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A fish scale is a small rigid plate that grows out of the skin of a fish. The skin of most jawed fishes is covered with these protective scales, which can also provide effective camouflage through the use of reflection and colouration, as well as possible hydrodynamic advantages.
Dolphins are sometimes used as symbols, for instance in heraldry. When heraldry developed in the Middle Ages, not much was known about the biology of the dolphin and it was often depicted as a sort of fish. Traditionally, the dolphins in heraldry still may take after this notion, sometimes showing the dolphin skin covered with fish scales.
Generally, the skin also contains sweat glands and sebaceous glands that are both unique to mammals, but additional types of skin glands are found in fish. Found in the epidermis, fish typically have numerous individual mucus -secreting skin cells called goblet cells that produce a slimy substance to the surface of the skin.
Birds' scales are found mainly on the toes and metatarsus, but may be found further up on the ankle in some birds. The scales and scutes of birds were thought to be homologous to those of reptiles, [ 4 ] but are now agreed to have evolved independently, being degenerate feathers.
Apart from electric rays, which have a thick and flabby body, with soft, loose skin, chondrichthyans have tough skin covered with dermal teeth (again, Holocephali is an exception, as the teeth are lost in adults, only kept on the clasping organ seen on the caudal ventral surface of the male), also called placoid scales (or dermal denticles ...
Brittle stars do not have pedicellariae, and the plates that cover their surface are known as shields. On the arms these are in four rows with each segment having an aboral and oral shield and two lateral shields, usually with fringing spines. Other ossicles include spines, tubercles, small scales and vertebrae.
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In practice, fish anatomy and physiology complement each other, the former dealing with the structure of a fish, its organs or component parts and how they are put together, such as might be observed on the dissecting table or under the microscope, and the latter dealing with how those components function together in the living fish.