Do fish have lungs?

At school we are having the disagreement between me and the whole of my biology class. I say fish DO NOT have lungs and have gills instead that extract oxygen from the water by passing oxygenated water over a membrane while everyone else including 2 BIOLOGY teachers (however my chemistry teacher also says the same as me) say that fish DO HAVE lungs and have to go to the air to breath oxygen. I mean I'm being deadly serious and I'm beginning to feel incredibly stupid. Please settle this ridiculous argument. Lol thanks

If I'm correct I think my biology teachers need to go back to school and I have no idea how they got into teaching...

 

Hope this helps....

 

Lol thanks iv already tried the yahoo answers approch but apparently "everyone over there is uneducated" and won't accept it

 

http://www.biology-resources.com/fish-01.html

Second to last section on that website explains how fish breathe.

 

The lung fish has lungs.

 

If every fish needed to come to the surface for air, there would be no deep sea fish at all! How the heck could anything survive on the ocean floor? lol

 

-__- guess what YOUR BOTH WRITE, your teachers less so but still.

Some fish have lungs called labrynth organs, Most gourami, all bettas and a huge variety of others have them, then you have fish like loaches and some catfish that abosrbe oxygen through their digestive tract by swallowing air. There are many ways that fish breath. However, betta for example can and will drown if they don't get any atmospheric air.

 

Standard fish do not have lungs. Gas exchange between blood and water occurs within the gills.

Lungfish have true lungs, and only one species can actual breathe through its gills. I have a feeling that these are the fish to which your biology teachers are referring. I'm guessing that someone, somewhere missed that they were specifically referring to lungfish, and that's how this argument started.

Anabantoids have labyrinth organs, which function like lungs. They can breathe through their gills, but they also need to breathe through the labyrinth organ periodically.

 

You could always offer to go fishing and catch a trout or bass - then dissect it in class and have the teacher show you where the lungs are.....or aren't.

 

^ this or, so long as nobody opposes this, and please don't kill me. Go down to the LFS or Petcosmart and ask for some of their recently deseased guppys, feeders and the like, ask for 1 dead betta(their almost garunteed to have one) or gourami. Then disect away. They shouldnt have any problems giving up the dead fish if you explain the situation. Just be sure to freeze em. There are also whole fish you can buy at grocery stores and bait fish at bait shops.