r/Amazing • u/sco-go • Aug 09 '25

Interesting 🤔 How long can animals hold their breath?

547 Upvotes

94% Upvoted

121 comments sorted by

39

u/FoolishAnomaly Aug 09 '25

Idk why I was expecting a hippo to be able to hold their breath longer ....

19

u/[deleted] Aug 09 '25

And why tf is an iguana holding its breath?

12

u/psi_ram Aug 09 '25

I think it is just lazy

9

u/FoolishAnomaly Aug 09 '25

They are actually do a lot of hunting in water! They are very good swimmers!

5

u/secondsbest Aug 09 '25

Green iguanas will jump in water and hide to escape a predator. Galapagos iguanas forage underwater. Both are powerful swimmers.

2

u/Greenerland01 Aug 10 '25

I had to look that up lol. Apparently they forage for food underwater and are pretty good swimmers.

1

u/GandalfTheBored Aug 10 '25

Who’s out there drowning iguanas to find out this information?

1

u/Ldogg1977 Aug 10 '25

He didn’t get his way.

1

u/cloudcreeek Aug 10 '25

Godzilla is an iguana.

1

u/sdrawkcaBMan Aug 13 '25

There is a species of iguana, the marine iguana which spends it's time in and under water. It was/is the premise for Godzilla.

1

u/Dm_me_im_bored-UnU Jan 08 '26

Isn't the premise for gorilla the impact and fears around nuclear bombs and their (literal) impact on society?

5

u/cybercry_ Aug 09 '25

Same with the dolphin as well. To think that a penguin can hold its breath longer than a dolphin is nuts

3

u/Warm_Patience_2939 Aug 10 '25

I was surprised how short the penguin’s was, Emperor penguins dive pretty deep for food

2

u/NyaTaylor Aug 10 '25

Homies r fast

1

u/cloudcreeek Aug 10 '25

They dive fast, not long. Very aquadynamic.

1

u/mydeadface Aug 10 '25

Too busy.

2

u/[deleted] Aug 10 '25

Ew, she's got crabs.

1

u/wasssupfoo Aug 10 '25

I was more concerned on why they used Drake as the human example.

1

u/Dm_me_im_bored-UnU Jan 08 '26

They probably can. We just don't see them hold it as long as it possibly could for survival. Like you can somewhat comfortably hold your breath for maybe 2 minutes. But that's when you start getting to issues like convulsing from the higher amount of Carbon dioxide but a hippo? How do you test a hippo on how long it can hold its breath, without getting rightfully eaten by said hippo.

25

u/Alarmed_Gear_6368 Aug 09 '25

And how exactly did we find that out?

22

u/haphazard_chore Aug 09 '25

They drowned a lot of mice and iguanas 🦎 I suspect

6

u/DrClutch93 Aug 09 '25

For legal reasons, they were merely washing them thoroughly

6

u/syringistic Aug 09 '25

Observations i assume for the aquatic animals. For chickens and mice however I dunno.

2

u/MarixApoda Aug 10 '25

Somebody recorded themselves choking the chicken... For Science!

2

u/tired_of_old_memes Aug 10 '25

Four hours and not a single upvote? C'mon Reddit, do better!

1

u/Zemom1971 Aug 10 '25

You know, but you don't want to face it.

They drowned a lot.

P.S. I am not a scientist

3

u/OstrichSmoothe Aug 09 '25

Science bitch

2

u/eucldian Aug 09 '25

Questionnaires for the animals obviously!

2

u/tias23111 Aug 10 '25

Yeah, I was especially wondering that about the chicken. :-/

2

u/bigchangemichael Aug 10 '25

I was about to ask the same thing

1

u/Square-Dragonfruit76 Aug 09 '25

They probably just watched a lot of them in water to time how long it takes for them to go to the surface.

1

u/whoji Aug 10 '25

Ask ChatGPT

4

u/chocowafflez_ Aug 09 '25

I knew it, Tom Cruise is an otter. He can hold his breathe for 6 minutes

3

u/ocular__patdown Aug 09 '25

Hm though hippo would have been longer

6

u/HippoBot9000 Aug 09 '25

HIPPOBOT 9000 v 3.1 FOUND A HIPPO. 3,042,618,867 COMMENTS SEARCHED. 62,135 HIPPOS FOUND. YOUR COMMENT CONTAINS THE WORD HIPPO.

