Gas Exchange in Animals

Respiration

• Obtaining sufficient oxygen and expelling

excessive amounts of carbon dioxide.
• In animals, there are four major types of
gas exchange systems that allow them to
obtain oxygen from the environment-
body surface, gills, tracheae, or
lungs.
• Ventilation
- The process involved in the bringing of
oxygenated water or air into contact with
respiratory organs.
•
 In single-celled protists, they can
easily diffuse essential gases and will
not require complex respiratory organs.
 Invertebrates, cnidarians,
sponges, and worms, exchange
oxygen and carbon dioxide by diffusion
because their skin is only a few layers
thick.
 Earthworms use their entire outer skin
to exchange gases known as
cutaneous respiration or
integumentary exchange.
 For amphibians, aside from using their
lungs, breathe through their skin as a
gas exchange.
 Amphibians cannot breathe air when
they are underwater. Thus, oxygen
diffuses into a dense net of thin-walled
capillaries beneath their skin, which
allows them to spend prolonged time
underwater.
 Some animals have skin surface that is
not adequate gas exchange all over its
body.
 Certain parts of their bodies evolved as
highly branched large respiratory
surfaces in the form of tracheal
systems.
 Arthropods, such as the insects
and spiders have a tracheal system
that consists of branched internal tubes
that extend throughout the body.
 On the surface of the insect’s body are
tiny openings called the spiracle and
arising from these spiracles are sturdy
tubes known as trachea.
 The tracheal system uses smaller tubes
called tracheoles that can become
smaller enough, with tips that reach all
its cells. The tip are filled with small
amounts of an aqueous substance
where oxygen can be dissolved from air
whereas carbon dioxide diffuses in the
opposite direction.
Gills

 These are found in more advanced

marine invertebrates which are thin
sheets of tissue that waves through the
water, increasing the surface area
available for diffusion.
 For mollusks and echinoderms, they
have external gills that are often in the
form of extensive projections.
 These are highly folded, thin-walled
vascularized epidermis that projects
outward of the organism’s body.
 Organisms that use this gas exchange
mechanism ventilate by waving these
gills back and forth through the water,
an action that is important for sessile
invertebrates that rely on water
currents for ventilation.
 Limitations:
1. They are susceptible to damage
from the environment as they are
exposed.
2. A considerable amount of energy
is needed to move them continually
through the water.
3. Their appearance and motion makes
the animal susceptible to predators by
drawing attention to it.
 Fishes, on the other hand, have set of
feather-like internal gills found on each
side of its head that flap open and close
with exchange of gases.
 Different fishes can ventilate in three
possible ways:
1. actively drawing water in through
their mouth and out and out of their
operculum
2. swimming while their mouth and
out is open so that water can
continuously flow across the gills.
 3. Resting near a water current
while keeping their mouth open.
• Through this flow-through system, it
allows the fish to constantly be in
contact with fresh, oxygenated water,
making the water move in one
direction, and thus improving gas
exchange.
 Higher forms of terrestrial vertebrates
have evolved lungs that are internally
lined with moist epithelium.
 their lungs are located inside the chest
or thoracic cavity.
 In modern amphibians, the skin is a
major respiratory organ, and in some
species, it is the exclusive respiratory
organ.
 Aside from their skin, frogs breathe
through a pair of thin-walled lungs that
act like a big air sac.
 In reptiles, cannot rely on their skin to
breathe and evolve dry, scaly skin that
is watertight to avoid moisture loss.
 Their lungs is similar in structure with
amphibians, but with wider surface
area and many small air chambers, thus
increasing the surface for more oxygen
diffusion.
 In birds, they have a respiratory
demand far greater than the capacity of
the lungs of an active mammal.
 Due to intense beating of their wings
during of their wings during flight, the
wing muscles must contract, using up
most of their energy and requiring a
large amount of oxygen.
 Evolved in three components:
- A series of air sacs outside of the
lungs called posterior and
anterior air sacs, and the air
passageways through the lungs
known as parabronchi.
 In mammalian respiration, they use
their lungs to obtain oxygen and expel
carbon dioxide by receiving
deoxygenated blood from the heart and
returning oxygenated blood to the
heart.
 Mammals are well adapted to
terrestrial environment.
 Factors Affecting Gas Exchange

 In order for gas exchange to happen,

respiratory surfaces must be moist,
and with a large surface area and
protected from drying up.
 Gases in the air exert pressure on the
body surfaces of animals when they
breathe.
 Atmospheric pressure
- refers to the sum total of the
exerted pressures by each gas mixed
in the air, corresponding to the exact
proportion of their amounts.
• Partial pressure
-Each individual gas pressure (P).
 Oxygen’s partial pressure symbol is Po2
and because oxygen’s amount in air is at
21%, the computation of atmospheric
pressure oxygen in sea level is
(0.21 x 760 mmHg= 160 mmHg)
 It is the partial pressure of
oxygen in the air that provides a
major force that could affect the
diffusion from air or water
environment across the animal’s
respiratory surface and into its blood.
 Aside from pressure, temperature and
the presence of other solutes influence
the solubility of gases. Gases in the air
cam mix with freshwater, seawater and
body fluids.
 In terms of temperature, more gas can
dissolve in a given volume of cold water
than in warm water. It is because at
higher temperatures, there is more
thermal energy present in gases in
solution that can likely drive them to
escape from the liquid.
 Thus, animals living in the warm
waters will have less oxygen available
than those living in colder
envirenments.
 Mammalian Respiratory System

 Gas exchange in animals and humans

happen in several phases- breathing,
transport of gases by the
circulatory system, and exchange
of gases in cells.
 Breathing and respiration are related
process, but they are not the same.

Breathing
The act of taking air in and out of
the lungs.
 It is the physical action of taking in
oxygen into, and releasing the waste
carbon dioxide out of the lungs.
 Mammals, including humans, ventilate
by negative pressure breathing, pulling
the air into the lungs with the aid of
diaphragm contraction and expansion
of the rib muscles.
 The mammalian respiratory system
system consists of the lungs and various
passageways that allow the air to reach
the lungs.
 The second phase of gas exchange happens
with the help of the circulatory system.
1. The oxygen diffuses into the blood and
attaches itself to the hemoglobin present in
the blood.
2. The blood vessels help transport oxygen-
rich blood from the lungs to the capillaries of
body tissues and vice versa.
3. The circulatory system then carries
both the oxygen and glucose to your cells
where respiration occurs.
 The third phase is known as internal
respiration.
 This involves the body cells that take
up oxygen from the blood and release
carbon dioxide to the blood.
 Internal respiration is responsible for
bringing oxygen from your lungs to all
other tissues in your body and taking
out carbon dioxide from the tissues
back to your lungs as a waste product.