Eamon Warnock, Guangzhou China
• No living thing can exist without water. Define drinking?
Iain Davis, London UK
• Dave Allen doesn't drink it: he says, "Fish fornicate in water!"
Carla, Crewe, UK
• Only saltwater fish drink. In freshwater, the inside of the fish is "saltier" than the surrounding environment. Water moves into the fish by osmosis, passively, through the gills and the skin and the stomach. Fish have to eliminate all this excess water by peeing dilute urine. Lots of it. In saltwater, the environment is saltier, the fish loses water passively, so it has to drink. It eliminates excess salt using specialized cells; the excess salt is excreted primarliy in highly concentrated urine.
Chris Blanar, Montreal Canada
• It wasn''t Dave Allen originally: W.C. Fields said he wouldn''t drink it because fish f**k in it.
Jon Dann, Lancaster
• We once owned a goldfish that had a urine infection. We knew because the bowl kept overflowing.
Neil Parkes, Walsall
• Most fish need water as an oxygen supply to breathe. The fish drink water,for oxygen supply. Read about countercurrent mechanism, which will explain about how oxygen is obtained from water and diffused into blood.
Nazia, Huddersfield UK
• If it can be proved they do drink water, they should be charged water rates.
Mary Fallon, Chippenham UK
• Fishes dont actually drink water, down through the mouth. But obviously they need water, like all living things need to live. They genearally absorb it through there skin (osmosis) same way hormones and nutrients are absorbed in to our blood. There is one fish "Nikpoh Lyrad" which drinks the water in a chamber above the stomach, and spits it out tremendous speed at enemy fishes.
Zishaan Anwar, Newport UK
• As a side note, whales do not drink saltwater. If they did, they would die of thirst like any other mammal. They get the water they need from the food they eat.
Paul Green, Wheeling, Illinois, USA
• We have an extended drought in Australia and they, the respective governments, have ordered the removal of all fish from the fresh water rivers, estuaries and dams. Subsequently the water levels are not dropping at the same exponential rate as they were prior to their removal. This is absolute proof that they must drink heaps. Now we have an abundant oversupply of thirsty but dead fish, governments telling us the truth again, and soon the catholics will riot because there will be no fish left for Fridays. So yes, fish do drink water but at what cost?
Max Brown, Clareville, Australia
• So whence the expression:"He drank like a fish"?
T.R Andersen, Oslo, Norway
• Whales are not fish.