News Animals

Lizard breath has surprising birdlike flow

Decades of assumptions wrong about what happens inside the reptile’s lungs

FUNNY BREATHING  A savannah monitor lizard moves air through its lungs much like a bird does, surprising biologists.

Cheryl Ertelt

By Susan Milius

- More than 2 years ago

A monitor lizard ignores the textbook explanations of how it should breathe and instead it whooshes air through its lungs in a one-way flow, just as birds do.