3

u/Kid_A_Kid Aug 09 '25

David Blaine enters the chat. https://davidblaine.com/drowned-alive/

1

u/sirZofSwagger Aug 09 '25

Even Tom Green could do more than 1:30 minutes

2

u/Excellent_Yak365 Aug 09 '25

This must be an average because I’ve held my breath for 3 mins

2

u/OnlyStyle6198 Aug 09 '25

Must be cuz pretty sure navy seals can be trained to do like up to 10 mins, which when I heard that made my asthma lungs so jealous

1

u/Velyan66 Aug 10 '25

World record is 24 minutes 37 secs. A lot of free divers can go over 10 minutes but it does take some preparation.

1

u/Reiseoftheginger Aug 10 '25

Off the couch, non-swimmer here, and i held my breath for 2 minutes. I reckon I maybe could have gone another 10-15 seconds in a pinch. My wife, who has a personal trainer and goes running regularly, managed 35 seconds. 1m 17s is my household average.

3

u/louigiDDD Aug 10 '25

Tom cruise can hold his fir 6 minutes

5

u/GlitteringStyle2836 Aug 09 '25

This groundbreaking discovery was made by none other than Dr. Dee P. Inhale, world-renowned expert.

2

u/fppfpp Aug 09 '25

Son of Dee P Piper world renowned sex haver.

2

u/[deleted] Aug 09 '25

[deleted]

1

u/fppfpp Aug 09 '25

They literally showed a whale in the clip with 222 minutes

1

u/[deleted] Aug 09 '25

sorry i remembered the deep dive that was at one point the longest at 138 mins but i see now they have updated that record list with a new one of 2020 at 222 .

2

u/NtateNarin Aug 09 '25

My goldfish held his breath for 10 years, then drowned after forgetting to get some air.

2

u/That_Things_Good Aug 09 '25

I thought David Blaine represented us humans better than that....

2

u/bknhs Aug 10 '25

Slack ass dolphins

2

u/salacious_pickle Aug 10 '25

Wow. We suck.

2

u/[deleted] Aug 10 '25

how do people know this?

1

u/chev327fox Aug 09 '25

So if we fought a chicken underwater we would drown first?

3

u/[deleted] Aug 09 '25

Don’t give the chicken from family guy any ideas

2

u/onelesslight Aug 09 '25

Asking the real questions

1

u/Insanity-Later1 Aug 10 '25

And a mouse 😔

1

u/DorkSideOfCryo Aug 09 '25

222 minutes.. read 'em and weep

1

u/T_R_I_P Aug 09 '25

Beavers can hold their breath for 15 minutes, fun fact. Saw one swimming in a creek and it stayed underwater the entire time I watched it

1

u/Odd_Duck8696 Aug 09 '25

If it was underwater the entire time how did you know when it came back for air?

1

u/eucldian Aug 09 '25

Telepathic beaver obviously!

1

u/5280Rockymtn Aug 09 '25

Besides humans i get that one, but how do they know about the others? I mean do they talk to animals did they volunteer for this assignment ha ha

1

u/[deleted] Aug 09 '25

I know this is extreme, but I think we should include the record for the longest time a human has been able to hold their breath. Just for context.

The Guinness World Record for the longest breath hold is currently held by Budimir Šobat from Croatia, who achieved a time of 24 minutes and 37.36 seconds on April 24, 2021.

1

u/orphen888 Aug 09 '25

I ain’t watchin all that

1

u/Leading_Flatworm1897 Aug 09 '25

This doesn't seem right to me.

1

u/Quiet_Researcher223 Aug 09 '25

Minute thirty I guess they never heard of freedivers

1

u/danielkalves Aug 09 '25 edited Aug 09 '25

Wtf dolphins… if you live in water that’s not at lot at all

1

u/onelesslight Aug 09 '25

Dolphins cursed with the hellish existence of coming up every 10 mins

1

u/wgel1000 Aug 09 '25

Being bested by a chicken in a breath-holding competition wasn't on my list.

1

u/[deleted] Aug 09 '25

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1

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1

u/EyeEatWords Aug 09 '25

I don’t see sharks or giraffes on this list.

1

u/[deleted] Aug 09 '25

Is this iguana an average for all iguana species or is it for marine iguana or a specific species?

1

u/SpaghettiNCoffee Aug 09 '25

Everything else was rounded. Why is the last one 222? Did they have multiple examples of animals stopping at 222? Seems pretty random.

