Mandarin fish is a nocturnal piscivore, which stalks and captures its prey. The typical sequence of events is: eyeing the prey, turning and slowly moving towards it, leaping forward, snapping and finally swallowing it. Mandarin fish has typical “split-head” colour pattern in the form of a stripe running from the snout back along the mid-dorsal line to the dorsal fin, which may will allow the fish to approach its prey undetected.

When one of the three sense organs (eyes, lateral lines and nose) was eliminated or blocked, mandarin fish fed as much as the normal ones did. When two of the three sense organs were eliminated or blocked, mandarin fish could still feed normally but when both eyes and lateral lines were eliminated or blocked simultaneously, mandarin fish could hardly feed, whether or not the sense of smell was working.

It could respond to various types of artificial preys behind a glass screen. Although it stalked all the moving artificial preys, it only attacked intermittently the moving prey with the shape of a shuttle or rectangle, and did not respond to still visual stimuli.

Blinded mandarin fish could attack various types of artificial preys vibrating at a low frequency (below 10 Hz), but did not respond to the still preys. The chemical nature of artificial preys did not affect the frequency of occurrence of attacking behaviour of mandarin fish, but did affect that of the swallowing behaviour. Mandarin fish only swallowed fresh dead prey fish, and rejected rotten fish and fish made of plastic.

It is shown that mandarin fish attacks its prey by using eyes or lateral lines, and that the taste sense is used in the process of prey-swallowing. Since chemical stimuli cannot induce mandarin fish to attack potential prey. This may be the main reason why the fish reject artificial diets offered normally.