Talk:Swim bladder

Untitled
"Swim bladder" has more Google hits, but apparently it's no longer favored (see or Bond's text for example), so I made an executive decision to put it under the correct term rather than the popular one. Stan 16:41, 24 Sep 2003 (UTC)


 * (...) evolved into the lungs of today's vertebrates and into the gas bladders of today's fish.

I changed "vertebrates" to "terrestrial vertebrates" to make the distinction clearer. There are (as always in nature...) exceptions: non-terrestrial vertebrates with lungs (lungfish and other fishes, sea snakes and turtles, cetaceans), and fishes without gas bladders (apart from lungfishes e.g. sharks), but these are cf. rare.
 * Don't forget about whales, dolphins, and other marine mammilia. Siraf 23:20, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Aragorn2 23:47, 1 Dec 2003 (UTC)

I removed the split infinitive. I can't help it.

--59.167.194.95 10:29, 31 October 2006 (UTC) Grammar Nazi

Gas Bladder vs. Swim Bladder
It should be noted that there is a difference between gas bladders and swim bladders, gas bladders are a more primitive stage, which actually allows some fish (Karp) to breath air, the swim bladder is primarily marine, and can't be used to breath air directly.

Siraf 23:13, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

I think the title of this article should be "swim bladder" and not "gas bladder". It is true that fishbase advises against "swim bladder", but whenever fishbase refers to this organ, it invariably uses the term "swim bladder". Some examples are,. (I know of no exceptions.) Where what is practised differs from what is preached, Wikipedia should follow the former. Thunderbird2 09:50, 19 June 2007 (UTC)


 * Indeed, the article's name should be swim bladder per WP:COMMONNAME. Colonel Warden (talk) 14:29, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

Broken links
Link [5] is not valid any more. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.5.27.66 (talk) 09:59, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

Well I have now tidied this up taking out the nonsense and using a more scientific explanation :)

''In some cases, especially sharks, an oily liver and body structure helps to protect the animal against high water pressure. '' I removed this from the article, because it's not about the swim bladder, but it might belong in some other article. -- Heron

Darwin
Darwin has a wonderful discussion in the Origin of the swim bladder:

The illustration of the swim bladder in fishes is a good one, because it shows us clearly the highly important fact that an organ originally constructed for one purpose, namely, flotation, may be converted into one for a widely different purpose, namely, respiration. The swim bladder has, also, been worked in as an accessory to the auditory organs of certain fishes. All physiologists admit that the swimbladder is homologous, or “ideally similar” in position and structure with the lungs of the higher vertebrate animals: hence there is no reason to doubt that the swim bladder has actually been converted into lungs, or an organ used exclusively for respiration.

According to this view it may be inferred that all vertebrate animals with true lungs are descended by ordinary generation from an ancient and unknown prototype, which was furnished with a floating apparatus or swim bladder.

Worth mentioning? --Gargletheape (talk) 01:53, 7 December 2010 (UTC)


 * Definitely, though IMHO we shouldn't include the full quote, especially since modern research (cited on the page) suggests lungs are the ancestral state. I saw something on some page (sorry, I forget which once) where the quote was in the footnote.  Can we do something like that? Mokele (talk) 02:51, 7 December 2010 (UTC)
 * I'm a bit reluctant to edit the article myself - don't know much biology...didn't know what a swim-bladder was, in fact, which is how I ended up here. Just thought it was kind of cool Darwin was using them as evidence for such theoretically important ideas. --Gargletheape (talk) 03:09, 8 December 2010 (UTC)


 * Ok, I put it in. By the way, you don't know what page number and edition the quote is from, do you? Mokele (talk) 03:56, 8 December 2010 (UTC)


 * I pasted from the 6th edition. Don't really have a page number...it's a Gutenberg text. --Gargletheape (talk) 16:02, 8 December 2010 (UTC)