The Similarities Between Lungfish And Human Respiratory System

The respiratory system is a system that deals with how animals receive their oxygen, and not so surprisingly there are many ways different ways animals do this. Humans have an organ called the lungs which helps us inhale oxygen, but fish do not. Fish usually use gills to breathe but there are some exceptions such as the lungfish. The lungfish is one of the only types of fish that have lungs. This is why today we will compare the differences between the lungfish and human respiratory systems. We will highlight the differences and the similarities between the two.

First of all we will start off with the Lungfish respiratory system
The lungfish respiratory system is very much different than ours. The lungfish breathe air in and that air instead of only taking oxygen from it like the humans the lungfish takes carbon dioxide and oxygen from it. Now the streams of blood go in different directions and are separated by the septation of the atrium into a right and left side. Then the oxygenated blood goes to the body and muscles and the carbon rich blood is sent to the gills which over the course of time have degenerated and now have different jobs depending on the gill. The 1st and 2nd gills are completely deformed and are not in use anymore. But, the 3rd, 4th, 5th and 6th gills are the ones that are used. The 3rd and 4th gills exhale and the 5th …show more content…
The human respiratory system is much more complicated than the lungfish one. The journey starts when the human breathes air through the mouth or nose and that air goes down the trachea into the lungs. The lungs have small air sacs that are called bronchioles in both the right and left sides of the lungs. Attached to these bronchioles are very small blood vessels called capillaries. Through the process of osmosis the oxygen in the air diffuses into the blood stream where it is pumped to the rest of the body. Then the de-oxygenated blood comes back to the lungs and the cycle