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Intestinal Spiral Valve
A spiral valve or scroll valve is the corkscrew-shaped lower portion of the intestine of some sharks, Acipenseriformes ( sturgeon and paddlefish), rays, skates, bichirs, Lepisosteiformes (gars), and lungfishes. A modification of the ileum, the spiral valve is internally twisted or coiled to increase the surface area of the intestine which increases nutrient absorption.Campbell Reece, ''Biology'', 9th edition, p. 752 Description The intestines of a shark are much shorter than those of mammals. Sharks have compensated for this problem by having a spiral valve, or a scroll valve, inside the intestine to increase the absorbent surface of the intestine. By keeping digestible material in the ileum for an extended period maximum nutrient absorption is ensured. For this reason, many sharks and related fish feed very infrequently. The food passes into the comparatively short colon of the shark almost fully digested, and then out the cloaca and vent. A consequence of the spiral valv ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fish
Fish are aquatic, craniate, gill-bearing animals that lack limbs with digits. Included in this definition are the living hagfish, lampreys, and cartilaginous and bony fish as well as various extinct related groups. Approximately 95% of living fish species are ray-finned fish, belonging to the class Actinopterygii, with around 99% of those being teleosts. The earliest organisms that can be classified as fish were soft-bodied chordates that first appeared during the Cambrian period. Although they lacked a true spine, they possessed notochords which allowed them to be more agile than their invertebrate counterparts. Fish would continue to evolve through the Paleozoic era, diversifying into a wide variety of forms. Many fish of the Paleozoic developed external armor that protected them from predators. The first fish with jaws appeared in the Silurian period, after which many (such as sharks) became formidable marine predators rather than just the prey of arthrop ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Physical Characteristics Of Sharks
Shark anatomy differs from that of bony fish in a variety of ways. Variation observed within shark anatomy is a potential result of speciation and habitat variation. The Five Chordate Synapomorphies The five chordate synapomorphies are present in chondrichthyes as follows. The five synapomorphies are pharyngeal slit, dorsal nerve cord, notochord, Endostyle, and the post-anal-tail which is depicted and labeled well on the chordates page. This image is helpful to visualize the regions where the five synapomorphies existed in chordates and what they looked like. In cephalochordates, the pharyngeal slit, or pharynx, are lateral to the throat of the chordate and work as filters by letting water pass over this region in order to retain nutrients and oxygen from gas exchange occurring. The dorsal nerve cord serves as a hollow-like backbone where signals are sent throughout the body due to nervous tissue being located in this region. The notochord is also toward the tail of the chordate ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Small Intestine
The small intestine or small bowel is an organ in the gastrointestinal tract where most of the absorption of nutrients from food takes place. It lies between the stomach and large intestine, and receives bile and pancreatic juice through the pancreatic duct to aid in digestion. The small intestine is about long and folds many times to fit in the abdomen. Although it is longer than the large intestine, it is called the small intestine because it is narrower in diameter. The small intestine has three distinct regions – the duodenum, jejunum, and ileum. The duodenum, the shortest, is where preparation for absorption through small finger-like protrusions called villi begins. The jejunum is specialized for the absorption through its lining by enterocytes: small nutrient particles which have been previously digested by enzymes in the duodenum. The main function of the ileum is to absorb vitamin B12, bile salts, and whatever products of digestion that were not absorbe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Feeding Frenzy
In ecology, a feeding frenzy occurs when predators are overwhelmed by the amount of prey available. The term is also used as an idiom in the English language. Examples in nature For example, a large school of fish can cause nearby sharks, such as the lemon shark, to enter into a feeding frenzy. This can cause the sharks to go wild, biting anything that moves, including each other or anything else within biting range. Another functional explanation for feeding frenzy is competition amongst predators.Staddon. Adaptive Behavior and Learning. Foraging and Behavioral Ecology. Retrieved from: http://psychandneuro.duke.edu/uploads/assets/Chapter09.pdf This term is most often used when referring to sharks or piranhas. English language uses It has also been used as a term within journalism. The term is occasionally used to describe a plethora of something. For instance, a 2016 Bloomberg News article is entitled: "March Madness Is a Fantasy Sports Feeding Frenzy." In economics the term ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Regurgitation (digestion)
Regurgitation is the expulsion of material from the pharynx, or esophagus, usually characterized by the presence of undigested food or blood. Regurgitation is used by a number of species to feed their young. This is typically in circumstances where the young are at a fixed location and a parent must forage or hunt for food, especially under circumstances where the carriage of small prey would be subject to robbing by other predators or the whole prey is larger than can be carried to a den or nest. Some bird species also occasionally regurgitate pellets of indigestible matter such as bones and feathers. It is in most animals a normal and voluntary process unlike the complex vomiting reflex in response to toxins. Humans In humans it can be voluntary or involuntary, the latter being due to a small number of disorders. Regurgitation of a person's meals following ingestion is known as rumination syndrome, an uncommon and often misdiagnosed motility disorder that affects eating. It ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Stomach
