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| Lungs?; What else might work? | |
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| Topic Started: Feb 13 2010, 01:20 PM (761 Views) | |
| sam999 | Feb 13 2010, 01:20 PM Post #1 |
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Is there any other way for getting oxagen into a body that works as well as lungs and could be used by a larrge creature? EDIT. Must be for use on land. Edited by sam999, Feb 14 2010, 12:44 PM.
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I am not suffering from insanaty. I truely enjoy being mad.![]() ![]() ![]() Comeon, thy dragons need YOU! Visit them here please... | |
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| Holben | Feb 13 2010, 03:01 PM Post #2 |
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Rumbo a la Victoria
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In water, gills. If a creature was hollow and filled with tubes cahnneling oxygen-rich air, it could absorb it through cells. |
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Time flows like a river. Which is to say, downhill. We can tell this because everything is going downhill rapidly. It would seem prudent to be somewhere else when we reach the sea. "It is the old wound my king. It has never healed." | |
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| sam999 | Feb 14 2010, 12:43 PM Post #3 |
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Sorry, edited. |
I am not suffering from insanaty. I truely enjoy being mad.![]() ![]() ![]() Comeon, thy dragons need YOU! Visit them here please... | |
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| Holben | Feb 14 2010, 12:52 PM Post #4 |
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Rumbo a la Victoria
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With a system of tubes and holes, air could go through the body alongside whatever carries the nutrients through an organism. Hope that made sense. |
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Time flows like a river. Which is to say, downhill. We can tell this because everything is going downhill rapidly. It would seem prudent to be somewhere else when we reach the sea. "It is the old wound my king. It has never healed." | |
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| Canis Lupis | Feb 14 2010, 01:26 PM Post #5 |
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Dinosaurs eat man, woman inherits the Earth.
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Are you talking about for an alien planet or for Earth? |
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| Holben | Feb 15 2010, 10:49 AM Post #6 |
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Rumbo a la Victoria
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I've assumed alien... |
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Time flows like a river. Which is to say, downhill. We can tell this because everything is going downhill rapidly. It would seem prudent to be somewhere else when we reach the sea. "It is the old wound my king. It has never healed." | |
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| Zorku | Mar 18 2010, 06:37 PM Post #7 |
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The advantage of lungs if the very hugh surface area and lot of nearby blood vessels. For lower gas exchange needs just the body surface can be enough. As such a variety of structures could work. The first thing that comes to mind are a series of pouches on an animal's underside. They wouldn't get as intricate or have the same kind of blood flow without a ribcage over them but they could be at least as effective as fish gills (getting oxygen in water is much harder than in air.) Some fish get by by swallowing air which is presumably related to how we developed lungs so having some kind of starting anatomy for the pouches would make it more plausible. There's also the humorous option of breathing through their butt. Lungs are just an offshoot of the gastrointestinal tract near the front, and as such they don't make a whole lot of sense as food intake becomes rather dangerous. Waste expulsion would actually be less of a choking hazard as it could be oriented to move in a direction opposite the inward airflow. For animals with tidy poop, like the pellets deer and rabbits produce, there wouldn't be too much risk of liquids draining into the organ but this could be further reduced with the simple gravity advantage now that the organ would be up from it's intake point instead of down or relatively even with it. Plus it's not like the waste system was so nasty that we haven't combined it with other sytems ourselves (by which I mean the reproductive system.) Though I suppose ectopic pregnancies are nasty enough without the possibility of a baby in your lungs. We also have high surface area in our intestines so a tube lined with wavy extensions could go a long way. The human brain is another example of high surface area as it has all those folds. While mixing air with any of these organs sounds like a paradise for diseases we have taken many steps to also have immunological barriers around our lungs so no doubt life could come up with something. Aside from not killing themselves really the only limit to what they could use to breath would be if there was anyone around with something that had bigger immediate payoffs. |
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| Holben | Mar 19 2010, 03:38 PM Post #8 |
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Rumbo a la Victoria
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Even so, root-like structures which sprouted hair could hypothetically absorb more. But the more O2 in the blood, the more energy needed to put more in. Unless you're using a form of active trasnport. Breathing rectally would be, erm, disrupted by defecation. Urrggh. Breathing through subcutaneous active transport, perhaps? |
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Time flows like a river. Which is to say, downhill. We can tell this because everything is going downhill rapidly. It would seem prudent to be somewhere else when we reach the sea. "It is the old wound my king. It has never healed." | |
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| Toad of Spades | Mar 19 2010, 07:30 PM Post #9 |
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Clorothod
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How about a one-way breathing system. Air gets inhaled by a spiracle or spiracles, then goes throuch a tube into a lung-like chamber, the spiracle closes, the needed gas gets absorbed the lung-like chamber, then the waste gas gets exhaled out a rear spiracle or spiracles. Quite an effecient form of breathing and could be useful for a flying creature. Edited by Toad of Spades, Mar 19 2010, 07:31 PM.
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Sorry Link, I don't give credit. Come back when you're a little...MMMMMM...Richer. Bread is an animal and humans are %90 aluminum. | |
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| colddigger | Mar 19 2010, 10:00 PM Post #10 |
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Joke's over! Love, Parasky
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you could absorb oxygen at the joints i guess, it would work especially well if you have an exoskeleton... |
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Oh Fine. Oh hi you! Why don't you go check out the finery that is SGP?? v Don't click v Spoiler: click to toggle | |
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| Holben | Mar 20 2010, 04:47 AM Post #11 |
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Rumbo a la Victoria
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That does seem very similiar to how we breathe, but we have three 'spiracles', mouth and nostrils. Our waste gas leaves through the same passage, so there is no seperation malarkey needed. |
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Time flows like a river. Which is to say, downhill. We can tell this because everything is going downhill rapidly. It would seem prudent to be somewhere else when we reach the sea. "It is the old wound my king. It has never healed." | |
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| Zorku | Mar 20 2010, 10:48 AM Post #12 |
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Breathing orally gets interrupted by swallowing so I don't see why that's so bad. I should probably find out how snakes breath when they've unhinged their jaw and stretched their throat around something large though. |
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| Toad of Spades | Mar 20 2010, 12:12 PM Post #13 |
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Clorothod
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Snakes can do that because they can extend their breathing out of their mouth. That way they can breath and swallow at the same time. |
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Sorry Link, I don't give credit. Come back when you're a little...MMMMMM...Richer. Bread is an animal and humans are %90 aluminum. | |
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| Holben | Mar 20 2010, 01:38 PM Post #14 |
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Rumbo a la Victoria
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They have an extendable trachea which sticks over the food. Mbwah. When we breathe, it's mainl;y through the nose. I don't know anyone who swallows through the nose, but hey... The epiglottis still allows some gas through when shut. |
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Time flows like a river. Which is to say, downhill. We can tell this because everything is going downhill rapidly. It would seem prudent to be somewhere else when we reach the sea. "It is the old wound my king. It has never healed." | |
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| Zorku | Mar 21 2010, 11:18 AM Post #15 |
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We don't chew things in our nose but the nose joins up at the back of our throat where we need to switch the larynx's role to mostly one purpose of the other. Because we only swallow occasionally we can handle giving up most of the air flow for a few seconds at a time. Imagining your own bowel movements interrupting your breath is unrealistic because a small animal just evolving gas exchange wouldn't store up nearly as much waste or need to go to much effort to expel it. After the alternative lungs were in place evolutionary constraints would limit bowel movements to only the types still possible with breathing of concern. |
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7:17 PM Jul 10