

The Spinner Family 
have food and oxygen, just as you do. 
Now that you know something about 
their food, perhaps you would like to 
hear how they manage to get oxygen’ 
when they have no noses with which 
to breathe in air. In your body the 
air passes through your nostrils into a 
tube called the trachea, or wind-pipe, 
which leads to your lungs. In your 
lungs are hundreds and hundreds of 
air-sacs, the walls of which are pene- 
trated by numerous small blood-vessels 
through which the blood is circulating 
all the time. When the air you have 
breathed in enters an air-sac, some of 
the oxygen from it goes through the 
thin walls into the blood. At the 
same time carbon dioxide and other 
waste products come out of the blood 
into the air-sac and are breathed out 
with the air through the nostrils. 
Now, while the Spinner’s breathing 
apparatus is not so complicated, it is 
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