What is an Aquatic Animal?

Aquatic animals can refer to either a vertebrate or invertebrate, which lives in water for most of its life.

Insects, most commonly dragonflies, mayflies, mosquitoes, caddisflies or any species of aquatic larvae, all refer to aquatic animals. These breath air but can also extract oxygen that gets dissolved in water. They breathe through specially structured organs, which are known as gills. They can also breathe through their skin, and thrive mostly in natural environments, which is also why they are known and categorized as aquatic animals.

Those who live on land again, are referred to as terrestrial animals.

Aquatic animals thrive in both saltwater and freshwater, depending on the environment they’re adapted to. They can’t all be necessarily categorized as marine animals, as they don’t all live in water, yet a large majority of them do.

Their environments are considered very fragile, which makes them, more specifically the freshwater aquatic animals, a great concern to conservationists, due to their fragile environments.

Human activities and influences, such as destructive fishing, overfishing, climate change, and marine pollution, are all contributing factors of disrupting and destroying their environments.

What are air-breathing aquatic animals?

These species, instead of breathing underwater like fish, can be either sea or aquatic mammals, like whales (Cetacea) or sea cows (Sirenia) and cannot survive on land, just in water. However, unlike fish, must come up to the surface for air. True seals, walruses and eared seals (pinnipeds) are categorized as aquatic mammals.

Four-footed mammals, like the famous beaver and river otter, may have a habitat both on land and in the water but are still also considered aquatic. The same goes for different species of frogs. Even though they require water to survive, they still have a unique environmental classification, as they live the first part of their lives primarily in water, while the rest is lived on land, but in a wet or water-dense environment.

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