Antarctic Icefish

Looking like a crocodile from donkey kong crossed with a ghost... the icefish has a caiman like head and a smooth lionfish/perch like body and fanned dorsal fin.  If I were currently doing a graduate level thesis for zoology-- which was a path that I had almost taken-- I would probably study the blood of the Icefish.  The icefish has no scales, and bleeds clear blood.  The blood lacks hemoglobin which is the protein in blood cells that makes them red and helps them carry oxygen.  This is why blood darkens as it is exposed to the air, it begins to hold more oxygen upon its hemoglobin.  If blood cells lack oxygen then they would be blue by default-- the icefish, though transparent, is neither color.  Did I mention that they live in the Antarctic?  Normally fish that live in cold regions of the world have simply less blood so as to circulate more easily through their bodies.  But the icefish has much blood.  Most fish if you cut behind their eyes you will see tightly bound and organized capillaries, but for the icefish they are mixed up and thick like a bowl of spaghetti rather than well compacted honeycombs.  In other words they have a lot of capillaries, volume, and usage of blood.  But they even lack red blood cells.  How is this all possible?  Scientists don't even know.

Essentially how we think it works is that oxygen gets dissolved in the fish's plasma which carries only 10% of what it would normally carry, though oxygen is more soluble in the cold temperatures. The temperature gets so cold that the blood actually has antifreeze glycoproteins to keep it from hardening into ice.  The fish makes up for the difference by having larger hearts and more blood.  But questions still remain, how does oxygen exchange work, are there other factors in play?

If you cut them open they actually would ooze colorless, inviso-blood.


(Articles for further research)_____________
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/brainwaves/2012/08/03/how-the-antarctic-icefish-lost-its-red-blood-cells-but-survived-anyway/

http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/34797/title/-White-Blooded--Icefish--1927/
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Lets glorify God in his ability to sustain life no matter where-- I always found it ridiculous when people studied the possibility of lifeforms in other areas of the universe.  If God wanted to sustain life, then he can do it!  How ridiculous we are to find animals who produce chemosynthesis in the vents of the bottom of the ocean, then to find bacteria with arsenic DNA which is regularly poisonous and then for us to claim that certain structures are necessary for life.  We must realize that God can make the transfer of energy occur in any way that he sees suitable.  We always doubt the possibility of life somewhere, but could God not make lifeforms in the universe specifically made for surviving on comet dust?  Of course he could if he so pleased.  We look at these animals with bizarre micro-level exchanges and yet.. he is doing far more under the surface than we will ever realize.  Both on a microscopic level in our bodies and animal bodies but also in our lives and the intricate connections and events that are happening like chain reactions around the entire world only they are not maverick cells... there is no maverick cell... as RC Sproul once said,

“If there is one single molecule in this universe running around loose, totally free of God’s sovereignty, then we have no guarantee that a single promise of God will ever be fulfilled.”

 Lets glorify him in his immense creativity!  and also his immense control and power.  We are able to explore the universe with an infinite wonder and sense of discovery because of the working of Jesus and how imaginative and wonderful and even adventurous he is.  Praise to him for such amazing creative power.


"Remember your creator" --Ecclesiastes 12:1