Breathing??

Question

how would the lungs of a marine animal like an octupus have to change to live outside the water and breathe air?

Answer 1

this is hard as they cant due to the gills factor.

This whole subject is alittle difficult as some fishes do have the ability... the most common being labyrinth... Which means they have an organ behind their gills that allow them to directly take air from the surface.

Another feature that some fishes can use is their swim bladder. Pirachuris or amapherias which are the largest freshwater fish in the world ...can use their swim bladder as a lung.


But no,, it would take many years of evolution to get their forms of breathing to match mammels lungs.

Answer 2

First of all, fish don't have lungs, they have gills (and some have a lung-like apparatus called a labyrinth organ). Not only would the gills have to change, the animal's entire body would have to change. If you took a fish out of water, it will dry out, so the animals would need to develop thicker skin or scales to prevent them from simply shriveling up. Also, their gills would have to be more rigid (they are set up like a filing cabinet, extreme undulating rows of tissue to allow for maximum surface area, in turn, allowing for the maximum amount of oxygen to be gained). So, fish would have to develop more rigid gills and become more "water tight". Obviously, this couldn't happen overnight... evolution isn't that fast.

Soop Nazi

Answer 3

huh?