HEAD TURNING IN HERRING AND SOME OTHER FISH

Herring (Clupea harengus L.), swimming freely, were recorded on high-s peed video and the positions of their heads found at 5 ms intervals. T he displacements, velocities and accelerations of various positions al ong the head were estimated. An analysis of this data showed that, wit h continuous swimming, the lateral motions of the head could be descri bed reasonably well as the sum of side-slip movements (with equal late ral displacements for all points along the length of the head) and yaw ing movements around a pivoting position, P, on the mid-line of the he ad, about 16%-18% of the body length of the fish from the snout. The p hases of the lateral displacements due to yaw were close to those of t he lateral velocities at P; the lateral displacements and velocities, both being measured in a direction perpendicular to that in which the fish was moving. The lateral velocities were in good agreement with th e products of the steady forward velocity of the fish U and the angle alpha (in radians) between the direction in which the head was pointin g and the direction in which the fish was swimming. The angular veloci ty, OMEGA, of the turning of the head was close to being equal to 0.87 A/U, where A is the acceleration of the head at P in the direction per pendicular to that in which the head was pointing. OMEGA and A were in phase. These facts give support to a theory described by Lighthill in the preceding paper on how clupeids might 'turn their heads' during s wimming so as to swim more economically and diminish the large stimuli that a fish's own movements would otherwise give to the receptor orga ns of the lateral line system. An analysis of data taken from earlier work on cod (Gadus morhua) by J. J. Videler and C. S. Wardle, and on b ream (Abramis brama) by R. Bainbridge, showed that these fish probably make head movements with the same properties.