[MR.FREEZ]

Quote

Antarctica has a peculiar group of fish called the ice fish. These have no red pigment - haemoglobin - in their blood to carry oxygen around. Because the temperature is so low and oxygen dissolves better in cold temperatures, they get by perfectly well without it. They just have a larger volume of clear blood instead and so unusually have a ghostly white colour, particularly their gills.
These ice fish have recently been shown to have their DNA damaged by high levels of ultra violet light resulting from the ozone hole (they have less pigment to prevent the UV getting through).

Many other Antarctic sea creatures including fish have antifreeze in their blood so they don't accidentally get frozen solid!

just thought it was neat, i cant find any pictures but ill keep an eye out

heres my source for the quote, its # 12

This post has been edited by mr.freez: 20 January 2005 - 07:41 PM

[Advertisements]

[acestro]

Cool stuff freeze, I'll try and get more info.

I like #13 on that page:

Quote

The largest land animal in Antarctica is an insect, a wingless midge, Belgica antarctica, less than 1.3cm (0.5in) long. There are no flying insects (they'd get blown away), just shiny black springtails that hop like fleas and tend to live among penguin colonies

I guess the penguins don't count as land animals (aquatic). Funny stuff!

[acestro]

Found it, here's some taxonomic info (note that these aren't the only fish around antarctica, there are more).

Notothenioidea. This sub-order is divided into four families: Antarctic cod, plunder fish, Dragonfish and ice fish.

Attached File(s)

•  Antarc8.jpg (4.33K)
  Number of downloads: 0

[acestro]

This is from a Korean site but it was labelled 'ice fish' as well.

Attached File(s)

•  IceFish.gif (96.45K)
  Number of downloads: 0

[acestro]

Freeze got me on a role, here's another weird fish that apparently elevates it's body temperature with a jaw muscle (there are other fish that produce heat from muscles like swordfish and tuna, but this one was new to me! ).

Quote

Those fish were caught and opened up for the sake of science. They happen to have a very peculiar thermoregulating muscle in their jaw. Most antarctic fish keep their body temperature identical to the water temperature, using a high quantity of glycopeptides in their blood as antifreeze, but not this specie thanks to a special muscle. Here the muscle has been removed for analysis. Biologists study also their digestive enzymes for cold temperature detergent applications. Another weird fish is the ice fish which is almost transparent thanks to the complete absence of hemoglobin (which gives the red color to blood and also carries oxygen around the body); even its parasitic leaches are transparent

Attached File(s)

•  DeadFish.jpg (30.27K)
  Number of downloads: 0

[MR.FREEZ]

acestro, on Jan 20 2005, 06:04 PM, said:

Cool stuff freeze, I'll try and get more info.

I like #13 on that page:
I guess the penguins don't count as land animals (aquatic).  Funny stuff!

yeah the way i figure it the penguins must leave and breed in like argentina or chile

or something

This post has been edited by mr.freez: 21 January 2005 - 01:52 AM