This MedLibrary.org supplementary page on Respiration organ is provided directly from the open source Wikipedia as a service to our readers. Please see the note below on authorship of this content, as well as the Wikipedia usage guidelines. To search for other content from our encyclopedia supplement, please use the form below:
Related Sponsors
Breathing / Respiration organs are used by most, or all, animals to exchange the gases necessary for their life functions, known as respiration. These organs come in many forms, some of them apparently having independently evolved:
- skin -- some aquatic, or small terrestrial (some of the smallest spiders and mites, for example), animals can breathe simply by exchanging gas through the surface of their body
- gill -- many aquatic, and a few smaller terrestrial, animals use gills to breath. Yes, even land animals can do this, as with isopods like the woodlice you probably can find living under rocks in your yard. Gills are simply layers of tissue adapted specifically to gas exchange.
- book lung -- Some spiders, scorpions, and other arthropods still use primitive book lungs, essentially gills adapted for land use, in their respiration. These are simply tissue with many wrinkles to increase their surface area.
- Labyrinth organ -- A secondary breathing organ specific to the labyrinth fish, essentially an enclosed maze of tissue, evolved from a niche in their gill structure.
- Invertebrate trachea -- tubes evolved by many arthropods, possibly from book lungs, which simply lead directly into their bodies through holes called spiracles, where their internal organs generally absorb their own air. These can be very primitive, as with some spiders, or more complex, ending with specialized air sacs, as with many insects.
- lung -- The lung is made up of muscle tissues the cells inside the lung which collect the oxygen in the air pass it into the blood stream via vein and carbon dioxide passes out and that is breathing respiratory.
- diaphragm -- a layer of muscular membrane located at the bottom of the thoracic cavity which in responsible in adjusting the volume of thoracic cavity.
Wikipedia content modification information:
- This page was last modified on 26 July 2008, at 16:24.
Wikipedia Authorship and Review
Wikipedia content provided here is not reviewed directly by MedLibrary.org. Wikipedia content is authored by an open community of volunteers and is not produced by or in any way affiliated with MedLibrary.org.
Wikipedia Usage Guidelines
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article on "Respiration organ".
The URL for this specific entry is:
All Wikipedia text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License. (See Copyrights for details). Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.