• Question: when we are born how do we know how to breathe

    Asked by botter7r2 to Amy, Drew, Julia, Kimberley, Sara on 15 Jun 2011.
    • Photo: Drew Rae

      Drew Rae answered on 14 Jun 2011:

      Botter, that’s a tricky question. We have some muscles that we can completely control (like when we move our arms and legs) and others that our nerves or brain control without us having to think about it. The ones that we completely control, we learn to use. That’s why babies can’t walk or pick things up. The others (like our heart) are wired to work automatically.

      Breathing is somewhere in the middle. You can breathe by thinking about it OR by not thinking about it. There’s a weird brain illness where you lose the ability to breathe without thinking about it. These people can quite literally forget to breathe!

    • Photo: Julia Griffen

      Julia Griffen answered on 14 Jun 2011:

      Hey Botter… Its one of those things where we just do… its automatic… just like our heat beating! Automatic!

    • Photo: Kimberley Bryon

      Kimberley Bryon answered on 15 Jun 2011:

      Hey, Julia is right. We need to breathe to live just like we need our heart to beat and our brain to control these two things happening. The human body is amazing and it is just a natural automatic thing to happen once we are born.

    • Photo: Amy MacQueen

      Amy MacQueen answered on 15 Jun 2011:

      I don’t think anyone knows. Its amazing!!! 🙂

    • Photo: Sara Imari Walker

      Sara Imari Walker answered on 15 Jun 2011:

      Hello botter! I think Drew and Julia have given great answers. Its automatic! This is pretty strange though (at least I think it is). As scientists we want to know more!! There are many things in biology that seem preprogrammed like breathing. For example I have two beagles, neither one of them has been trained to hunt – they have no idea what hunting is – yet they both know how to track a scent. Now why is that if they were never taught??? There are just some things we don’t know in biology yet. And one is precisely that we just don’t know why some things are innate, we know them from birth. How to breath is one such thing, how to cry is another! For my beagles it is how to sniff and bark at scents. Probably it is in our genetics somewhere, but it is a tough problem to crack! Great question!!

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