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A lymph heart is an organ which pumps lymph in lungfishes, amphibians, reptiles, and flightless birds back into the circulatory system. [1] [2] In some amphibian species, lymph hearts are in pairs, and may number as many as 200 in one animal the size of a worm, while newts and salamanders have as many as 16 to 23 pairs of lymph hearts.
The heart of newts, like that of most amphibians, consists of two atria and one ventricle. [19] Blood flows from the anterior and posterior caval veins into the right atrium; blood that entered the heart from the left atrium is then expelled out of the ventricle.
The largest living amphibian is the 1.8 m (5 ft 11 in) Chinese giant salamander (Andrias davidianus) [41] but this is a great deal smaller than the largest amphibian that ever existed—the extinct 9 m (30 ft) Prionosuchus, a crocodile-like temnospondyl dating to 270 million years ago from the middle Permian of Brazil. [42]
In amphibians and reptiles, it is typically a shield-shaped structure, often composed entirely of cartilage. It is absent in both turtles and snakes . In birds , it is a relatively large bone and typically bears an enormous projecting keel to which the flight muscles are attached. [ 17 ]
The vessels form three rings: one around the mouth (the hyponeural haemal ring), another around the digestive system (the gastric ring) and the third near the aboral surface (the genital ring). The heart beats about six times a minute and is at the apex of a vertical channel (the axial vessel) that connects the three rings.
The structure of the feet and legs varies greatly among frog species, depending in part on whether they live primarily on the ground, in water, in trees, or in burrows. Adult anurans have four fingers on the hands and five toes on the feet, [ 51 ] but the smallest species often have hands and feet where some of the digits are vestigial. [ 52 ]
Lungfish are freshwater vertebrates belonging to the class Dipnoi. [1] Lungfish are best known for retaining ancestral characteristics within the Osteichthyes, including the ability to breathe air, and ancestral structures within Sarcopterygii, including the presence of lobed fins with a well-developed internal skeleton.
These are reduced in adulthood, their function taken over by the gills proper in fishes and by lungs in most amphibians. Some amphibians retain the external larval gills in adulthood, the complex internal gill system as seen in fish apparently being irrevocably lost very early in the evolution of tetrapods. [12]