Animals that breathe through the skin

There are many animals that breathe through the skin , although some of them, due to its size, must combine it with other types of breathing or modify the shape of your body to increase the surface/volume ratio.

In addition, we should know that animals that breathe through The skin has a tegument or extremely thin epidermal tissue so that the gas exchange can take place.They must also be aquatic, be closely linked to water or live in extremely humid environments.

Have you ever wondered what the animals that breathe through the skin are called? In this article of Animals and Pets Online we will talk about animals that breathe through the skin, that other breathing mechanisms exist and other curiosities about the animal world, read on!

Types of breathing in animals

In the animal kingdom there are many different mechanisms of respiration.Whether an animal has one type or another depends on many factors, one of them is whether the environment where it lives is terrestrial or aquatic, if it is a small animal or large, whether it flies or not or if it performs metamorphosis.

One of the main types of breathing is that which occurs through gills.Gills are structures that can be inside or outside the animal and It allows them to take oxygen and release carbon dioxide.The animal group where there is more diversity of gills is that of aquatic invertebrates, some examples are:

The tubicola polychaetes , marine anelids, take out some tentacles that they use as gills and to feed when there is no danger.
The starfish have gill papules that act as gills.they would also act as gills.
The sea cucumber has a tree Respiratory into the mouth (aquatic lung).
The limulus or horseshoe crabs have gills on a book covered by gill plates that the animal moves rhythmically.
The gasteropods have gills that develop from the mantle cavity (special cavity that mollusks have in their body).
The lamelibranchs , a type of bivalve, have laminated gills with projections to mix the medium.
The cephalopods have laminated gills without cilia.The mantle is the one that will contract to move the medium.

Other animals that breathe through gills are fish.If you want to know more about this, don't miss the articleHow do fish breathe?

tracheal respiration in animals is another important type of respiration that occurs mainly in insects.Animals that present this breath have a structures in your body called spiracles by which they take air and distribute it through the body.

Another respiratory mechanism is the one that uses lungs .This type is widespread in vertebrates, with the exception of fish.In reptiles, for example, there are single-chamber and multi-chamber lungs.In smaller animals such as snakes, they will use single-chamber lungs and the larger they are, such as crocodiles, multi-chamber.a bronchus that runs through the entire lung is a reinforced cartilaginous bronchus.In birds, there is a parabronchial lung, which consists of a set of bronchial squares with a series of air sacs.Mammals have lungs that can be divided into lobules.

Finally, there are animals that breathe through the skin , which we'll talk about next.

Animals with skin breathing

Cutaneous breathing, as an exclusive form of respiration, occurs in very small animals.Since they have few metabolic requirements and because they are small, the diffusion distance is small.When these animals grow, their metabolic requirements increase and its volume, so diffusion is not enough, so they are forced to create another type of breathing.

In animals of a somewhat larger size, or have another mechanism to breathe or acquire an elongated shape.In worms, having an elongated shape increases the surface-volume relationship, being able to continue with this type of breathing.Although they must be in humid environments, and must have a thin and permeable surface.

Amphibians, for example, have several types of breathing throughout their lives.When hatching the egg, small tadpoles breathe through gills and skin, gills lose full functionality when the animal becomes becomes adult.The skin, when tadpoles, serves both to capture oxygen and to release carbon dioxide.On reaching the adult state, although the function of oxygen uptake is reduced, that of releasing carbon dioxide increases.

Examples of animals that breathe through the skin

To learn more about the animals that breathe through the skin, we show you a list of animals with permanent skin breathing or at some period of their life.

Common earthworm ( Lumbricus terrestris ).All earthworms breathe through the skin throughout their lives.Medical leech ( Hirudo medicinalis ).Also has permanent cutaneous breathing.American salamander giant ( Cryptobranchus alleganiensis ).Breathes through lungs and skin.Northern brown salamander ( Desmognathus fuscus ).Has exclusively cutaneous breathing.Iberian cryon ( Lissotriton boscai ).Breathes through lungs and skin.Common midwife toad ( Alytes obstetricans ).Like all toads and frogs, they have gill breathing when they are tadpoles and adult lungs.it remains for life, but in the adult stage the release of carbon dioxide becomes important.Toad spurs ( Pelobates cultripes ) Common frog ( Pelophylax perezi ) Golden dart frog or poison dart frog ( Phyllobates terribilis ) Red and blue arrow frog ( Oophaga pumilio ) Sea urchin ( Paracentrotus lividus ).In spite of having gills, they also perform cutaneous breathing.Douglas marsupial mouse ( Sminthopsis douglasi ).Mammals, due to their metabolism and size they can not have skin respiration but it has been discovered that the newborn pups of this species of marsupial depend exclusively on the skin respiration during their first days of life.

As a curiosity, the human being has a cutaneous breathing, but only in the corneal tissue of the eyes.

If you want to read more articles similar to Animals that breathe through the skin , we recommend that you enter our Curiosities section of the animal world.

Bibliography

Boutilier, RG,&Toews, DP (1981).Respiratory, circulatory and acid-base adjustments to hypercapnia in a strictly aquatic and predominantly skin-breathing urodelle, Cryptobranchus alleganiensis.Respiration physiology, 46 (2) , 177-192.
Gatz, RN, Crawford Jr, EC,&Piiper, J.(1975).Kinetics of inert gas equilibration in an exclusively skin-breathing salamander, Desmognathus fuscus.Respiration Physiology, 24 (1), 15-29.
Mortola, JP, Frappell, PB,&Woolley, PA (1999).Breathing through skin in a newborn mammal.Nature, 397 (6721), 660.

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