Our lungs are made up of millions of tiny bags. Breath in, fill the bags with fresh air, breathe out, empty the bags of spent air. But bird lungs are very different. They’re made up of millions of tiny tubes, like bundles of drinking straws, and those tubes are connected to big, empty air sacs, like balloons that spread throughout the body. When birds breathe in, some of the air goes through the lungs, and some skips the lungs and goes into the air sacs. Then when the bird breathes out, the air in the air sacs gets pushed through the tubes in the lungs. So birds get oxygen-rich air blown through their lungs both when they inhale and when they exhale. The lungs and air sacs of birds also send mini air sacs into the skeleton, and these create air-filled spaces inside the bones, akin to our sinuses. These air spaces in the skeleton are the footprint of the respiratory system. A lot of extinct dinosaurs have the same pattern of air spaces in their skeletons, so we think they breathed like birds.

— Jessie Atterholt and Matt Wedel