Can fish freeze and come back to life?

Almost never: most fish die if they freeze solid, but one species, the Amur sleeper (Perccottus glenii), can survive being frozen in ice and recover when it thaws.

A 2023 study in Molecular Biology and Evolution describes the Amur sleeper as the only known freeze-tolerant fish. It is native to the Amur River drainage of northeastern Asia and lives in small, stagnant ponds, typically 40 to 70 cm deep, that often freeze to the bottom while winter air temperatures range from −15 to −35 °C. In a laboratory test, every Amur sleeper survived 24 hours frozen in ice at −2 °C. Freezing is normally lethal because ice forming outside cells pulls water out of them, shrinking the cells and damaging their membranes. The Amur sleeper copes by sharply slowing its metabolism, switching on stress-protection genes, and building up protective compounds such as glucose, which rose 3.6-fold in its muscle during the frozen period. Researchers found that wild fish collected from a completely frozen bog still had relatively soft bodies.

Source: Molecular Biology and Evolution (2023), Multi-omics Investigation of Freeze Tolerance in the Amur Sleeper (PMC)

Image: Amur sleeper, George Chernilevsky, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.



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