00:00Fish can breathe underwater.
00:05That's sort of their thing.
00:06Dissolved oxygen in the water is pulled from their surroundings via their gills, but now
00:10experts say one fish is actually able to hold its breath, and they think they know why.
00:15According to researchers, some species of hammerhead sharks close their gills when they
00:18dive into particularly deep waters, effectively holding their breath as they move lower and
00:23lower and into cooler and cooler water while hunting, letting them maintain body heat as
00:27they do so.
00:28That's because the scalloped hammerhead shark is cold-blooded, meaning it doesn't produce
00:32its own body heat, so it has to make up for diving from warm surface waters down into
00:36the cold depths below, and maintaining body heat is extremely important for maintaining
00:40high metabolic function, something biologists say is extremely necessary while hunting.
00:45Post-doctoral researcher in shark physiology and behavior, Mark Royer, told Nature, quote,
00:50The most rapid point of heat loss for any fish, even a high-performance fish, is always
00:54at the gills, as they are essentially just giant radiators strapped to their heads.
00:58And scalloped hammerhead sharks would definitely need any help they can get, as they're known
01:02to hunt at depths of more than 2,600 feet.
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