full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Grantly Galland and Raiana McKinney: Meet the bluefin tuna, the toughest fish in the sea

Unscramble the Blue Letters


What’s as big as a polar bear, slwalows its prey whole, and swims at 40 melis an hour?

It’s not a shark or a killer whale. It’s the Atlantic bluefin tuna. The legsrat and longest-lived of the 15 tuna species, the altantic bluefin has a unique set of adaptations that make it one of the most dominant prdoatres in the ocean.

It starts as a tiny hatchling in the Gulf of Mexico or the Mediterranean Sea, no bigger than a human eyelash. Within its first year of life, It develops something known as regional endothermy— the ability to regulate its body temperature. An Atlantic bluefin gets oyexgn from cold ocean water using its gills. This process cools its blood. Then, heat the tuna generates swimming and htnunig warms the bolod. In most fishes, this heat would be lost back out into the ocean through the gills. But in the Atlantic bluefin, a mshecainm clelad crrutcreonenut exchange traps the heat. Cold blood on its way to the lgare swimming muscles passes close to warm blood leaving those mcusles in a specialized network of blood vessels known as a rete milbarie. Here the heat “jumps” to the cold blood and stays in the body.

Open Cloze


What’s as big as a polar bear, ________ its prey whole, and swims at 40 _____ an hour?

It’s not a shark or a killer whale. It’s the Atlantic bluefin tuna. The _______ and longest-lived of the 15 tuna species, the ________ bluefin has a unique set of adaptations that make it one of the most dominant _________ in the ocean.

It starts as a tiny hatchling in the Gulf of Mexico or the Mediterranean Sea, no bigger than a human eyelash. Within its first year of life, It develops something known as regional endothermy— the ability to regulate its body temperature. An Atlantic bluefin gets ______ from cold ocean water using its gills. This process cools its blood. Then, heat the tuna generates swimming and _______ warms the _____. In most fishes, this heat would be lost back out into the ocean through the gills. But in the Atlantic bluefin, a _________ ______ ______________ exchange traps the heat. Cold blood on its way to the _____ swimming muscles passes close to warm blood leaving those _______ in a specialized network of blood vessels known as a rete ________. Here the heat “jumps” to the cold blood and stays in the body.

Solution


  1. hunting
  2. called
  3. blood
  4. largest
  5. swallows
  6. countercurrent
  7. large
  8. oxygen
  9. atlantic
  10. muscles
  11. miles
  12. mechanism
  13. predators
  14. mirabile

Original Text


What’s as big as a polar bear, swallows its prey whole, and swims at 40 miles an hour?

It’s not a shark or a killer whale. It’s the Atlantic bluefin tuna. The largest and longest-lived of the 15 tuna species, the Atlantic bluefin has a unique set of adaptations that make it one of the most dominant predators in the ocean.

It starts as a tiny hatchling in the Gulf of Mexico or the Mediterranean Sea, no bigger than a human eyelash. Within its first year of life, It develops something known as regional endothermy— the ability to regulate its body temperature. An Atlantic bluefin gets oxygen from cold ocean water using its gills. This process cools its blood. Then, heat the tuna generates swimming and hunting warms the blood. In most fishes, this heat would be lost back out into the ocean through the gills. But in the Atlantic bluefin, a mechanism called countercurrent exchange traps the heat. Cold blood on its way to the large swimming muscles passes close to warm blood leaving those muscles in a specialized network of blood vessels known as a rete mirabile. Here the heat “jumps” to the cold blood and stays in the body.

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations


ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
atlantic bluefin 5
bluefin tuna 3
body temperature 2
cold blood 2
spawning grounds 2


Important Words


  1. ability
  2. adaptations
  3. atlantic
  4. bear
  5. big
  6. bigger
  7. blood
  8. bluefin
  9. body
  10. called
  11. close
  12. cold
  13. cools
  14. countercurrent
  15. develops
  16. dominant
  17. exchange
  18. eyelash
  19. fishes
  20. generates
  21. gills
  22. gulf
  23. hatchling
  24. heat
  25. hour
  26. human
  27. hunting
  28. killer
  29. large
  30. largest
  31. leaving
  32. life
  33. lost
  34. mechanism
  35. mediterranean
  36. mexico
  37. miles
  38. mirabile
  39. muscles
  40. network
  41. ocean
  42. oxygen
  43. passes
  44. polar
  45. predators
  46. prey
  47. process
  48. regional
  49. regulate
  50. rete
  51. sea
  52. set
  53. shark
  54. specialized
  55. species
  56. starts
  57. stays
  58. swallows
  59. swimming
  60. swims
  61. temperature
  62. tiny
  63. traps
  64. tuna
  65. unique
  66. vessels
  67. warm
  68. warms
  69. water
  70. whale
  71. year