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Respiratory gases—oxygen and carbon dioxide—move between the air and the blood across the respiratory exchange surfaces in the lungs. The structure of the human lung provides an immense internal surface that facilitates gas exchange between the alveoli and the blood in the pulmonary capillaries. The area of the alveolar surface in the adult human is about 100 square metres. Gas...
...breathers, which, as in the case of the water beetle Dytiscus, take on a gas supply in the form of an air bubble under their wing surfaces next to the spiracles before they submerge. Tracheal gas exchange continues after the beetle submerges and anchors beneath the surface. As oxygen is consumed from the bubble, the partial pressure of oxygen within the bubble falls below that in the...
in respiration: Birds )...the continual, unidirectional airflow, the lungs of birds are more completely ventilated than the lungs of mammals. The flow of gas and blood within the bird lung is carefully arranged to maximize gas exchange, which is far more efficient than in the mammalian lung: Himalayan geese have been observed not only to fly over human climbers struggling to reach the top of Mount Everest, but to honk...
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