B. Mine, C. Worthy, CU Boulder, 10/19/00

Do all animals respire at the same rate per gram?

In this study we examined the question – Do all animals respire at the same rate per gram. Since respiration is a chemical process that produces ATP, all animals need to respire to live and therefore should respire at the same rate regardless other characters such as legs and wings. We hypothesized that all animals will respire at the same rate.

We tested our hypothesis by estimating the respiration rates of crickets and pill bugs. Crickets can hop really high whereas pill bugs stay close to the ground. Pill bugs also have many more legs than crickets so their forms and body functions are quite different. If our hypothesis was correct we expected to see no differences in respiration rates. To be more sure of our results we did three trials of each. Since we only had 15 pill bugs we used 5 per trial but 10 crickets per trial.

Our results showed that the respiration rate of the crickets was significantly greater than that of the pill bugs (P = .003). For the crickets our mean respiration rate was 128 ppm CO₂/min/g and for the pill bugs it was 38 ppm CO₂/min/g..

As a result we reject our hypothesis. It appears that different body forms and different types of bodies result in different respiration rates.