I've got a lot of experience with the standard lung and alveoli system, but the whole thing will gills and extracting dissolved oxygen from water is just fascinating to me.

What's your favourite form of respiration?

 

Apparently if you have perforated eardrums you can breathe through them. I'm not sure if that counts as a different respiration system, though.

 

I have this on my grindr profile and it’s always a well received fact.

 

I had a coach in middle school that used to yell 'clean out your ears' and another one that used to tell us we had 'gay tendencies'. I can only imagine how they would respond if a boy showed up to the gym with cum dripping out of his ears.

 

Aren‘t there some frogs that “breathe“ through their skin underwater? That‘s pretty neat.

 

There's research now to suggest that humans can absorb a bit of oxygen through our anuses.

'Anal breathing' -- this is, of course, a clickbait headline and the reality is while you might be able to pump your unfortunate lab rats' arse with oxygen it's not the most practical thing in the world, and not super useful for bigger animals like humans... But hey it's... a thing. Maybe.

Maybe in the future when you guys only have half a lung left from your 80 packs a day habit, you will be able to experience the joys of the newly developed anal breathing device?

 

I'm a lung and alveoli purist!

None of this eardrum or anus breathing for me thank you very much.

 

The objectively correct answer is an Elephant's trunk. You might say that that's just another mammals lungs with an incredibly long nose attached, I don't care.

 

The Iron Lung. It's the 21st century, you don't expect me to do my own breathing do you? Modern ventillators are nice and all but I'm a sucker for the classics. Plus its on theme with the plague.

 

The best respiration is the deep inhale coupled with biiiig stretch and gusty exhale combo performed when you've just completed your last to do list item, flicked on your email auto-response and stood up from your desk prior to heading off on holiday.

Bonus points if you've just completed a large piece of written work, or it's late in the office and dark outside. The final submission of dissertations/essays/theses also qualify for this absolute belter of a breathing technique.

Another strong candidate is the 'just got home after a big day out in the sun, collapse onto your nice cool bed' exhalation. Or maybe the contented sigh upon sitting down in a sunny beer garden with your friends.

These top tier breaths make all the deep sighs and irritated sniffs in life worthwhile.

 

This is the only valid answer. Prepare your sphincter for maximal effective anal breathing.

 

I'm just a modern guy. Of course I've had it in the ear before.

 

My favourite is CAM respiration, but that's because I collect cactuses. I doubt it would personally serve me well.

 

CAM is all well and good, but I feel I've much more in common with photorespiration, myself.