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Documente Cultură
by Francis G. Carey
36
I
GILLS
HEART
POSTCARDINALVEIN
DORSAL AORTA
DORSAL AORTA
POSTCARDINAL VEIN
1
7
CUTANEOUS VEIN
CUTANEOUS ARTERY
V.4SCULAR SYSTEMS of cold-blooded (top) and warm ( b o t t o m )fishes are different. The
main vessels in most fishes, the cold-blooded ones, run along the backbone and radiate outward to the small vessels (not shown) that supply the muscle. In warm fi-hes the central
vessels are smaller; most of the blood flows through cutaneous vessels under the skin and
thence through countercurrent nets I not shown) that supply the muscle. This arrange.
tnent puts the cold end of the exchanger near the skin and the warm end in warm ti-sues.
veins acts as a Countercurrent heat eschanger. There are large areas of contact
between the two kinds of fine vessel, and
heat is readily transferred through the
vessels' thin walls. Therefore the walm
venous b l o o d i s c o o l e d a s i t flo~vs
through the rete, so that little or no heat
is lost when the venous blood at last
reaches the gills. At the same time the
cold arterial blood is warmed, so that
when it reaches the interior of the fish,
it has nearly reached the temperature of
the warm body tissues.
A rete of this type serves exclusively
as a countercurrent heat exchanger. Its
vessels, although small, are too large and
their walls are too thick to aIIow any significant difusion of oxygen molecules
from the arterial blood to the venous
blood. Other retia that do serve as gas
eschangers are found in many species of
fish [see '' 'The Wonderful Net,'
by
P. F. Scliolander; SCIENTIFIC ,IJIERICA
April, 19571. The tiny vessels that coniprise thein are capillaries, and so oxygen
molecules readily pass from one to another. Such retia are found in the swim
bladder and the eye.
"
-'
?&!y suqp1;ed w i t h blood. T h e lightc8lorsd Gben usudy have a less well:,e!rJg,ed blood supply. They can h c 4L1 a-:&out oxygen during activity by
metabo:king foodstuff through fermen;:don, recovering later when they are at
rest. Sluscles that are continuously active, for example the heart, are made up
largely or entirely of dark fibers. Muscles
that alternate between periods of rest
and short intervals of activity contain
few, if any, dark fibers.
As anyone who has seen a fish steak
knows, the two kinds of inuscle fiber are
sharply segregated in the axid musculature of fishes, For example, in many
t u n s a large inass of very dark muscle,
well supplied with blood, lies in a broad
band between the backbone and the skin
along the midplane of the body. This
dark muscle can operate continuously;
its contractions propel the &sh as i t
FX%!'-SVIXGING
The ones illustrated here are three tunas: the bluefin (a),the SEpjack (b) and the wahoo (c), and a mackerel shark, the
(di.
39
ARK MUSCLE
DORSAL AORTA
POSTCARDINAL
VEIN
.RnE
MlRAElLE
40
j. Body-temperature measurements
;!c:F,jack attest to the efficiency of the
;;:--haped heat exchanger. these Iittle
fi& are often 10 degrees C. warmer than
the water and their warmest muscle is
adjacent to the backbone.
'la9p
t o
of
10\
5
I
10
,
I
30
3
c
15
20
WATER TEMPERATURE ( D E G R E E S CELSIUS)
MAXIiMI.Ti1 XUSCLE TEMPERATURES are plotted against water temperature for bluefin
(color), skipjack (solid black) and penowfin (open black). The bluefin r e p l a t e s its temperatnre almost independently of water temperature. The skipjack is warmer than the yell o w h but both tend to maintain a fixed temperature difference above water temperature.
WATERTEM P ERATU RE
19 DEGREES C.
WATER TEMPERATURE
21 DEGREES C
TEMPERATURES were recorded at various points in bluefin tuna (a! and mako sharks
( b ) .Isotherms show that the warmest parts of the fishes are within the dark muscle on each
side of the body. Much of the rest of the muscle is also considerably warmer than the water.
42
signals.
~ , placed
v ~ transmitters on or in 14
bluefin tuna. The longest we tracked a
fish was 54 hours; by then the bluefin
had reached a position 130 miles offshore. We soon found that, as commercial fishermen had told us, tuna
avoid changes in water temperature if
they can. Most of our specimens remained near the surface or at least on
the warm side of the steep thermocline
that separated the upper waters from the
cold depths. Some of the bluefin would
dive through the tlermoche, but they
spent only a few minutes in the colder
water before returning to the warm side
Near the end of our efforts ~ 7 ewere
lucky enough to get a most satisfactory
res& The specimen was a 600-pound
bluefin with a transmitter in its stomach
The fish had been handled quite roughly
wkile the instrument was being installed
Perhaps for this reason as soon as it was
released from the pound at about 9:00
A.M. it swam down through the thermodine into water 14 degrees C colder
than the s q f a c e water in the pound.
When .the fish was released, its stomach
temperature registered 21 degrees C.
During its four-hour stay in the fivedegree water the temperature of its
stomach gradually fell to about 19 degrees. Early in the afternoon the fish l e turned to the warm side of tlie thermocline and remained in water that registered between 13 and 14 degrees for the
rest of the day. In spite of a change in
water temperature of nearly 30 degrees
C. the temperature of the fishs stomach
remained around 18 degrees The fact
that the deep-body temperature of the
fish remained nearly constant over extended periods in both cold water and
warm indicates that the bluefir was indeed thermoregulating. Just how the fish
do this we do not know. Presumably it is
by somehow varying the efficiency of the
heat-exchanging retia.
\Ve were not fortunate enough in our
muscle-temperature e.xperiments to have
a bluefin stay on the cold side of the
thermocline for any substantial lene@ of
time. One of the muscle-tagged fish,
however, did swim for hours in water
khat was gradually decreasing in temperature The water temperature dropped
four degrees C. in one 90-minute period.
During this interval the muscle temperature of the bluefin sIowIy rose from a
TIME
(HOURS)
TELEMETRY RECORD compares the temperature i n the muscle of a bluefin (color) with
that of the water !b&zck)through which it swam for three hours. The muscle temperature
was held constant as the water temperature declined gradually from about 1 4 t o 10 degrees.
I
i
10
I
3
TIME (HOURS)
RECORD O F TEMPERATURES from the muscle of a dusky shark (color)and the water it
swam in (black? shows a Ziderent relation. The dusky shark is a cold-blooded fish and its
muscle temperature stayed close to that of the water, dipping during even short dive:.
43
4
TIME (HOURS)
RECORD FROM TUNAS STOMACH shows the effect of the visceral, as opposed to the muscular, temperature-control system. The
temperature was telemetered from thermistors in the tunas stom-
ach (color) and outside the fish in the water (black). M7hen the
tuna was released, it swam down into cold water and stayed there
for four hours, but its stomach temperature decreased only a little.
Suppose