The stomach is a muscular, hollow organ in the gastrointestinal tract of humans and many other animals, including several invertebrates. The stomach has a dilated structure and functions as a vital organ in the digestive system. The stomach is involved in the gastric phase of digestion, following chewing. It performs a chemical breakdown by means of enzymes and hydrochloric acid. In humans and many other animals, the stomach is located between the oesophagus and the small intestine. The stomach secretes digestive enzymes and gastric acid to aid in food digestion. The pyloric sphincter controls the passage of partially digested food ( chyme) from the stomach into the duodenum, where peristalsis takes over to move this through the rest of intestines. Structure In the human digestive system, the stomach lies between the oesophagus and the duodenum (the first part of the small intestine). It is in the left upper quadrant of the abdominal cavity. The top of the stomach lies ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bone
A bone is a rigid organ that constitutes part of the skeleton in most vertebrate animals. Bones protect the various other organs of the body, produce red and white blood cells, store minerals, provide structure and support for the body, and enable mobility. Bones come in a variety of shapes and sizes and have complex internal and external structures. They are lightweight yet strong and hard and serve multiple functions. Bone tissue (osseous tissue), which is also called bone in the uncountable sense of that word, is hard tissue, a type of specialized connective tissue. It has a honeycomb-like matrix internally, which helps to give the bone rigidity. Bone tissue is made up of different types of bone cells. Osteoblasts and osteocytes are involved in the formation and mineralization of bone; osteoclasts are involved in the resorption of bone tissue. Modified (flattened) osteoblasts become the lining cells that form a protective layer on the bone surface. The mineralize ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lumen (anatomy)
In biology, a lumen (plural lumina) is the inside space of a tubular structure, such as an artery or intestine. It comes . It can refer to: *The interior of a vessel, such as the central space in an artery, vein or capillary through which blood flows. *The interior of the gastrointestinal tract *The pathways of the bronchi in the lungs *The interior of renal tubules and urinary collecting ducts *The pathways of the female genital tract, starting with a single pathway of the vagina, splitting up in two lumina in the uterus, both of which continue through the Fallopian tubes In cell biology, a lumen is a membrane-defined space that is found inside several organelles, cellular components, or structures: *thylakoid, endoplasmic reticulum, Golgi apparatus, lysosome, mitochondrion, or microtubule Transluminal procedures ''Transluminal procedures'' are procedures occurring through lumina, including: * Natural orifice transluminal endoscopic surgery in the lumina of, for example, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cloaca
In animal anatomy, a cloaca ( ), plural cloacae ( or ), is the posterior orifice that serves as the only opening for the digestive, reproductive, and urinary tracts (if present) of many vertebrate animals. All amphibians, reptiles and birds, and a few mammals ( monotremes, tenrecs, golden moles, and marsupial moles), have this orifice, from which they excrete both urine and feces; this is in contrast to most placental mammals, which have two or three separate orifices for evacuation. Excretory openings with analogous purpose in some invertebrates are also sometimes referred to as cloacae. Mating through the cloaca is known as cloacal copulation, commonly referred to as cloacal kiss. The cloacal region is also often associated with a secretory organ, the cloacal gland, which has been implicated in the scent-marking behavior of some reptiles, marsupials, amphibians, and monotremes. Etymology The word is from the Latin verb ''cluo'', "(I) cleanse", thus the noun ''c ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Colon (anatomy)
The large intestine, also known as the large bowel, is the last part of the gastrointestinal tract and of the digestive system in tetrapods. Water is absorbed here and the remaining waste material is stored in the rectum as feces before being removed by defecation. The colon is the longest portion of the large intestine, and the terms are often used interchangeably but most sources define the large intestine as the combination of the cecum, colon, rectum, and anal canal. Some other sources exclude the anal canal. In humans, the large intestine begins in the right iliac region of the pelvis, just at or below the waist, where it is joined to the end of the small intestine at the cecum, via the ileocecal valve. It then continues as the colon ascending the abdomen, across the width of the abdominal cavity as the transverse colon, and then descending to the rectum and its endpoint at the anal canal. Overall, in humans, the large intestine is about long, which is about one-fi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Digestion
Digestion is the breakdown of large insoluble food molecules into small water-soluble food molecules so that they can be absorbed into the watery blood plasma. In certain organisms, these smaller substances are absorbed through the small intestine into the blood stream. Digestion is a form of catabolism that is often divided into two processes based on how food is broken down: mechanical and chemical digestion. The term mechanical digestion refers to the physical breakdown of large pieces of food into smaller pieces which can subsequently be accessed by digestive enzymes. Mechanical digestion takes place in the mouth through mastication and in the small intestine through segmentation contractions. In chemical digestion, enzymes break down food into the small molecules the body can use. In the human digestive system, food enters the mouth and mechanical digestion of the food starts by the action of mastication (chewing), a form of mechanical digestion, and the wetting contact o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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