Stupid Question

[AdAndrews]

SO IF FISH NEED OXYGEN HOW DONT THEY SURVIVE OUT OF WATER?, IS IT ONLY A CERTAIN AMOUNT OF OXYGEN AND TOO MUCH WOULD "DROWN" THEM LIKE WE DROWN IN WATER??

ITS A STUPID QUESTIN BUT I JUST WONDERED

 

[nosoup4you]

Because fish use gills to extract oxygen from water. Just as humans can't process oxygen from water (we have lungs not gills), fish cannot process oxygen from air...furthermore, they'd dry up. LOL

 

[AdAndrews]

Because fish use gills to extract oxygen from water. Just as humans can't process oxygen from water (we have lungs not gills), fish cannot process oxygen from air...furthermore, they'd dry up. LOL

thanks i thought it was a dumb q but your answer had satisfied my curious little mind

 

[waterdrop]

o come on now.. "big" questions like that are fun. Why not use your question as a jumping off point to have fun learning some stuff. You could look up "gill" on wikipedia and read about fish gills (actually I just did and let me warn you that it contains the incorrect information that gills only give off CO2 (they only/also (not sure) give off NH3/NH4+ (ammonia) but other than that the article and links are pretty interesting if you treat it as fun!)

 

[Jim Curtis]

Fish can't drive either because they have no hands and their fins are too short to reach the pedels.

 

[fifefish]

fish dont need to drive they can swim..

 

[Corleone]

o come on now.. "big" questions like that are fun.

The real fun is that some fish can survive out of water. Gouramis and bettas can breathe air, but still need to be wet. I've heard stories about how some breeders ship bettas in wet newspaper instead of water to reduce weight, though I don't really know how long they can survive that way. Snakeheads have been known to live for days out of their tanks, and there's a species of killifish that spends half the year in trees instead of water. Some catfish can swallow air and absorb oxygen from it through their gut.

Even in these cases, there's a limited timeframe, and certain conditions they need to survive out of water - fish and amphibians lack the regulatory systems that higher vertebrates use to keep their fluid levels constant, so when they dry out, they lose fluids quickly and die.