Few things in the ocean are more easily recognisable than a blowfish have a bad bit . When they ’re threatened , the fish rapidly gulp down water into their stretchable , distensible stomachs , puffing themselves up to both come out larger than they normally are and to show off the pointy spur that cover their skin . “ The final solution is a barbellate ball that can be three - to - four - times the resting mass of the fish and not well take in , ” say Georgia McGee , a marine biology scholar at James Cook University in Australia .
It ’s an impressive defense against predators , but as far as scientist guess for years , it had one big drawback . The fish appeared to hold their breath while billow , keeping their gill flaps closed and neither bringing oxygen in through them nor pass waste out . A pufferfish , then , could presumptively only stay puffed for as long as it could make its breath , and it had skilful hope that that ’s longer than the care span of whatever marauder was bothering it . To compensate , some scientist thought the Pisces might absorb atomic number 8 through its skin while in spiky beach globe modality .
After read about this surmise in other study , as well as watchingFinding Nemo , McGee was inspired tosee if these approximation held any H2O . With Timothy Clark , a physiologist who examine fish respiration at the Australian Institute of Marine Science , McGee captured Black - saddle pufferfish near the Great Barrier Reef and brought them back to the science lab . The research worker arouse each fish into inflating while sensors in the blowfish ’ tank monitored how much oxygen they took from the water through their gills , and a smaller helping hand - held detector was pressed to their bodies to value oxygen ingestion through the peel .
They found that right when the fish inflate , they really take in about four sentence as much atomic number 8 as when they were deflated . That rate went down as the fish stayed puff ( which they did for anywhere from three to 18 minutes ) , but they kept take in oxygen and did n’t hold up their breath . The Pisces the Fishes did n’t breathe like scientist had assumed , and oxygen intake through the pelt was “ fundamentally undetectable . ” rather , the Pisces kept breathing through their lamella , which McGee could clear see moving .
Pufferfish can breathe normally while inflated and do n’t have to take between getting eaten or running out of breath . But that does n’t intend blowing up into a spiky clump is easy . After the fish deflated , McGee noticed they were “ take a breath hard ” and take a while , sometimes as long as five hours , to return to their normal respiration rates . Other report have likewise found a long recovery time after inflation , and that the fish can only amplify so many times in a words before get fatigued and being ineffective to draw up again . McGee thinks that chugging enough water to inflate , on top of any relief valve attempts the fish might make before inflate , is energetically taxing and leaves the fish tuckered out .
