Internal anatomy of a bony fish: finned aquatic vertebrates animal with skin covered with scales.

It lives in water and is usually oviparous. Brain: seat of the mental faculties of a fish. Esophagus: part of the digestive tract connecting the mouth to the stomach. Dorsal aorta: vessel in the back that carries blood from the heart to the organs. Stomach: part of the digestive tract between the esophagus and the intestine. Air bladder: pocket in which urine collects. Spinal cord: part of the nervous system that connects the brain to all other parts of a fish. Kidney: blood-purifying organ. Urinary orifice: opening for eliminating urine. Genital Orifice: opening related to the genital organs. Anus: end of the digestive tract. Gonad: hormone-secreting sexual gland of a fish. Intestine: last part of the digestive tract. Pyloric cecum: cul-de-sac related to the intestine. Gall bladder: small sac containing the bile. Liver: bile-producing digestive gland. Heart: blood-pumping organ. Gills: respiratory organ of a fish. Tooth: hard organ of a fish used to shred food. Eye: sight organ of a fish. Olfactory bulb: bulging part of the smell organ of smell of a fish.

Gills mediate the gas exchange in fish. These organs, located on the sides of the head, are made up of gill filaments, feathery structures that provide a large surface for gas exchange. The filaments are arranged in rows in the gill arches, and each filament has lamellae, discs that contain capillaries. Blood enters and leaves the gills through these small blood vessels. Although gills are restricted to a small section of the body, the immense respiratory surface created by the gill filaments provides the whole animal with an efficient gas exchange. The surrounding water keeps the gills wet. A flap, the operculum, covers and protects the gills of bony fish. Water containing dissolved oxygen enters the fish's mouth, and the animal moves its jaws and operculum in such a way as to pump the incoming water through the gills. As water passes over the gill filaments, blood inside the capillaries picks up the dissolved oxygen. Since the blood in the capillaries flows in a direction opposite to the flow of water around the gill filaments, there is a good opportunity for absorption. The circulatory system then transports the oxygen to all body tissues and picks up carbon dioxide, which is removed from the body through the gills. After the water flows through the gills, it exits the body behind the fish's operculum.

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Background
Respiration is the process of using a gas to convert food into energy. Many people confuse breathing with respiration, but breathing is just the first step of respiration. Respiration is a function of life, which means it is carried on by all living things. Does this mean fish breathe and respire? Of course they do, fish are adapted to taking dissolved oxygen out of the water with their gills. In this lab you will observe the effect of temperature on the respiration of fish. RESPIRATION In order to live, fish must extract oxygen from the water and transfer it to their bloodstream. This is done by gills, lungs, specialized chambers, or skin, any of which must be richly supplied with blood vessels in order to act as a respiratory organ. Extracting oxygen from water is more difficult and requires a greater expenditure of energy than does extracting oxygen from air. Water is a thousand times more dense (heavier per unit volume) than air, and at 20 deg C (68 deg F) it has 50 times more viscosity (resistance to flow) than air and contains only 3% as much oxygen as an equal volume of air. Fishes, therefore, have necessarily evolved very efficient systems for extracting oxygen from water; some fishes are able to extract as much as 80% of the oxygen contained in the water passing over the gills, whereas humans can extract only about 25% of the oxygen from the air taken into the lungs.

JOHNNY

Gills are made efficient in a number of ways. (1) A large surface area for gaseous exchange means that more oxygen can enter the bloodstream over a given period of time. A single gill of a bony fish consists of a curved gill arch bearing a V-shaped double row of gill filaments. Each filament has many minute folds in its surface, giving it a sort of fuzzy appearance and increasing the amount of surface area along a given length of filament. Consequently, the surface area of the gills is commonly 10 to 60 times more than that of the whole body surface. (2) A short diffusion, or travel, distance for the oxygen increases the rate of oxygen entry into the blood. The blood traveling in the folds of the filaments is very close to the oxygencontaining water, being separated from it by a very thin membrane usually 1 to 3 microns (4/100,000 to 1/10,000 in) thick, and possibly less. (3) By using countercurrent circulation in the gill, the blood in the filament folds travels forward, in the opposite direction to the water flow, so that a constant imbalance is maintained between the lower amount of oxygen in the blood and the higher amount in the water, ensuring passage of oxygen to the blood. If the blood were to flow in the same direction as the water, oxygenated blood at the rear of the gills would be traveling with deoxygenated water and not only could not extract oxygen from the water but would even lose oxygen to it. (4) Gills have little physiological dead space. The folds of the filament are close enough together so that most of the water passing between them is involved in the gas-exchange process. (5) Water flows continuously in only one direction over the gills, as contrasted with the interrupted, two-way flow of air in and out of lungs of mammals.