The secret of farming crucian carp through the winter

After the oxygen in the water is reduced, in order to maintain a normal metabolism, the fish have to inhale more water in order to breathe more oxygen. However, more water intake can affect their salt balance and increase physiological stress. Therefore, in order to maintain a normal physiological balance, most fish do not increase their respiratory frequency to maintain normal physiological activity in winter, but automatically weaken their respiration, and their metabolism begins to slow down. As a result, many fish move slowly in winter, and some even begin to hibernate.

However, biologists have found that crucian carp are still active in winter, even under the ice. Is there any secret for crucian carp to spend the winter? Yes, there is. Scientists have recently discovered that crucian carp survive the cold winter by deforming their gills. It was Joe Lande, a biologist at the University of Oslo in Norway, who discovered the mystery. Solid, he put some crucian carp into water tanks with lower-than-normal oxygen content, and then observed that the gills of crucian carps were strangely deformed and the Gill filaments cracked, so that the respiratory surface area of the whole gills became larger. At that time, Solid measured that the respiratory surface area of crucian carp gills actually increased by 7.5 times the normal value, which shows that the deformation ability of crucian carp gills is quite strong, which is also an important reason for the exuberant vitality of crucian carp. We often find in the aquaculture market that even if there is a large pot of crucian carp, they are not easy to die, while other fish are easy to die from lack of oxygen, which is also because the gills of crucian carp are good at deformation.

Is it true that only the gills of crucian carp can deform? I'm not sure yet, but so far scientists have only found that crucian carp have this ability. As a result, some biologists have proposed that if the cracked Gill genes of crucian carp are studied and transplanted to other fish to produce genetically modified fish that can split Gill filaments, maybe freshwater fish farms do not have to worry about how to get the fish through the cold winter.