Respiratory System

With large body size comes larger organs… and the lung volume of a giraffe is definitely one to see. With a tidal volume of 3.3 liters, a giraffe’s oxygen intake is approximately six times greater than that of a humans (Hugh-Jones et al., 1978). It would appear however, that a giraffes elongated trachea could cause some unwanted air. Dead-space is the area in a trachea, in which the air is neither inhaled or exhaled completely. With an elongated trachea, it was once believed that the accumulation of dead-space would be higher. However, current literature is somewhat contradictory, and it is still unclear as to whether or not the dead-space in a giraffe’s trachea is truly greater than that of another mammal if scaled up to size (Mitchell and Skinner, 2011; Langman et al., 1982) . One study suggests that the dead-space is no different, which may be the cause of an abnormally long and narrow trachea (Langman et al., 1982).

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