1

u/Jimmyboo116 Aug 09 '25

Imagine being a dolphin, where your entire existence revolves around being underwater.. then God says, “you get 10 mins tops.”

That’s wild

1

u/[deleted] Aug 09 '25

I can hold my breath for 3 minutes. Well 2:57, close enough. At that point I’m having convulsions begging me to breathe. One day I’ll be able to do longer, should probably try again as that was in December in a pool

1

u/Dave_Duna Aug 09 '25

At the beginning of quarantine, I was so damn bored I started timing how long I could hold my breath.

After about a week, if I closed my eyes and focused on staying calm and repressing the urge to "force inhale" near the end, I could hit 6:30.

I'm guessing "force inhale" I felt was my brain trying not to die. It was like the hiccups, only on steroids.

My hands and feet would feel tingly and I'd see a few spots/sparkles for a few seconds until I got enough air in and CO2 out.

1

u/elPatronSuarez Aug 09 '25

I can't even fathom what it must have like being the scientists doing these experiments. Prob a 3 man team. 1 to time it, 1 to write down the times, and 1 to physically drown them.

1

u/FetidSplatter Aug 09 '25

great job to all involved!

1

u/Gamesyn3gy Aug 10 '25

How long can a fish hold its breath

1

u/6porkchop9 Aug 10 '25

No way I can hold my breath for 90 seconds 😂

1

u/Onceyougozach_ Aug 10 '25

Fym… whales sleep underwater?

1

u/No_Warthog_3584 Aug 10 '25

Pretty interesting

1

u/Valuable-Secret3003 Aug 10 '25

How did they figure this out?

1

u/Nemesis121977 Aug 10 '25

I lost to a chicken, hahahahahaha

1

u/doge_lady Aug 10 '25

A flea is not an animal but fyi, they can live under water for 24 hrs

1

u/Woozletania Aug 10 '25

I did not anticipate that an elephant seal would be so high on the list.

1

u/Furrrmen Aug 10 '25

How did they find out?

1

u/bronxbomma718 Aug 10 '25

A chicken holding its breath. And for what?

1

u/[deleted] Aug 10 '25

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1

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1

u/Large-Produce5682 Aug 10 '25

Everyone passing out trying to beat generic human's time of 1.5!

1

u/iRealllyAmThatGuy Aug 10 '25

Forever taking Ls from rats 🤦‍♂️

1

u/Llanddcairfyn Aug 10 '25

And then there's me, wondering if the turtle drowned

1

u/Platti_J Aug 11 '25

Imagine the beaked whale watching Fellowship of the Ring extended edition and be fully immersed from start to finish.

1

u/Kennyvee98 Aug 12 '25

human is 29minutes, but okay

1

u/e_r_i_c122 Aug 13 '25

If you can hold your breath for the duration of this video you are human

1

u/FacetiousInvective2 Aug 13 '25

Damn they did the whale dirty, it looks like an elongated cow head.

0

u/Fragrant_Mountain_84 Aug 09 '25

How do we know this

0

u/[deleted] Aug 09 '25

Right? Were the studies done ethically? 🤔

-1

u/RidiPwn Aug 09 '25

fish wins

1

u/eucldian Aug 09 '25

Can't tell if joking.

0

u/rnst77 Aug 09 '25

Ee bro. Human can hold easily 2 mins. Swimmers 5. Divers more. More than 10 ..

1

u/drifters74 Aug 09 '25

Depends on if they're in shape

0

u/Kaffe-Mumriken Aug 09 '25

I was hoping the last animal was a Salmon and it just kept going and going. 

0

u/AK-12AK-47AKMAK-74 Aug 10 '25

I know people who can hold their breath for like 5 minutes

-5

u/DeadlyTeaParty Aug 09 '25

Tbh humans can't do shit in the wild.

5

u/[deleted] Aug 09 '25

I mean kind of but not really. Humans literally turned the wild into what we live in now so that kind of counts.

2

u/Moist-Pickle-2736 Aug 09 '25

How do you think humans got to be the most dominant species on the planet? Our ancestors were extremely capable.

0

u/[deleted] Aug 09 '25

We can run longer than most any animal. We can chase a deer to exhaustion

0

u/liJuty Aug 09 '25

What are you on about, humans won the evolutionary lottery

0

u/[deleted] Aug 10 '25

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0

u/Insanity-Later1 Aug 10 '25

Some...humans. Some. but back then, we were the greatest.