FEEDING OF FISH AS STOCHASTIC-PROCESS

he experiments were carried out with fishes kept solitary. Bloodworms were offered one-by-one to starved individual of barbel, Puntius arulius with 30 sec intervals in a 5-hour run. The whole time of a feeding experiment can be divided in two periods. During the first period fish ingests each food item, during the second one many food items are rejected. The rate of feeding at first period is limited by frequency of encountering of fish with food items. Limitation at the second period is determined by the rate of digesta evacuation from anterior part of intestine. Times of food refusals are distributed exponentially. This distribution may be interpreted as distribution of waiting-times in an overloaded processsing system, in accordance with the approach of queues theory.