Fish often travel in schools. Their mesmerizing actions look choreographed and rehearsed as these schools bend and break at the perfect time. However, in reality, there is no choreographer. Each fish moves independently. How and why each fish behaves the way it does is what makes their school formation so puzzling to scientists. Scientists now think they have a clue as to why schooling is so common. Saves fish energy — a lot of energy.
Hundreds to thousands of fish can form schools. Sometimes they move slowly and gracefully. They may also fly quickly in one direction and then in another.
A new study compared the energy consumed by fish as they swim. And moving in schools reduced the energy used by fish by more than half Compared to when I was swimming alone, I found it.
“The whole idea of measuring how much it costs an animal to move is important,” says George Roeder. He is a fish biologist at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and an author of the new study. He points out that many physiologists have been studying this for many years. “I believe this is the first paper that has been evaluated so comprehensively.”
His fellow Harvard University researcher Yangfan Zhang shared the new discovery on January 19th. e-life.
underwater sprint
Loder and Chan collaborated with Giant Danio (Debario aequipinatus), a small fish that loves to swim.
Sometimes the team would put eight fish at a time into a tank shaped like a racetrack. Sometimes I only add one fish. Danio didn't circle around the tank like a race car. Instead, the motor pushed the water out of the tank to create a current, and it swam in one place, like a treadmill runner.
While the fish swam, a special device called a respirator (Res-pur-AH-meh-tur) measured how much oxygen the fish consumed. Oxygen helps provide energy to your muscles. For example, people who run sprints consume large amounts of oxygen. Afterwards, it often takes a few minutes to recover and catch your breath. Here, the researchers used oxygen as a measure of how much energy the fish used to swim in place.
To make them swim as fast as sprinters, the researchers increased the speed of the circulating water flow. When they slowed the water flow, the fish slowed down as well.
Schooling fish consumed less oxygen than when swimming alone. It also took less time to recover from sprints. In other words, they now have more time to “catch their breath” after school.
The researchers repeated the experiment a total of five times.
“This is a careful and careful study of the energy in schools of swimming fish,” says David Coughlin. He is a fish biologist at Widener University in Chester, Pennsylvania.
According to Frank Fish, schooling allows fish to conserve energy for other important things. He works at West Chester University in Pennsylvania, where he studies the mechanics of animal movement. For example, if the fish is young, it can put its energy into growth. As adults, they can use it for reproduction and evasion from predators.
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Inside the school
However, Fish points out that “this is not the end all story.” The new data “doesn't tell us what's going on in schools,” he said.
researchers still don't have solid evidence why Fish save energy by swimming in schools. However, they have some ideas.
The fish moves forward by flapping its tail from side to side against the surface of the water. This causes the water behind the animal to rotate. In one study, Fish observed three fish swimming together. When a person swims between or behind another person, The fish in the back saved energy. But in larger schools, Fish points out, understanding the energy used in that movement becomes more complex.
If you place a fish in the middle of a school, fish will swim to the left, right, above, and behind it. That creates a myriad of interactions, he says. And the flapping of its tail means that the water spirals endlessly, colliding and colliding with each other.
These eddies in the water can make it easier for schooling fish to swim, Fish said. This may also help you breathe a little easier. But all this is still unproven.
“We found that there was such a huge benefit,” Coughlin said. “Let's try to understand how their interactions help them biomechanically from a fluid mechanics perspective.”
futuristic fish robot
Study author Zhang said this new research could help engineers build fish robots. “Nothing moves through water as gracefully and effortlessly as a fish,” he says. To save energy, you can also create 20 small swarming fish robots instead of one large fish robot. These robots could help us count all the fish in the ocean and find sources of pollution. Creating machines that imitate living things is called biomimicry.
The results may also help researchers protect real fish. Most fish get their heat from the environment. Therefore, their temperature will be the same as the surrounding water. As water temperatures rise due to climate change, fish need more energy to swim and survive. By understanding the energy costs associated with fish migration, scientists can predict how climate change will affect fish lives, Coughlin said.
“In the face of climate change, we really want to understand things like: [the energy needs] Fish. ”
Source: www.snexplores.org
