A fish (pl: fish) is an aquatic, craniate, gill-bearing animal that lacks limbs

with digits. Included in this definition are the living hagfish, lampreys, and
cartilaginous and bony fish as well as various extinct related groups.
Approximately 95% of living fish species are ray-finned fish, belonging to the
class Actinopterygii, with around 99% of those being teleosts.

The earliest organisms that can be classified as fish were soft-bodied chordates
that first appeared during the Cambrian period. Although they lacked a true spine,
they possessed notochords which allowed them to be more agile than their
invertebrate counterparts. Fish would continue to evolve through the Paleozoic era,
diversifying into a wide variety of forms. Many fish of the Paleozoic developed
external armor that protected them from predators. The first fish with jaws
appeared in the Silurian period, after which many (such as sharks) became
formidable marine predators rather than just the prey of arthropods.

Most fish are ectothermic ("cold-blooded"), allowing their body temperatures to

vary as ambient temperatures change, though some of the large active swimmers like
white shark and tuna can hold a higher core temperature.[1][2] Fish can
acoustically communicate with each other, most often in the context of feeding,
aggression or courtship.[3]

Fish are abundant in most bodies of water. They can be found in nearly all aquatic
environments, from high mountain streams (e.g., char and gudgeon) to the abyssal
and even hadal depths of the deepest oceans (e.g., cusk-eels and snailfish),
although no species has yet been documented in the deepest 25% of the ocean.[4]
With 34,300 described species, fish exhibit greater species diversity than any
other group of vertebrates.[5]

Fish are an important resource for humans worldwide, especially as food. Commercial
and subsistence fishers hunt fish in wild fisheries or farm them in ponds or in
cages in the ocean (in aquaculture). They are also caught by recreational fishers,
kept as pets, raised by fishkeepers, and exhibited in public aquaria. Fish have had
a role in culture through the ages, serving as deities, religious symbols, and as
the subjects of art, books and movies.

Tetrapods (amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals) emerged within lobe-finned

fishes, so cladistically they are fish as well. However, traditionally fish (pisces
or ichthyes) are rendered paraphyletic by excluding the tetrapods, and are
therefore not considered a formal taxonomic grouping in systematic biology, unless
it is used in the cladistic sense, including tetrapods,[6][7] although usually
"vertebrate" is preferred and used for this purpose (fish plus tetrapods) instead.
Furthermore, cetaceans, although mammals, have often been considered fish by
various cultures and time periods.

Etymology
The word for fish in English and the other Germanic languages (German Fisch; Gothic
fisks) is inherited from Proto-Germanic, and is related to the Latin piscis and Old
Irish īasc, though the exact root is unknown; some authorities reconstruct a Proto-
Indo-European root *peysk-, attested only in Italic, Celtic, and Germanic.[8][9]
[10][11]

The English word once had a much broader usage than its current biological meaning.
Names such as starfish, jellyfish, shellfish and cuttlefish attest to almost any
fully aquatic animal (including whales) once being fish. "Correcting" such names
(e.g. to sea star) is an attempt to retroactively apply the current meaning of fish
to words that were coined when it had a different meaning.[citation needed]

Evolution
Main article: Evolution of fish
Fish, as vertebrata, developed as sister of the tunicata. As the tetrapods emerged
deep within the fishes group, as sister of the lungfish, characteristics of fish
are typically shared by tetrapods, including having vertebrae and a cranium.

Drawing of animal with large mouth, long tail, very small dorsal fins, and pectoral
fins that attach towards the bottom of the body, resembling lizard legs in scale
and development.[12]
Dunkleosteus was a gigantic, 10-metre (33 ft) long prehistoric fish of class
Placodermi.

Lower jaw of the placoderm Eastmanosteus pustulosus, showing the shearing

structures ("teeth") on its oral surface; from the Devonian of Wisconsin
Early fish from the fossil record are represented by a group of small, jawless,
armored fish known as ostracoderms. Jawless fish lineages are mostly extinct. An
extant clade, the lampreys may approximate ancient pre-jawed fish. The first jaws
are found in Placodermi fossils. They lacked distinct teeth, having instead the
oral surfaces of their jaw plates modified to serve the various purposes of teeth.
The diversity of jawed vertebrates may indicate the evolutionary advantage of a
jawed mouth. It is unclear if the advantage of a hinged jaw is greater biting
force, improved respiration, or a combination of factors.

Fish may have evolved from a creature similar to a coral-like sea squirt, whose
larvae resemble primitive fish in important ways. The first ancestors of fish may
have kept the larval form into adulthood (as some sea squirts do today).

Phylogeny