The purpose of this critical review is to reevaluate the current experimental literature on fish audition based upon evaluation of structural, physiological and behavioral studies. The specific emphasis of the paper will be to (1) review the recent literature on the psychophysiology of hearing in fishes; (2) look at the subject of fish hearing from the standpoint of auditory mechanisms and their relationship to what is known about hearing in terrestrial vertebrates; and (3) emphasize some questions and areas of research which we feel require more investigation. Based on the data reviewed in the paper we have tentatively concluded that the teleost auditory system is well adapted as a temporal analyzer.