The mystery of the strange South American fish that lives without water

Lungfish - African and South American Ceratodontimorpha have the ability to live in a complete lack of water for many months, even years.

Lungfish do not need water to live well.

While there are fish that can live in water filled with sulfuric acid or in deep water that no light can reach, lungfish - Ceratodontimorpha even without water can still live well.

Unlike fish, the lungfish's bladder has evolved to the point where it can adapt itself like the lungs of terrestrial animals, allowing it to take oxygen directly from the air. Therefore, this fish can live in a completely waterless environment for many months, even years.

Most extant lungfish have two lungs, with the exception of the Australian lungfish, which has only one.

Locals discovered a lungfish under the arid soil.

During the high water season, lungfish like other fish, forage by hunting smaller fish, as well as crustaceans on the bottom of rivers and lakes.

But strangely, in the dry season, when aquatic animals slowly die under the sun, lungfish gently dig a burrow by swallowing mud into its mouth and pushing it out through its gills. .

After diving to a certain depth, the fish will lie there and secrete a slime that covers its entire body, except for the mouth. At this time, lungfish have no food to eat in the cave. So it will gradually digest its own tail muscle to survive.

Lungfish can live a very long time. A Queensland lungfish at Shedd's aquarium in Chicago was part of a long-lived collection from 1933 to 2017, when it died from declining health with old age.

Lungfish have been around for nearly 400 million years, and the fossils unearthed show that this fish has remained unchanged for more than 100 million years.

The lungfish's ability to survive and adapt makes it a species unlikely to become extinct. In addition to South America, lungfish are also found in Africa and Australia.