New Research Reveals Certain Sharks Stop Breathing to Catch Prey

Amaze Lab

Fish can breathe underwater, that’s sort of their thing. Dissolved oxygen in the water is pulled from the surrounding ocean via their gills, but now experts say one fish is able to actually hold its breath and they think they know why.

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00:00Fish can breathe underwater. That's sort of their thing. Dissolved oxygen in the water is pulled

00:08from their surroundings via their gills. But now experts say one fish is actually able to hold

00:12its breath, and they think they know why. According to researchers, some species of

00:17hammerhead sharks close their gills when they dive into particularly deep waters,

00:21effectively holding their breath as they move lower and lower and into cooler and cooler water

00:25while hunting, letting them maintain body heat as they do so. That's because the scalloped

00:29hammerhead shark is cold-blooded, meaning it doesn't produce its own body heat. So it has to make up

00:34for diving from warm surface waters down into the cold depths below. And maintaining body heat is

00:39extremely important for maintaining high metabolic function, something biologists say is extremely

00:43necessary while hunting. Post-doctoral researcher in shark physiology and behavior, Mark Royer,

00:49told Nature, quote, the most rapid point of heat loss for any fish, even a high-performance fish,

00:53is always at 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,

01:01as they're known to hunt at depths of more than 2,600 feet.

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