Are there really fish in the hot, arid desert? It may seem incredible, but in real life, there are some fish that live in desert areas.
Death Valley, located in the desert valley of California, USA, is one of the harshest regions in North America, where temperatures are very high all year round, especially in the summer, when temperatures can reach up to more than 50°C. More than 100 years ago, many people tried to cross this area, but due to the extremely harsh environment here, many people stayed in Death Valley forever, so the locals called this area "Death Valley".
In such extreme heat, many species cannot survive, but in this Death Valley there are some desert fish called "medaka". Of course, this is not to say that these fish live in the sand of the desert, there is a "devil's hole" in Death Valley, and in the devil's hole, there is a waterhole 130 meters deep in the moon, and this waterhole is the home of these desert fish.
Due to the generally high temperature in Death Valley, the water temperature in this Devil's Cave is not low, maintaining between 33.3°C and 33.9°C all year round, which is actually not suitable for most fish to survive for a long time, but desert fish can survive here very well. Conversely, when scientists moved some desert fish out of the Devil's Hole, they couldn't adapt.
Scientists have found that these desert fish belong to a separate species that has been isolated from the world for almost 60,000 years. About 2 million years ago, the environment here was not as harsh as it is now, but a warm, humid wetland, so there were countless creatures here, including various animals, plants, and microorganisms.
Later, the three mountains of Nevada, Panamin and Agas blocked the moist sea breeze from the Pacific Ocean, so that the rainfall here became less and less, and it became more and more arid, and finally became a desert. As the once humid and warm wetlands turned into deserts and deserts, the creatures that once lived here gradually became extinct, and these desert fish remained in the Devil's Cave, isolated from the world for tens of thousands of years.
Although the desert fish are able to survive in extremely hot conditions, due to the fact that the Devil's Cave is their only home at present, the survival situation of these desert fish is not very optimistic due to the influence of humans and other factors, and at the very least, there are only 38 desert fish left.
In order to protect these desert fish, the locals have also made a lot of efforts, but the effect is not very obvious. For example, the locals once built 3 new shelters for these desert fish, and the environment of these shelters mimicked the environment of the Devil's Cave as much as possible, and there was no difference to be seen, but when these desert fish were transferred to the shelter, they changed.
Because the phenotype of desert fish is extremely plastic, after being transferred to a shelter, their phenotype also changed. So, moving desert fish out of the desert and out of Death Valley won't work. That's why the only thing that can be done now is to protect this Devil's Cave, and to protect this only home they rely on for survival, is to protect these desert fish.
A fish that can crawl in the desert
Although the desert fish mentioned above have strong vitality and can survive in extreme desert areas, they live in the waterholes of the Devil's Cave and cannot survive without water.
There is a Qianhu Desert in the northeast of Brazil in South America, although it is a desert, but the precipitation here is relatively high, with an annual rainfall of 1,600 mm, which is almost three times the rainfall in Beijing.
Although there is a lot of rainfall, due to its proximity to the equator, water evaporates very quickly during the dry season, with the water level falling at a rate of up to 1 metre per month.
Therefore, this Thousand Lakes Desert has formed an extremely rare landscape, that is, when the rainy season comes, when the rainfall is abundant, the rainwater here cannot be quickly drained to form lakes, and some lakes are even connected to the Atlantic Ocean. When the dry season arrives, the water in the lakes quickly evaporates and turns into desert-like sandy land due to heat waves.
And around this Thousand Lakes Desert, there are many rivers, when the rainy season comes, the Thousand Lakes Desert forms a lake in a few words, connected to the nearby river water, and those fish living in the river will follow the river water into the Thousand Lakes Desert, including a catfish called "Hoplosternum littorale", this kind of catfish also has another name, that is, the Litola Chariot Mouse.
Look at you who are not familiar with this kind of catfish, but another species in the same family is a very common fish in our family, and that is what we call scavengers.
The catfish are over 25 centimeters long and have bony armor composed of large hard scales on their surface. As a fish that lives in the Qianhu Desert, the shore catfish has a strong vitality and has the ability to breathe on land for a short time, and can survive for a short time after leaving the water, not only crawling on the shore, but also breathing in the air of the land. They breathe through their mouths and then exchange gas with their microvascular intestines, leaving the rest of the gas out of the anus, similar to the most primitive lung system.
During the rainy season, catfish feed on aquatic organisms, and when the dry season comes, they can climb ashore to feed on insects. So, even though the Qianhu Desert is constantly switching between humid and arid environments, these coastal catfish can cross the sand to find other places to live that have not dried up, and finally have to return to the water to survive for a long time, after all, it is still a fish after all.