Why it is an advantage to have lungs with many smaller air sacs instead of having just two large sacs like balloons?

Answer 1

There are several ways to answer this question; I'll tackle two: the embryologic answer and the teleologic one. Embryologically (ie, during development), the lungs develop as an outpouching of the foregut, the first part of the gastrointestinal tract that runs straight through the center of the body. As the lung bud grows and descends from its origin in the foregut, it begins to divide multiple times. The first division forms the primary bronchi, the next division forms secondary bronchi, etc. Successive divisions of bronchi make smaller bronchi and bronchioles, until ultimately division ends with the air sacs (called alveoli). It's because of all these divisions of the lung bud that we have so many alveoli. A teleologic answer gets to the bottom of why it's important to have so many alveoli. The short answer is that for the lung to to its job of exchanging oxygen and carbon dioxide gases, it needs to have a large area of contact with air from the environment. Having many alveoli results in a large surface area for gas exchange.

Answer 2

it is important so that the oxygen can be exchange into the body waste called carbon dioxide and the body nutrients from the oxygen and be used by the different parts of the body.

by: meary williams

Answer 3

If you were to draw a line say six inches long with a pen on a piece of paper and then above that line draw another but instead of going from right to left, move the pen up and down so that you and up with what looks like a sine wave or the wave of a heart monitor seen in the movies. Now, imagine if this was string and you pulled the ends of the wiggley piece so that you have a straight line, you can see how much more material there is and if this is a surface area that is responsible for absorbing oxygen, the longer piece of string would absorb two to three times more oxygen.

Having lots of sacks in the lungs is a way of increasing the surface area for the absorption of oxygen.

Hope this helps.

Answer 4

The lungs have many air sacs to increase the surface area of the lungs and increase the amount of gas exchange.

Answer 5

It is important to have air sacs called aveoli because they allow gas exchange.

Answer 6

because it just is!