How is the way birds breathe different from the way reptiles or mammals breathe?

Buck540

It's complicated, having to do with always having fresh oxygen, but this site seems to explain it: http://www-das.uwyo.edu/~geerts/cwx/notes/chap01/bird_lungs.html "The lungs of birds differ from those of mammals and other animals, which breathe in and out of fixed volume, as in a bellows. With this arrangement the rising concentration of oxygen in the blood in the lungs gradually approaches the falling concentration in the air during the brief period the air is inhaled. In the case of birds, there is a flow from an entry to a separate exit in the lungs, in counterflow to the blood. That means that air and blood go in opposite directions so that the amount of oxygen in the air always exceeds the amount in the blood nearby. Such an arrangement allows the bulk of the air's oxygen to be transferred to the blood, so that the exit concentration in the blood actually exceeds the concentration in the outgoing air." Nov 10 04, 1:14 PM

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