Humans absorb oxygen from air in the lungs, fine.
If you put water in the lungs the dissolved oxygen in the water somehow(?) doesn’t get absorbed, fine.
But, somehow(?) fish can absorb oxygen from water.
OK? How come human lungs can’t absorb oxygen from water but fish gills can absorb oxygen from water?
It’s literally just diffusion?
**EDIT: This thread is cancer. I will try to find the answer somewhere else. Turning off replies.**
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There is a lot less oxygen in water than in air and our lungs are terribly inefficient and also not optimized for underwater.
Fish gills are very efficient, they use [countercurrent exchange](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Countercurrent_exchange) to pull much more oxygen out of the water. Theres other factors too like we would struggle to pump water in and out and the water would wash away surfactants, etc. that help our lungs function.
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