If it is a matter of life or drowning... can all mammals swim?
438215
Most mammals are able to swim if they absolutely have to.  It's true that some might drown while attempting to, but that doesn't mean that the species itself can't swim.  Dolphins and seals sometimes drown too, but no one would say they can't swim.\n\nHow well a particular species of mammal can swim depends a lot on their physiology.\n\nAnimals with higher density of muscle than fat tend to sink instead of swimming.  Even if they have the limb mobility and strength that should be allow swimming, they have tremendous difficulty keeping above water.  Most primates actually fit into this category.  Chimpanzees in particular tend to sink like a stone in water, and avoid swimming at all costs.  Humans are very unusual in their ability to swim, and affinity for water (which raises a whole other set of questions, but that's another topic).\n\nIf they don't have much fat, thick fur can also help keep a mammal afloat.  Dense underfur traps air and can act like a flotation device.  Baby sea otters actually have difficulty diving because their fur traps so much air that they can't swim hard enough to reach the bottom.  Once again primates, with their thin, sparse coating of hair lose out on the flotation front.\n\nAnother factor is limb mobility.  Critters that can't move their arms and legs as swiftly or don't have enough surface area to push water aside tend to be crappy swimmers.  Anteaters tend not to be great swimmers, and camels aren't likely to win any swim meets either.\n\nIn general, mammals are pretty good swimmers.  Most mammals have some fat, most of them have hair or fur to trap air, and they have the limb mobility to move around.  Mammals can also close their mouths or noses and block their breathing passages so they don't take water in.  Critters like insects and spiders don't have that option, and unless they have other adaptations they tend to drown fairly easily.
352852
ther are a few desert animals that can do that, but humans can not, we need water to digest the food we eat, you will die of thirst.
557077
In order to withstand pressure, their cells must counterbalance the extreme pressure outside. Also, animals at such depths are generally colourless and are blind. They navigate by sound.
667467
ANY KIND OF ANIMAL WITH GILLS, SHARKS, FISH, ETC. I GUESS..
347164
YES! but that would depend on what species.\n\nsurprising to some, but NOT all sharks die when they stop moving. infact some species even tend to lie motionless at the bottom of underwater caves.\n\nCaribbean Reef Shark (Carcharhinus perezi)\nBanded Houndsharks (Triakis scyllium)\nWhitetip Reef Shark (Triaenodon obesus)\nLemon Sharks\nGrey Reef (Carcharhinus amblyrhynchos)\nBlackfin Reef (Carcharhinus melanopterus)\n\nare just a few examples.\n\nangel sharks lie motionless covered with sand on ocean floor to ambush prey.\nwhile some sharks "sleep"\n\nhope that helps :)
391527
They could. There were fish that evolved from swimming to walking. There is a fish called the flying fish that can jumpfrom the water and glide through the air for a ways to escape predators. Follow the link to see a picture, its fins look very similar to wings.\n\n\nhttp://oceanlink.island.net/oinfo/biodiversity/flyingfish/flyingfish.html
1106580
In theory yes, but you does not have enough instruments to do it. You must build everything. \n\nConsidering huge cetaceans, it would be more dificult due its size. \n\nIts harder than do CPR into a Dog.
891350
People die in all sorts of places. Some of them go to certain places because they know there gonna die... so what's the difference for an animal... It's the Dolphins' natural instinct to go to land when they are ill or on the verge on dying.... It's not very often they wash up on shore by accident... maybe babies but most of the time its to die.
583500
All animals can carry bacteria, so this could be possible, but the doctors should be able to detect this.  Best of luck.
175992
Rabbits can't climb but they are very good swimmers. One jumped in my pool one time so I know.
