The so-called thermostatic animals refer to birds and mammals, because the body temperature regulation mechanism is relatively perfect, can maintain a relatively stable body temperature in the case of changes in ambient temperature.
In everyone's impression, fish can not regulate their own temperature, so fish are cold-blooded animals, their body temperature changes with the change of external temperature
However, in the Pacific and Indian Oceans, there is a thermostatic fish, the moonfish, also called the moonfish
The lunar fish is the only thermostatic fish found by humans.
They are nearly half a meter long and flattened, resembling giant pomfrets. The body is rusty red and covered with white spots
As a constant temperature fish, unlike other fish, they have a unique thermoregulation mechanism, which can regulate their own temperature, so they can live in the deep sea of 50 to 400 meters for a long time, which is the advantage of being able to stand firm in the sea compared to sharks
Since the temperature can be adjusted autonomously, how does the moon fish produce heat?
In fact, they produce heat by constantly flashing their wings-like pectoral fins. And can keep the muscle temperature on average about 4 to 5 ° C higher than the temperature of the surrounding sea water, which allows them to hunt in the deep sea for a long time, this advantage is not comparable to other fish
The lunar vessels are located inside the gills of the fish, not the muscles used by other fish to be useful, which means that when it waves its pectoral fin to produce heat, the heated blood swims through the body rather than being quickly cooled by the cold sea water
In addition, its gills have a special function: they can exchange the cold blood in the gills with the oxygen in the water to generate heat. This special function is engineeringly called "countercurrent heat exchange"
The clever moonfish isolates the colder parts of the body from the hotter parts to prevent damage to important organs such as the brain and heart
These unique body structures allow the moonfish to not lose their body even in the icy waters.
Its thermostatic constitution gives them another advantage: they are not easy to capture. It is exactly like this that people call it "Lucky Fish".