Tactile sense, or cutaneous mechanoreception is a sensory system which is the least investigated in fish

not only mechanoreceptory systems such as auditory, vestibular systems, and that of lateral line but also
in comparison with other sensory systems. According to the volume of knowledge on structure and
function, the tactile system is commensurable with the general chemical sense or with sensitivity to pain.
It is not incidental that both these sensory systems, tactile and general chemical sense, are extremely
rarely considered in extensive reviews or monographs on sense organs, behavior, or physiology of fish.
Tactile sense provides the most direct, immediate connection of the animal with the surrounding world.It
should be stressed that tactile reception is indeed the sole contact sensory system and this property
distinguishes it from all other sensory systems of fish. Even the gustatory system in some fish.

In such a case, usual among fish, tactile organs perform a complex sensory function, and it is more correct
to call them chemotactile organs. The obvious sensory purpose of these organs determines the high
attention to their investigation.
Barbels of fish are epidermal outgrowths tentacular in form that in fish are situated on the head,
frequently near or around the mouth.
Obviously, such wide range of variation in size, position, and number of barbels; mobility; and other
characteristics indicates that their function is extremely diverse and evidently related to the mode of life,
behavior, and feeding and to development of other sensory systems in them. Especially significant are the
barbels in fish living or feeding under conditions when possibilities for visual orientation are limited.
Tactile reception plays an important role in feeding of many fish, first of all, of those that have
poor vision or feed under conditions interfering with action of the visual system. Principally, these are
inhabitants of bottom and near bottom biotopes and the fish with crepuscular nocturnal type of activity.
During food search, these fish mainly use tactile sense and other non visual sensory systems olfactory,
external gustatory reception, the lateral line, hearing, electroreception. By foraging strategy, the majority
of such fish belong to hunters of the hiding or tracking type. They move at a low speed in searching for
food and thoroughly examine places of probable location of prey, while repeatedly touching the bottom
and any objects with barbels, fins, lips, free fin rays, head, trunk, or caudal peduncle.
 Perception of external information usually occurs by several sensory canals simultaneously. Most
reactions in animals and man are formed on this basis and this implies close interaction of different
sensory systems. It is supposed that tactile reception in vertebrates is closely connected with the taste
system, similarly to other somatosensory components thermal and pain reception. Their interaction may
take place at any level, beginning from the periphery where it is not so well expressed and finishing with
primary and secondary brain centers.
Tactile reception is functionally connected in fish not only with gustatory but also with other
sense organs, in particular, with the auditory system and the system of lateral line, belonging, similarly to
tactile reception, to the mechanosensory complex. It is known that tactile irritation of skin near the dorsal
fin (light touches and patting with a glass rod) modified in roach the amplitude of induced answers to
acoustic stimuli recorded in the medulla oblongata and the anterior part of the tectum .
Behavior of juvenile fish of the phytophilic group may make an example of coordinated action of
tactile and visual systems. In prolarvae of acipenserids, a negative attitude to light during a short, strictly
definite, period of ontogenesis coincides with the positive reaction to touches. Due to this fact, the
juveniles hide under stones or escape to other shelters on the bottom and stay here during time dangerous
for them. After several days, the attitude to light changes into one of indifference, and tactile stimuli now
start a defensive motor reflex: juveniles leave shelters and start feeding on external food.