Imagine the size of elephant.Is there any relation between body size and lung size?
Answers
Air can enter an elephant’s body through three entrances, its mouth, trunk and forehead (through internal nares).There is definitely a relationship between body size and size of lungs. Lungs are major part of respiratory system and life is dependent upon lungs for absorption of life giving oxygen.
Elephant lungs have a unique lung physiology. Mammals usually share the common trait of a pleural cavity; the space between the pleura, in which the lungs are situated. This lubricated membrane, the pleura, usually aids in respiration by exerting negative pressure on the lungs and thereby forcing them to expand so that the host can inspire they don't have a pleural space between the lung and the chest wall, in elephants, the pleural cavity is filled with connective tissue. Elephants will breathe out an average of 310 litres of air every minute.
In 1681, a scientist in Dublin, Ireland, conducted an autopsy on an elephant that had died in a fire and wrote that the elephant's lungs were different from those of any other four-legged animal he'd ever seen. Their lungs are attached directly to the diaphragm and chest wall, allowing them to create much greater "vacuum pressure" for sucking water through their long trunks, while drinking.