Be amazed with the ability to drink seawater comfortably without dying of cats

A very close animal surprised us about their biological ability - Cats.

Cats can drink seawater comfortably without dying

Seawater is water from the ocean or the ocean. On average, seawater of the world's oceans has salinity of about 3.5%. This means that for every liter (1,000 mL) of seawater contains about 35 grams of salt, the majority (but not all) is sodium chloride (NaCl) dissolved in it in the form of Na + and Cl- ions. It can be expressed as 0.6 M NaCl.

Water with such permeability level of course cannot be taken. However, this is only true for humans, but there is one animal that is capable of drinking seawater like drinking fresh water, which is a cat. Let's find out about this issue.

This cute guy "broke off" us about drinking seawater.

Seawater has uneven salinity all over the world although most of them have salinity ranging from 3.1% to 3.8%. When the mix with fresh water comes from rivers or near melting glaciers, the sea water is significantly lighter.

Randomly consuming a small amount of clean seawater is not harmful, if it is used with a large amount of fresh water . However, consuming seawater to maintain hydration is counterproductive. When used longer, more water must be consumed to remove salt from the seawater (through excretion in urine or sweat) compared to the amount of water obtained from drinking seawater.

This occurs because the amount of sodium chloride in human blood is always regulated and maintained by the kidney in a narrow range of about 9 g / L (0.9% by weight). Drink seawater with a concentration of about 3.5% of dissolved chloride and sodium ions) temporarily increasing the concentration of these ions in the blood.

This kidney stimulation increases sodium excretion activity, but the sodium concentration of seawater is higher than the maximum capacity of the kidney. Finally, with the additional amount of seawater, the sodium concentration in the blood will exceed the threshold for poisoning, it removes water from every cell and hinders neurotransmitter transmission; causes bleeding and arrhythmias, which can be fatal.

Cats' kidneys are a completely different story when they are more sodium -efficient than human kidneys and so they can survive even when forced to drink seawater, all thanks to a filter. Extremely effective. That's why cat urine has extremely high levels of salt and cat feces are usually very dry, if anyone who has a cat will know this.

If we can simulate this filtering mechanism on artificial kidneys in the future, people will be better able to adapt to the harsh living environments in the world.