Skin breathing

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In animals and humans, skin respiration (perspiration) is the exchange of oxygen and carbon dioxide through the skin . In very small animals and those with a relatively very large surface area (such as the cnidarians , whose body consists of only two cell layers) or a low metabolic intensity , it is the only type of gas exchange with the environment.

Skin respiration is physically based on diffusion . In combination with a blood circulation system that absorbs oxygen through capillaries directly under the skin and distributes it throughout the body, even larger animals such as earthworms can get by with pure skin breathing.

Breathing in the oral cavity can also be counted as skin breathing. Some water dwellers take in fresh water through the anus into the rectum to breathe , such as annelids of the Naididae family (including Tubifex ), various small crustaceans ( copepods , water fleas ) and dragonfly larvae .

Most animals have developed special respiratory organs such as trachea , gills and lungs . In addition, they also breathe through the skin to varying degrees, which in eels can account for 60% of the total respiration.

In most terrestrial vertebrates , skin respiration is not essential; the lungless salamanders are an exception . Part of the realm of legends is that people can suffocate if they cannot breathe through their skin (see James Bond : Goldfinger ). Only the top 0.4 mm of human skin is supplied with oxygen through skin respiration.

swell

  1. ↑ Adolf Remane , Volker Storch , Ulrich Welsch: Kurzes Lehrbuch der Zoologie . 5th edition, Gustav Fischer, Stuttgart 1985, pp. 202f.
  2. ^ A b Adolf Remane , Volker Storch , Ulrich Welsch: Short textbook of zoology . 5th edition, Gustav Fischer, Stuttgart 1985, p. 203.
  3. ↑ Christoph Drösser: ZEIT series, right ?: If you paint your whole body with paint, you suffocate. In: zeit.de. ZEIT ONLINE GmbH, August 8, 1997, accessed on April 16, 2019 .
  4. ↑ M. Stücker et al .: The cutaneous uptake of atmospheric oxygen contributes significantly to the oxygen supply of human dermis and epidermis . In: Journal of Physiology . Volume 538, 2002, No. 3, pp. 985-994. PMID 11826181 doi : 10.1113 / jphysiol.2001.013067