Breathing underwater is something that surprises every human being. If you love swimming and experienced the tough survival conditions underwater, you may have asked this question many times: How do fish get their oxygen? We have done some research for you and this article will give answers to all the questions that may pop up in your mind regarding the process of oxygen intake by fish underwater.
How Do Fish Get Their Oxygen?
First of all, remember that fish do breathe and they do use oxygen for breathing. However, they have developed different mechanisms for the intake of oxygen compared to humans. Humans have lungs but fish have gills. Lungs cannot bear the entry of water and are highly sensitive to even a single drop of water.
On the other hand, fish utilize gills to get their oxygen. Gills are the feathery organs present on the side of fish that make it possible for fish to inhale oxygen while they are underwater. Fish use gills to extract oxygen from water and add it to the circulatory system of the fish.
Still, have questions?
Want to know how gills are structurally different from lungs? How nature has made it possible for fish to get their oxygen inside salty oceans and other water resources?
Let’s discover the answers in detail.
How Are Gills Structurally Different From Lungs?
If we observe the embryos of fish and humans at the very primitive stage, we come to know that they both have slits and have a similar structure. However, the slits of the fish embryo later develop into the gills while the human slits take the shape of lungs.
Unlike gills, the lungs are made of elastic tissues and have very little ability to allow the flow of liquid. As a result, they perform well with air as it requires very little effort. Their structure does not allow them to expel other fluids.
On the other side, the gills are not elastic structures. Instead, they are made up of thread-like structures. When the fish takes the water inside their bodies, they expel it out through the gills and the threads of the gills immediately absorb oxygen from the water.
This functionality of the gills is lost when they are outside water and collapse.
It is due to this reason the fish cannot live or breathe without water.
How Do Fish Extract Oxygen From Water?
If you are interested about the mechanism of oxygen extraction inside water, keep in mind that the process of diffusion is responsible for the entry of oxygen from the water into the blood. Diffusion is the process in which gas or fluid travels from the area of higher concentration to the area of lower concentration.
Both lungs and gills use the process of diffusion for oxygen extraction, but their structures make them different. These structural differences make lungs suitable for oxygen extraction in the air while gills are naturally designed to work best underwater.
The bottom line
Fish are aquatic animals that require oxygen to survive. However, they have different specialized organs called gills to breathe underwater. In short, every organism has adaptations for oxygen interaction that make them suitable for their particular environment.
