Where did the myth that humans can automatically breathe through their mouths come from?

Babies with bilateral choanal atresia (blocked nose caused by bone or tissue) die of suffocation soon after birth. This proves that humans are obligatory nasal breathers and can only voluntarily mouth-breathe. It's not an automatic reflex at all.

 

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It proves nothing of the kind, of course.

But isn't it time to give us another thread on spontaneous combustion, or people being throttled by their own thymus glands?

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What this lends support to is that babies are nasal breathers. Every article about bilateral choanal atresia that I looked at clearly states this.

 

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I've had colds bad enough that I couldn't breathe through my nose. I was able to sleep and not die. I've listened to that happen to my wife as well, and she will breathe with her mouth open. Occasionally she will close it, and then she'll snort after a few seconds and open her mouth again. So for us (and for most humans) it is quite automatic.

 

As other posters have noted we get colds blocking nasal breathing. Adults around 2-4, and children around 4-6 colds per year. Even if only a small percentage of those colds resulted in nasal blockage the human population would not have got off the ground due to suffocation in our sleep.