Stuff You Should Know - Short Stuff: Do Fish Get Thirsty?

Episode Date: June 22, 2022

One of the greatest questions we’ve ever heard, answered (in a roundabout way).See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh and there's Chuck and this is short stuff coming

at you with a question I had never thought of until I was on our old site, How Stuff Works, and came across an article by Nathan Chandler, which asked a surprising question that makes a lot of sense. If you think about it, do fish, which spend their lives in the water, ever get thirsty? It's a great question. And I immediately thought of possibly one of my favorite, definitely one of my favorite all time comedies, maybe my favorite, the movie Arthur. I thought you're going to say family ties. Movie comedies, Arthur, when Arthur says, I must think that fish get awfully tired of eating seafood. And that's not even one of the good lines. I've never seen that one.

You're talking about that. You've never seen Arthur? Yeah, with Russell Brandt. Oh, God. You know, I'm mad I am right now. Yeah, I know. You're a big Russell Brandt fan. Even though Hodgman was in that version, I think. He really was. And yeah, that's my big connection to him. That's his claim to fame. So, no, I haven't seen Arthur, but I will just to keep this one going. How about that? Oh, wait, you haven't seen the original either for real? I've never seen any, Arthur. Dude, it's one of the best comedies of all time. Doesn't it have that song between the moon in New York City?

Yeah, one of the great movie theme songs of all time. It is a good theme song. I know it's crazy, but it's true. Nice. So, let's keep going, though, because we need to get back to this question. Do fish ever get thirsty, Chuck? Right. And the first thing that Nathan Chandler points out, which is very easy, and I think Nathan interviewed some people that know more than we do about fish and their needs and wants. But the first thing they point out is like, that's kind of a weird question, because you can't really tell whether an animal thinks I'm thirsty or not.

The real question is, basically, do fish drink and do they need to hydrate like we do? Yeah. And Nathan Chandler's like, come on, that's what I meant, pencil neck. Right. So, that is ultimately the question that we're after. So, if you are ever thirsty, it's kind of like hunger. You have a sensation that tells you, you need to eat food. We need energy. This is the same thing. Your body sends you all sorts of cues and signals that says, you need to drink some water because we need to be hydrated. And the whole point of staying hydrated is not just to drink water, which is fun, but that's not the point. The point is that we have all sorts of like little minerals and salts and electrolytes, according to the good

people at Gatorade, in our bodies that we need to keep at a certain level. And we keep them at a certain level, a certain concentration, by regulating our water intake. Right. So, that's how we stay hydrated. And that's the point of staying hydrated. And it turns out that fish basically have to do the same thing, despite living in water or actually, I guess, because they live in water. Right. Yeah. And this whole process is called osmoregulation. And fish do this, you know, we're very closely related to fish. So, it's not the most different process for them, even though we don't have gills. It would be kind of fun if we did, but we don't. But their kidneys are a big part of this, obviously, in maintaining, just like with us,

those salt levels. And then they do have those gills. And those gills have cells that exchange water and salt. And again, just trying to keep the right electro-littical balance. Yeah, I think that's a great way to put it. Or I could just say electrolyte balance. Okay. I like the electro-littical. All right. So, you're going to keep it in? Well, I mean, I'm not going to cut it out. Okay, cool. I've said much dumber things. I don't think it's dumb at all. I think it's neat. And Chuck, I have to say, if that isn't a term, you just coined a term, because I'm going to spend the rest of my days

promoting electro-littical. Okay, great. So, it turns out, though, this osmoregulation, I guess the process or the systems or the components for carrying out osmoregulation are the same basically across fish species. You know, similar enough that you could call them the same for our purposes today. But what they do or how they do it or what their goal is depends on what kind of water the fish lives in, salt water or fresh water, or if the fish can kind of transcend both kinds of water. And I propose we take a break and come back and talk about the setup that I just did. That sounds great. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass.

The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough, or you're at the end of the road. Okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh, god. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so my husband, Michael, um, hey, that's me. Yep, we know that Michael and a different hot, sexy teen crush boy band are each week to guide you through life step by step. Not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking this is the story of my life.

Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen. So we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Mangesh Atikular, and to be honest, I don't believe in astrology. But from the moment I was born, it's been a part of my life. In India, it's like smoking. You might not smoke, but you're going to get second hand astrology. And lately, I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention. Because maybe there is magic in the stars, if you're willing to look for it. So I rounded up some friends and we dove in and let me tell you, it got weird fast. Tantric curses,

major league baseball teams, canceled marriages, K-pop. But just when I thought I had to handle on this sweet and curious show about astrology, my whole world can crash down. Situation doesn't look good. There is risk to father. And my whole view on astrology, it changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, I think your ideas are going to change, too. Listen to Skyline Drive and the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right. Freshwater fish, should we start there? Yeah, I think so. It's a good place to start. Your common largemouth bass, let's say. Sure, that can eat a squirrel during a squirrel stampede. Oh, that's right. I forgot about that. So I learned a couple of interesting things here.

