Cutaneous respiration

Cutaneous respiration is when an animal or a living thing breathes through its skin, like a frog or a worm.

You know how you breathe in and out through your nose and mouth? Well, animals that have cutaneous respiration also use their skin to do that.

But how does it work? The skin of these animals is made up of many tiny little holes called pores. When they breathe in, oxygen from the air outside goes into the pores and then gets absorbed into their blood. Similarly, when they breathe out, carbon dioxide from their blood goes out through the pores and into the air.

It's kind of like when you put a sticker on your hand. If you look really closely, you can see tiny little holes in the sticker. That's kind of what the skin of these animals is like, except the holes are much smaller and there are a lot more of them.

Cutaneous respiration is really important for some animals, because they might not be able to breathe in any other way. For example, some frogs live in water and can't breathe underwater, so they use cutaneous respiration to get the oxygen they need.

So that's the basic idea of cutaneous respiration - breathing through your skin - in a way that a five-year-old might understand!