The price to pay for the fish that live in Antarctica

The fish that inhabit the cold waters of Antarctica are born with anticoagulant proteins in capillaries, which help the blood to flow normally without freezing.

>>>Found the 'hot' fish living in Antarctica

However, evolution has proven to be a strange game, with each special adaptation having to go with some compromise.

Notothenioid - (Photo: news.illinois.edu)

And for notothenioid fish in Antarctica, to not die from blood clots in conditions of temperature from -2 ^o C, they must suffer from the ice always exists in the blood vessels.

That means antifreeze proteins , cling to ice crystals and preventing them from growing in size, while preventing them from dissolving completely.

The team led by Paul Cziko of the University of Oregon (USA) discovered the strange fact when studying notothenioid fish that always exist in extreme cold conditions.

If the temperature of the water increases slightly from the freezing point, these crystals are more likely to melt, but this is practically unlikely.

The conclusion is that this fish still has to carry ice crystals throughout its life, according to a report published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

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