Why+can't+fish+breathe+outside+of+water?


 * __WHY CAN'T FISH BREATHE OUTSIDE OF WATER?__**

Answer the question below, append new answers to the top of this page. _ __Response 1:__ Why can’t fish breathe outside of water? Gills are very unique structures that serve the same purpose that lungs in mammals have, oxygenating the body. Gills have a bed of very small blood vessels – capillaries – that are covered by a thin wall. Because this wall covering the blood vessels is so thin it allows gasses to easily travel across it. The gas O2, or oxygen, can oxygenate the blood that is traveling through the capillaries when it passes over this thin wall. Once the blood is oxygenated it is pumped through the fishes body into the arteries and back to the heart to get pumped back to the gills when it needs to be oxygenated again. While the thin walls that cover the capillaries are buoyant when there is blood pumping through them, when a fish is pulled out of the water and exposed to the air the weight of these thin walls will collapse on themselves stopping the flow of blood and taking away the fishes only system of breathing. ~Lekszi.N 8.4
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http://www.ccmr.cornell.edu/education/ask/index.html?quid=226 http://www.news.wisc.edu/13726 http://futurescientists.tamu.edu/lesson11/page2.html

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