What’s This? A Warm-Blooded Fish?

Psalm 8:8-9
“The fowl of the air, and the fish of the sea, and whatsoever passeth through the paths of the seas. O LORD our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth!”

Though the fish story I’m about to tell you is absolutely true, it goes against what we’ve always been taught about fish being cold-blooded. Scientists have just discovered the very first warm-blooded fish. Though fish typically require heat from the environment to stay warm, the opah is able to elevate its own temperature without the help of its environment.

Southwest Fisheries Science Center biologist Nick Wegner holds a captured opah, the first-ever warm-blooded fish So how does the opah pull off this trick? Biologist Nick Wegner tells us, “The opah appears to produce the majority of its heat by constantly flapping its pectoral fins, which are used in continuous swimming.” But the opah’s real secret was discovered when scientists examined the opah’s unique gills.

As an article at Live Science explains, “The blood vessels are set up so that the vessels carrying cool, oxygenated blood from the gills to the body are in contact with the vessels carrying warm, deoxygenated blood from the body to the gills. As a result, the outgoing blood warms up the incoming blood, a process called counter-current heat exchange.”

Hey, wait a minute! Doesn’t this sound like the “wonder net” heat-exchange system in birds that we described in a Creation Moments program called “Why birds don’t need socks”?

Evolutionists will have to say that this heat-exchange system evolved not only in birds but in fish as well. But we have a much better explanation. The same God who created birds on the fifth day of creation used the same design on the opah, which He also created on day five.

Prayer: Heavenly Father, it makes perfect sense to me that You would invent a heat-exchange system and then use it for more than one kind of creature. Similarities of design indicate that all of creation had one Creator! Amen.

Author: Steven J. Schwartz
Ref: “First Warm-Blooded Fish Found,” Live Science, 5/14/15. Photo: Southwest Fisheries Science Center biologist Nick Wegner holds a captured opah, the first-ever warm-blooded fish. Courtesy of NOAA Fisheries, Southwest Fisheries Science Center. (Fair Use)