Cold reaction, fish

[goku]

help me out here, is there not a cold reaction accuring in fish :shrug:

[C1ay]

Your request appears a little vague. Could you expound on it a little further? I'm not sure what you're asking.

[goku]

like the movie "the saint" with val killmer

[modest]

Cold fusion is the phrase you're looking for.

[REASON]

So, you're asking if *cold fusion* is occuring in fish, is that right? Or did you mean accruing?

[goku]

So, you're asking if *cold fusion* is occuring in fish, is that right? Or did you mean accruing?

 

yea something like that, because they're not warm.

[REASON]

yea something like that, because they're not warm.

 

So you're wondering if fish are cold-blooded because *cold fusion* is occurring inside them? :(

 

No.

 

Fish are cold-blooded, or more aptly termed ectotherms, because they do not possess the ability to regulate their internal body temperature. This is not due to *cold fusion.*

 

Cold Fusion refers to the idea that nuclear reactions could be generated at conditions near room temperature and atmospheric pressure. It is highly controversial, and has not been proven to be possible.

 

Being "cold-blooded" and "cold fusion" really have nothing in common.

[goku]

the chemical reactions in our body produce heat.

 

i thought there must be a different reaction in fish since they don't produce heat.

 

perhaps this is just another one of my dumb ideas.

[Moontanman]

the chemical reactions in our body produce heat.

 

i thought there must be a different reaction in fish since they don't produce heat.

 

perhaps this is just another one of my dumb ideas.

 

I know this was a while ago but it seems no one answered you so here goes. cold fusion is a nuclear reaction, not chemical, the chemical reactions in our bodies produces heat and so does the chemical reactions in fish. When a living thing "uses" food the chemical reactions always produce heat. The chemical reactions in a warm blooded animal are "endothermic" like mammals and humans proceed at a rate that produces enough heat to offset the loss of heat to the environment. Feathers and fur help conserve heat but the basis is the reactions go fast enough to produce enough heat to keep us warm. Fish are "exothermic" they are the same temperature as the surrounding environment. This is because the chemical reaction of them using food doesn't proceed fast enough to keep them warm against the loss to the environment. having said this I think it';s important to know that there are some warm blooded fish. Tuna, white sharks, and possibly some other large active fish do indeed keep their bodies a few degrees above the ambient environmental temperature. They do this by eating a lot and by using heat exchangers in their gills to conserve the heat of their metabolisms. Reptiles keep them selves warm by basking in the sun. It is thought that many if not all dinosaurs were warm blooded as well, some from simply being so large that heat built up in their bodies faster than it could escape and some by faster bird like metabolisms. a large animal can keep it's self warm easier than a small animal. Does this answer this for you goku? Remember, there are no stupid questions goku, only unanswered questions.

[CraigD]

The difference between ectothermic (“cold-blooded”) and endothermic (“warm-blooded”) animals isn’t due to the biochemistry of the “building block” cells that make up their bodies, but the regulatory systems built into them.

 

When a ectothermic animal like a fish, lizard, crocodile, or snake uses its muscles, they produce heat in the same way that ours do, via almost exactly the same biochemical reactions. The difference between us, and the reason that we maintain our entire bodies at a nearly constant temperature every minute of our lives, while theirs rises and falls as they exercise, rest, and spend time in warmer and colder places, is that we have a system that constantly tell our cells mainly in our various muscles smooth and striated muscles – though a lot of heat is produced by our hearts, and our most oxygen-hungry organs, the major ones being the liver, intestines, and brain – to create heat, and near-surface circulatory system and sweat glands to dilate and sweat to lose heat. In Ectotherms, these temperature control systems are much less effective, and even if they were as effective as ours, their cells aren’t capable of the sustained high metabolism ours are.

 

An endotherm is like a house with a thermostat and a big furnace, while an ectotherm is like a house with a small wood cook stove that only gets lit when its occupants need to use it.

 

The main advantages we endotherms have is that we can live in colder places than ectotherm, function well regardless of day-to-day and seasonal temperature changes, and in general are faster, stronger, and more alert than ectotherms. The main disadvantage is that we use a lot more energy, so need a lot more food. A typical ectotherm, like a snake, can live on about 1/30th the food of an endotherm of equal mass, like a rat.

 

A less obvious disadvantage to endothermy is that all of our cells work more, so wear out sooner. Back to the snake and rat example, if nothing eats it, a typical snake can live for decades, while no matter how pampered, a rat is lucky to live 4 years. While only a rare human lives more than 100 years, and no one has ever lived more than 122.5 years, some fish have been reliably documented living as long as 226 years.

 

(see “warm and cold-blooded” and wikipedia articles ”oldest people” and “koi”.

[goku]

the only other thought is we die if we get too cold, cold blooded animals don't.

[Moontanman]

the only other thought is we die if we get too cold, cold blooded animals don't.

 

That is a pretty good point goku but it's not true. I'm sure you have read about people who drowned in very cold water but were brought back to life after as long as 30 minutes. This is a case of the cold preserving live, not taking it.

 

Mammals have to be keep warm to live due to the way they have evolved, cold doesn't just kill us it causes changes in our bodies that results in death if it's prolonged. Our hearts stop when cold, our brains swell, oxygen is cut off from the brain. these and other things happen because our bodies cannot operate correctly at cold temps.

 

If you think about it cold also kills "cold" blooded animals too. That is why it's better to say "endothermic" instead of warm blooded and "exothermic" instead of cold blooded. Exothermic animals also die from being too cold as endothermic animals can die from being too hot. Both types can die from either extreme, mainly because their bodies have evolved to be adapted to certain temperature ranges.

 

Endotherms are usually adapted to a more narrow range than exotherms but it's really not hot or cold that kills it's being out side the range the bodies metabolism works at. Out side that range the parts of the body that keep our brains alive stop, our brains die, not necessarily the body or many of it's parts. They die once the brain stops but not at once, it's a slow process.

[CraigD]

If we’re on the subject of coldbloodedness and fish, we’d be remiss not to mention Antarctic icefish, a collection of related species of fish some of which actually live with their blood below 0 C.

 

As a general rule, blood temperatures below the freezing temperature of water is deadly to all animals, as ice begins to form in it, and ice is pretty bad stuff to have anywhere in your body. Icefish survive by having some of the most unusual blood of any animal, containing almost no hemoglobin (in the case of one family of species, white-blooded icefishes, having no hemoglobin or red blood cells at all) and a special blood protein that acts as an antifreeze.

 

Antifreeze proteins like the icefishes’ work at several hundred time lower concentrations than ethylene glycol (typical car antifreeze), and are non-toxic. In recent years, several biotech firms have transplanted fish genes into yeast to produce commercial versions of these proteins, allowing such things as a line of Breyers ice cream (“Light Double Churned”) that tastes rich and creamy with less fat or other additives.