Do fishes present an open or closed circulatory system? How many chambers does a fish heart have? How does blood flow throughout the fish body?
As in every vertebrate the circulatory system of fishes is closed, i.e., blood flows only within blood vessels. The fish heart has only two consecutive chambers: a thin-walled atrium and a muscular ventricle. The arterial (oxygenated) blood comes from the gills and gains arteries towards tissues, then venous blood is collected by veins and reaches the atrium of the heart passing to the ventricle that pumps the venous blood towards the gills to be again oxygenated.
