When we go underwater, we have to fill our lungs with air in order to stay under the water. Whales and dolphins also have lungs and also have to resurface in order to spend any length of time under the water. Fish on the other hand don't have lungs and very rarely rise to the top of the water, so just how do they survive?
As you probably already know, fish have gills. The water around the fish produces a tiny amount of oxygen. In order for the fish to be able to stay under the water he needs to be able to take in oxygen. The fish's gills do just this. They filter the oxygen in the water and this enables the fish to be able to breathe in water.
If you take a fish out of the water, it will die of suffocation. This is because the oxygen in the air has not been filtered through its gills and the fish can't breathe it in properly.
When you find your goldfish lying dead on the top of its bowl, it has probably suffocated from a lack of oxygen because they oxygen has been used up by some other means such as bacteria. So always make sure you clean Jaws' bowl out regularly!
Humans and other land animals get oxygen by breathing it in and extracting it from the air. Some aquatic animals are air breathing – whales, for example, come up to the surface to breathe in lungfuls of air every few minutes.
Fish, however, have a different mechanism. Instead of lungs, they have gills. The fish allows fresh water, which contains dissolved oxygen, to pass into its mouth and over its gills. These are rich in blood vessels and also have a large surface area. The oxygen from the water passes into the blood of the fish by diffusion, and waste carbon dioxide passes out the same way.
As long as there is plenty of oxygen dissolved in the water, the fish can extract enough through its gills to gain enough oxygen for cellular respiration. Fish do get in trouble if the oxygen content of the water falls – for example, when water becomes polluted by sewage. Then, they suffocate.
Fishes have Gills on two sides of their heads. They take water through their mouth and take it out of their gills. These gills have the ability to absorb Ozygen from water
The gills cause breathing in and out through those slits(gills) and fill through through the lungs. And as the water goes in side, the oxygen our human lungs cannot seem to be able to breathe in nor our eyes see, is inside the water and a special tube in it's body make the water separate from the oxygen. The water comes out but the oxygen is used. Imagining having to always suck in disgusting salty water just to breathe in through your mouth? Thank goodness for gills so you don't have to taste that water. Smiles! :)
Their is lot of oxygen dissolved in the sea water and then the fishes gulp them and the oxygen falls into its gills and then they breath perfectly and easily
They breath oxygen through their gills! That is part of why Global Warming is SO IMPORTANT! Water absorbs ANYTHING it comes in contact with! And that means CO@! So some of the oceans are getting very high rates of CO2, and dangerous levels are starting to appear in a lot of places, too! Plus this driving Ions down, and Ions are proportional to plant growth and plants breath CO2! So soon the fish are going to have a hard time breathing!!!! :) :)