One is that freshwater fish don't drink actively because it's just going to dilute their blood and other fluids in their body really quickly. Obviously, what's inside their body, their tissue and their blood is going to be saltier than where they are because they're in freshwater. So they would just act as a big saltwater or I guess salt sponge if they were to drink too much. So the other thing I learned is that they urinate, they're constantly urinating. That's the only way to say it. And I did not know this. So the urine they pee out is super, super watery because, again, they're retaining and keeping a hold of as much of those salts and minerals and electrolytes that they possibly can because

it's just they're not getting it from their surrounding environment. That is the freshwater. So like you said, they are preventing from their solution in their blood from becoming too diluted. That's the point of their osmoregulation, correct? That's right for the freshies. Okay. And so if they do it correctly, if their cells in their gills and their kidneys are working properly, they're streaming out, they're accepting salt for the body, wherever it can get it. And they're peeing out tons and tons of water that they're taking on and keeping the salt. But if you go to a saltwater, like the sea saltwater area, you find pretty much the opposite process happening for the same reason. Yes. And the cool thing here is that saltwater fish

actually drink through their mouths and they drink through their mouths to stay hydrated. So they're drinking this ocean water. And so the big rub there is they have to avoid losing water too much to that salty environment out there. And they also have to keep from getting too salty. Like, you know, they're drinking in the saltwater and they have to keep that excess salt out. So their kidneys are kind of not working overtime. They're doing their regular job. Like they don't know how hard they're working compared to other kidneys. Sure. But their kidneys are removing that salt and conserving the water. And then they have those salt cells in their gills pumping salt into the water.

So again, you had that same exchange going on. It's just sort of backwards or the opposite. And you can imagine their urine is super salty urine and kind of light on the water, right? Super concentrated solution that they're peeing out. I would think so. And then I said this earlier, they're fish that can exist in both freshwater and saltwater. And now that you know, right, now that you know about osmoregulation, it's like, well, wait a minute, how does that work? And you can take the salmon as a really good example, because when the salmon go to spawn, they go to spawn in freshwater, usually upstream and some river, because they like to make things hard on themselves, which means that when they come to

spawn, they leave their saltwater habitat and enter a freshwater habitat. Yeah. And it was, it was interesting when I was reading this, I was kind of like, well, how in the world, like, do they have, have their organs evolved to be able to do both? And it kind of has in a way, but not both at the same time, because salmon are really smart. So what they do is they don't go straight from the freshwater right into the saltwater. They hang out a little bit in what they, what's called like a staging area before they complete their migration. And it's located in a space where they get a little bit of the freshwater and a little bit of the saltwater. And they just, they just hang out until they

regulate. Right. And it's just, it's as simple as that, that they use brackish water to kind of like prep themselves for the changeover. And I would guess they do this the opposite when they go back into the sea again, or the saltwater environment. The problem is, like everything, there's a, there's a conundrum that they're facing thanks to climate change, where sea ice is breaking up more and more and traveling further and further south and into salmon's breeding grounds. And there, it's actually the fresh water that's melting off of the sea ice is affecting the brackish water so that the salmon have less chance of a, to use that area as a staging area. Yeah. It kind of just screws up their staging area because they're, they're used to that area being,

having a certain amount of salinity. And then when you introduce that melting sea ice, it just screws everything up. Yeah. Yet another thing that's happening. It is. So Chuck, how much seawater can you ingest at a time? Like me? Sure. I don't know. Three and a half percent of my body weight? Sure. No, three and a half percent salt, I think, by weight. Like, you know, if you're trapped, we've talked about this before, if you're like stranded out in the ocean, you know, you will die if you just continue to drink seawater because you're gonna dehydrate, but you can drink a little bit of it. Yeah. I don't know if we should advise anybody doing

to do that though. I don't think so, but you're not going to die like, all right, let's forget you're stranded. You're just on the beach one day and you go like, get a small cup of ocean water and drink it. You'll be fine. I don't think we should tell people to do that either. Let's just stay away from the encouraging drinking seawater in general. All right. How about this? You're in your house and you take some very clean water and clean table salt and mix it together. Okay. You could drink that and, and a little bit of that and you'd be okay. No, I'm still not okay with that either. All right. Well, then why'd you ask how much we could drink? I just want to know how much you personally could drink.

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