ERRATA ALERT!
In the previous post, I used a child's anatomy to show how our epiglottis closes over our airway to avoid breathing in what we eat/drink, because there was far less anatomy depicted in this illo than in the adult version. It was easier on the child's head to see the differing positions of the epiglottis, but just to remind you, what you were looking at was not the anatomy of an adult throat.
This leads to an interesting ability that babies possess: have you ever watched a baby drink a bottle for minutes on end, without ever stopping to take in a breath? This is because a baby's throat anatomy is very different from the adult's, in that both the baby's tongue location and the shape of the epiglottis allow for the creation of separate "channels" in order to drink and breathe simultaneously!
For any of you curious about looking into this further, it's called a faucium channel. Anyway, sorry for the potential confusion!
In the previous post, I used a child's anatomy to show how our epiglottis closes over our airway to avoid breathing in what we eat/drink, because there was far less anatomy depicted in this illo than in the adult version. It was easier on the child's head to see the differing positions of the epiglottis, but just to remind you, what you were looking at was not the anatomy of an adult throat.
This leads to an interesting ability that babies possess: have you ever watched a baby drink a bottle for minutes on end, without ever stopping to take in a breath? This is because a baby's throat anatomy is very different from the adult's, in that both the baby's tongue location and the shape of the epiglottis allow for the creation of separate "channels" in order to drink and breathe simultaneously!
For any of you curious about looking into this further, it's called a faucium channel. Anyway, sorry for the potential confusion!
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