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Animal Themes
Fish
Polar Regions

Icefish

Icefish
Reading Level
     edHelper's suggested reading level:   grades 6 to 8
     Flesch-Kincaid grade level:   8.02

Vocabulary
     challenging words:    antifreeze, insufficient, southernmost, white-blooded, relatively, adaptation, ingenious, covering, surrounding, year-round, icefish, devour, extremely, krill, natural, subzero

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Other Languages
     Spanish: El Pez de Hielo

Icefish
By Vickie Chao 		  
1     In the freezing waters surrounding Antarctica, there lives a bizarre fish family called the icefish.
 
2     The icefish family has 16 members. They can grow up to 2 feet long and weigh 8 pounds. They devour fish, krill, and other crustaceans. Icefish have long snouts, wide mouths, and large teeth. They are also known as white-blooded fish or crocodile icefish.
 
3     Icefish are unique because they don't have red blood cells in their bodies. As a result, they look rather pale, and their blood carries much less oxygen than that of fish with red blood cells. The pasty appearance is not a pressing matter. But the insufficient supply of oxygen is. To solve the problem, icefish have big, strong hearts to pump large volumes of blood at low pressures.

Paragraphs 4 to 6:
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