The same way it does now. You'd have an additional tube for nose-breathing.
We eat through the same hole we speak out of. Without changing that, there isn't any way to get the lungs to supply the speaking apparatuses with air unless we cross tubes somewhere.
I still don't know what animals you were talking about.
It was just a general point that it is rather common for creatures to have separate breathing and eating tubes. I think we can rest that there.
Jon writes:
But the eating tube and breathing tube have to connect to get the air from the lungs to pass through the oral cavityan essential process in the production of human speech sounds.
We could have two breathing tubes.
But so long as the eating hole is the same as the speaking hole, at least one tube from the lungs will have to
somewhere cross paths with the digestive tract.
You can't get around it. You could maybe make it safer, but even then it would be difficult to do so without seriously altering the utility of human speech.
But you could employ it much slower and be okay. It'd prolly be helpful for lifting a lot of weight.
It seems that to 'wind up' the system would take as much energy as the system would give off (probably more). I think the advantages really come from the gear's ability to store a large amount of energy and release it rapidly in a higher concentration.
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