What Animal Has The Largest Lung Capacity

by Editorial Staff | August 24, 2017

Topics:

Lung Health and Diseases
Science

Nosotros all know the basics of how our lungs work. We breathe in, filling both of our lungs with fresh air rich in oxygen that fuels our body before exhaling air and waste carbon dioxide. But in the fauna kingdom, lungs come in a wide diverseness of shapes and sizes. Some animals tin concord their breath upward to 90 minutes, while others don't even need lungs to breathe! Here are a few of our favorite facts nearly beast lungs.

Sloths can breathe upside-down for hours on cease because their organs are continued to their rib cage with a "record-similar" tissue. If it wasn't for these adhesions that continue the lungs in place, an inverted sloth would spend upward to xiii percent more energy on breathing.ⁱ

Lungfish have a unique respiratory system, having both gills and a lung. It is the only type of fish to have both organs, and there are only vi known species effectually the globe. Many scientists even conjecture that lungfish might be the missing link betwixt when creatures a millennia ago left the sea to get land dwellers.
Gramps the lungfish, who was known to exist the earth's oldest living aquarium fish, lived to be about 100 years old. He spent the terminal 82 years of his life at Chicago's Shedd Aquarium.

Asthma and pneumonia affects animals just as it does humans. Cats and horses are the most prone to developing asthma symptoms.² One body of water otter at the Seattle Aquarium has even learned to use an inhaler to assist manage her asthma.

Dolphins can exhale air upwardly to 100 mph. When dolphins inhale, they exchange up to fourscore percent of the contents of their lungs, helping them to hold their breath upwardly to seven minutes. By comparing, humans tin can just exchange 17 pct of the air in our lungs when we breathe.ⁱⁱⁱ

One turtle species is capable of obtaining up to lxx per centum of oxygen through a process called cloacal respiration. Fitzroy River turtles have tiny, specialized papillae in their lower intestine, which are used for everything from urination and defecation to egg-laying. They also act somewhat similar the alveoli in our lungs do, arresting oxygen molecules into the bloodstream, assuasive them to, essentially, exhale with their butts.^four

Scientists believe whales may have evolved from prehistoric wolf-like mammals. As these primitive animals evolved, the ear-region of their skulls became specialized for underwater hearing, they improved the function of their lungs and they adult nostrils further dorsum forth the snout. This trend continued, eventually evolving into the "blowhole" we run into today in current whales.^v

Elephants move their lungs by contracting and releasing their breast muscles. They breathe out an average of 310 liters of air per infinitesimal.⁶

Most snakes only accept 1 operation lung, and do not crave the substitution of respiratory gasses to alive. They also exhale by contracting muscles between their ribs.^vii

A reindeer can brave the cold Northward Pole temperatures thanks to its olfactory organ, which warms the air information technology breathes earlier moving to its lungs.^viii

Horses are obligate nasal breathers, which means they can only exhale through their noses. This allows for grazing with their heads downwards while separate nasal passages can breathe in air and sniff for potential predators.^nine