Re: Tears and 'salt excre

Bill Burnett (bbur@wpo.nerc.ac.uk)
Tue, 7 Nov 1995 09:43:25

In article <60.3987.7295.0N1FCB23@canrem.com> j#d#.moore@canrem.com (J. Moore) writes:

>Bb> >What do whales drink? Do they not drink for weeks at a time? Or
>Bb> >maybe they swim up to rivers and then go upstream until there's
>Bb> >no salt left in the river, drink and swim back to the ocean.

>Bb> >How about seals? Where do they find water to drink? And how
>Bb> >about the other critters like doogongs (sp?), walruses, sea
>Bb> >otters.

>Bb> Jim Moore has graciously saved me the trouble of how whales drink so I
>Bb> shan't bother with that... <snipped>
>Bb> Bill

>Actually, I pointed out that marine mammals and birds *can drink*
>seawater and, unlike humans, excrete enough salt to make it
>worthwhile. In nature, it is not certain that any of them
>actually do deliberately drink water of any kind in the wild.

>Jim Moore (j#d#.moore@canrem.com)

You're right of course, sorry if I was over attributing... perhaps drink
should have been in quotes...

I believe most of the fluid intake of marine animals (at least the carnivores)
comes from the tissue fluids of their prey, which may be slightly
hypotonic to sea water (depending on prey item) so reduces salt intake and
associated problems to some extent.

Bill