How does the coelacanth breathe?

Before the dinosaur age, the coelacanth — a hefty, mysterious fish that now breathes with its gills — sported a well-developed lung, a new study finds. This lung likely helped the fish survive in low-oxygen, shallow waters hundreds of millions of years ago, the researchers said.

1. Can coelacanth breathe air?
2. Does the coelacanth have lungs?
3. Do latimeria have lungs?
4. How do coelacanths survive?
5. Do coelacanths still exist?

Can coelacanth breathe air?

This is further evidence that ancestral coelacanths could breathe air in shallow waters, and that they lost the use of the lung as it was replaced by the fatty organ — an important adaptation to the deep ocean.

Does the coelacanth have lungs?

The coelacanths vestigial lungs at different stages of development. Scientists knew that coelacanth fossils had this strange organ but thought it had died out as the species changed over the years. But just because a coelacanth has lungs, that doesn't mean it can breathe.

Do latimeria have lungs?

The presence of a vestigial lung in adult stages of the extant coelacanth Latimeria chalumnae is the result of allometric growth during ontogeny, in relation with long-time adaptation to deep water.

How do coelacanths survive?

Like all fish, today's species of coelacanths use gills to extract oxygen from the water they live in. ... This could explain how it survived the extinction event 66 million years ago that wiped all non-avian dinosaurs and most other life from Earth — and probably those coelacanths inhabiting shallow waters, Dr Brito said.

Do coelacanths still exist?

There are two living species of coelacanth, and both are rare. The West Indian Ocean coelacanth (Latimeria chalumnae) lives off the east coast of Africa, while the Indonesian coelacanth (Latimeria menadoensis) is found in the waters off Sulawesi, Indonesia.