Question

In our discussion of the digestive and respiratory systems, one of the concerns we had was that these systems use a common passageway (the pharynx) to get to the stomach or lungs, respectively. One of the problems, as we’ve all experienced, is food going down the “wrong pipe”, that is, food going into the trachea and then having to cough up the food so it doesn’t go into your lungs and you choke.

Suppose, however, that instead of this common passageway, we had two separate passageways that did not overlap. One route would take air into the nose and down through the bronchi into your lungs for breathing. The other route would take food into your mouth and down through your esophagus and into the stomach.

While this configuration would prevent us from choking on our food, what other activity, one that we take completely for granted, would we no longer be able to do?

Answer 1

Trachea is wind pipe and oesophagus is food pipe .Normally they are very closed to each other and have commication through pharynx oropharyx and nasopharynx.During food indigestion glottis closed the respiratory passages and risk of food going in lungs is very less but in unconscious pateint there are chances of aspiration of food from stomach to lungs with open glottis and risk of aspiration and death so this is the disadvantage of interconnection between trachea and esoohagus.

Advantages -- Speech production and clear speech and temperature regualation of body

Advantage that human beings of having this connection during evolution is of speech production and to speak clearly .Speech is produced when air moves from the lungs and it passes through two thin folds vocal folds and when air moves through vocal cords when it is partially open produces sounds by vibrating the vocal cords .Now the path sounds take place whether to move through mouth or naal opening is decided by velum which separates the two and form oranasal process and vowels consants is decided whether it moves through or mouth and produce the sound through lips.Animals being the two pipes widely separated from each other have advanatge of choking they don't have the advantage of production of speech so yewls ,,growns or barks but can't produce sounds clearly

Further large cavities in mouth lower the temperature of air that we inhale directly from atmosphere and optimum temperature by moistening the air so that air reaching the lungs have no damaging effects on lungs also when we feel too hot we exhale the air from mouth and nose to cool the body .