A research team in Japan has discovered that pigs can survive without breathing through their lungs, if oxygen is pumped up their rear. Apparently humans can also 'benefit' from this intestinal breathing, and trials will start soon.
Vice:
By pumping oxygen and oxygenated liquid through animals' buttholes into their intestines, the researchers found that they could survive without breathing through their lungs.
"It's so impressive because we never thought of breathing from the gut, but it's possible," Takanori Takebe, an author of the study and a doctor at the Tokyo Medical and Dental University, told VICE World News.
Last year, his team and collaborators from Nagoya University Graduate School and Kyodo University's Department of Respiratory Surgery published their study focusing on mice. Now they're looking to submit their research on pigs, which are closer to humans in physiology and genetic makeup, to a U.S. medical journal in August.
