Tag: fish

typhlonectes:

First (Fully) Warm-blooded Fish Found

by Stephanie Pappas

The car-tire-size opah is striking enough thanks to its rotund, silver
body. But now, researchers have discovered something surprising about
this deep-sea dweller: It’s got warm blood.

That makes the opah (Lampris guttatus) the first warm-blooded fish every discovered. Most fish are exotherms, meaning they require heat from the environment
to stay toasty. The opah, as an endotherm, keeps its own temperature
elevated even as it dives to chilly depths of 1,300 feet (396 meters) in
temperate and tropical oceans around the world.

“Increased temperature speeds up physiological processes within the
body,” study leader Nicholas Wegner, a biologist at the National Oceanic
and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Fisheries’ Southwest Fisheries
Science Center in La Jolla, California, told Live Science. “As a result,
the muscles can contract faster, the temporal resolution of the eye is
increased, and neurological transmissions are sped up. This results in
faster swimming speeds, better vision and faster response times.”…

(read more: Live Science)

photograph by NOAA Fisheries, SW Fisheries Science Center