i would like to know if it is true that a catfish has 20 000 taste buds.?

Answer 1

Catfish posess a highly developed sense of smell beyond that of other fish species. Catfish have tastebuds located around their mouths, lips and especially barbels but also distributed over their entire bodies. Catfish merely need to brush against a potential food item to taste it!

According to the US Fishing & Wildlife:

A single catfish may have more that 27,000 tastebuds on their body.

Answer 2

It's more than that...

The catfish’s highly developed sense of taste is like something out of Ripley’s Believe It or Not. The smooth scaleless skin is completely covered with taste buds. A catfish just 6 inches long has more than a quarter million. On a giant blue cat or flathead . . . well, who knows. No one wants to count them.

Imagine a huge swimming tongue. In a way, that’s what a catfish is.

Most fishes’ taste buds are only found in the mouth – on the tongue, the palate and so forth. There aren’t that many of them, either. In catfish, the mouth is packed with dense concentrations of taste buds. The major flow of water is across the gills, so gill rakers facing water flow also are loaded with huge densities of taste buds. Taste buds are also found on the outside of catfish as well – their fins, their back, their belly, their sides, even their tail.

On the flank of an adult channel or blue cat, there are at least 5,000 taste buds per square centimeter of skin. The highest concentrations on the outside of the body, however, are on the whiskers. Look at a catfish whisker under a microscope, and you’ll see a field of volcanoes. Every volcano is a taste bud.




CATFISH are literally covered from head to tail with sensory organs. The nostrils lead to the complex olfactory pits. The barbels and most of the body are covered with taste buds. The back of the eyes are coated with a layer of crystals that reflect light. The lateral line detects vibrations in the water. Electroreceptive pores cover the head region and the lateral line.

Answer 3

catfish have taste buds all along the surface of their body, as well as on their barbels of which they have four (whiskers around the mouth). About 25 buds per square millimeter. So my guess is that that would be about right depending on the size of the fish

Answer 4

i don't know... but my friend has a very large one as a pet... and it loves to eat different foods... but doesnt like krispy kreme donuts :) so maybe they can really taste everything! :)

I always just assumed he went by the texture of foods....