• Question: Why do human people need to breath and why do they have oxygen?

    Asked by to Anna, Iain, Nick on 20 Mar 2014. This question was also asked by .
    • Photo: Nick Goldman

      Nick Goldman answered on 20 Mar 2014:

      You need to breathe so that you can get oxygen in your lungs, where it is ‘captured’ into your blood and carried all over your body. Oxygen is needed everywhere in your body as part of the chemical reaction where glucose is used to create energy.

    • Photo: Anna Middleton

      Anna Middleton answered on 20 Mar 2014:

      Hi again
      Humans breath air and need oxygen because this is the way that they have evolved. Doing this gave them the best chances of coping with their environment. At the heart of most biological processes is evolution!

    • Photo: Iain Moal

      Iain Moal answered on 21 Mar 2014:

      Nice question!
      We breath for two reasons. Firstly, to get oxygen into our bodies, and secondly to get carbon dioxide out. The reasons we need oxygen is because oxygen has lots of energy in it, which is used to ‘burn’ sugars in tiny powerplants in our cells called mitochondria. This reaction turns the energy into a form which our cells can use for all the important biological processes, like movement or healing wounds.

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