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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