562934
It is a myth that sharks have to constantly swim or else drown.  As so often with exotic animals, apex predators in particular, we find such stories to be passed on through generations, and even tons of excellent studies on the animals cannot change commonly held opinion.  What is the basis for this wrongly held believe?\n\nMost "fishes" breath by producing a conintuous water flow over their gills making use of what is called the buccal/opercular pump.  You surely have observed fish in an aquarium before, and have noticed how they rhythmically open and close their mouths.  What you may or may not have seen was that in the same rhythm, only slightly delayed, a bone on the side of the head opened and closed.  What you saw was the buccal/opercular pump at action.  The bone on the side of the head was the operculum.  It covers the gill openings with the gills.  When the fish opens its mouth (i.e., the buccal cavity), the operculum is closed.  The fish fills its mouth with water rich in oxygen, opens the operculum and at the same time closes its mouth.  As an effect, the water is being pressed out through the gill openings and over the gills.  Next, the operculum is closed while at the same time the mouth opens and the cycle is repeated.  By this form of active breathing the animal can indeed achieve a constant flow of water over its gills. \n\nSharks, like all other elasmobranchs (i.e., sharks, skates, and rays) do not have operculi.  Instead, their gill slits are visible at the side of their heads.  Early biologists thought that sharks therefor could not be stationary at the sea bottom, since without an operculum they could not achieve water to flow over their gills and would certainly - believe it or not - drown.  Not quite so.\n\nIt is true, sharks usually breath "inactively", that is they achieve a constant water flow over the gills by swimming with their mouth slightly open.  But quite frequently, sharks can be found stationary on the bottom, where they breath actively.  Like teleost they achieve this feat by opening and closing their mouths.  The lack of operculu certainly makes this form of breathing less sufficient, but the gill openings are constructed like window blinds that are partially closed (or opened, in case you are an optimist...).  In other words, water can be pushed through in one direction, opening the gill slits, but if it were sucked the other way the individual skin flaps collapse on top of one another and close the openings.  It is not the most efficient form of breathing, but it works.  \n\nAt times, you will find animals that hover on the sea floor positioned in a moderate water current so that by simply opening their mouths the current constantly moves water over their gills.  But even without this current, sharks can do quite well breathing actively on the floor.\n\nI suggest, you take your son to an aquarium and check out some of the sharks on display.  I am sure their will be one or two specimens hanging out happily on the floor demonstrating what I just described.\n\nHope this helps.
119507
yes because of their hard shell.rats can survive too.
336386
I'm sorry, I can't find a centralized web site.  I found that gorillas and orangutans can't swim because of their low center of gravity.  I guess armidillos swim by inflating their stomachs with air.  \n\nHowever, future research on ask.com says all mammals can swim. So, I really don't know.  You have to figure anybody can post something on the internet whether it's true or not.
726282
That depends on if you are a fish or a mammal. But mostly, you have to deal with the salt, either by excreting excess, tolerating high amounts and secreting or by maintaining the same concentration of salt inside your body as outside. Moving through the water also presents problems, such as streamlining and propulsion.\nIn marine mammals, their kidneys and urine are adapted to secrete high amounts of salts without loosing excess water, their body shape is made to move through the water easily and there is a seperation of the mouth and nasal cavity so they can eat underwater.
564663
No, all animals do not breathe like us.\n\nBirds for example have an very different arrangement to their lungs. You and I have to take a breath in to absorb air and then take a  breathe in and then breathe out to expel it. A bird takes a breath in and a breath out at the same time. Every breath for a bird absorbs air and expels used air at the same time. That makes birds far more efficient at breathing than a human and also makes them far better at singing since they can make sound even while breathing in if they wish.\n\nMost land animals don't even have lungs and don't need to draw air into their bodies. Instead they absorb air directly  through their skin.\n\nEven something as similar to us as a frog can breathe mostly thorough its skin. All frogs have lungs that they can use to breathe but the lungs are used mainly for when the whether is dry. Many species of frogs have very small lungs, and the lungs can be surgically removed without having any effects at all on the frog. So long as the skin is kept wet a frog is perfectly capable of breathing through its skin.\n\nAnimals like slugs, snails and worms also breathe through their skin.\n\nIn the case of worms they have no other organs to breathe with. They are entirely dependent on their skin to breathe and the skin has to be kept wet or they suffocate.\n\nSnails breathe not just through their skin but also through a set of gills tucked up under the shell. It might seem strange that a land animal would use gills to breathe, but snails evolved from sea animals and have retained the same method of breathing.\n\nSpiders also use what is really a modified gill in order to breathe. The gill consists of a set of plates, like the pages in a book, hanging inside a pouch on the back segment of their body.\n\nInsects can't breathe very much through their skins, but they don't breathe through their mouths like we do. They instead have a series of holes along their sides that they use to breathe through. Those holes are connected to a series of pipes that run right through the animal. Imagine a person with holes in their side the size of the cardboard roles from toilet paper. You could see right into the holes all the way to the heart or guts, and those holes are the way that air gets into the body. Insects use pretty much that method. It's pretty , weird but it works for them.\n\nThere are many other ways that land animals breathe, but those are the main ones. Either they breathe through their skins like frogs or worms do, the have modified gills like snails or spiders or they have tubes running through their bodies as insects do.
48552
Fish are designed to swim. The obvious answer however is because they have fins and a strong tail that propels them through the water.
35913
Well, generaly, a large fish is bound to only swim in the ocean because there is enough space for it. Also it depends if the fish lives in salt water versus fresh water.