Digestive system of a carnivore (2)

Date: 8/7/08 TUE

Let us continue and discover the digestive system of a carnivore. And I will be starting from the small intestine as we ended it off from the stomach in the last post.

The small intestine is vitally important as without it, no digestion could take place and the animal could not survive. The dissolved food, called 'chyme' at this stage enters the small intestine. It is in the small intestine that food is digested and enters the bloodstream. The pancreas and the liver supply and deliver the enzymes needed to break down the fats and proteins into their component fatty acids and amino acids and only in that form, they pass through the gut wall into the bloodstream. These enzymes are vitally important to the carnivore. Those from the pancreas immediately start to break down the chyme into its basic components and continue to do this throughout the chyme's passage along the small intestine.

The chyme is a watery mixture but fat will not mix with water so it requires some special handling. Bile is manufactured in the liver and stored in the gall bladder until such time as it is needed. When fat is detected in the small intestine, this triggers the release of the stored bile, which enters the intestine through the bile duct. Bile acts just like a detergent in that it emulsifies the fat to make it soluble in water. This action makes fat susceptible to digestion by the digestive enzymes. The liver makes bile continuously, the excess being diverted to the gall bladder to be saved and concentrated until it is needed (for the next meal). When a hormone in the upper gut signals that fat is again present in the gut, the stored bile is forcibly ejected to perform its function.

Digestion of food in a carnivore is performed by enzymes produced by glands in the animal's own body and all the absorption of nutrients in that food is through the wall of the small intestine.The digestion of protein and fat, with little or no carbohydrate, in the carnivore's gut is remarkably efficient.

The small intestine doesn't join the large intestine in a straight line, but at a right angle. At this point is a small appendage, two or three inches in length, called the caecum. While this has no functional use in a carnivore, it should be noted because it is one of the major differences between a carnivore and a herbivore. By the time the chyme has passed through the animal's small intestine, the process of digestion and absorption of the nutrients in the food is complete. The large intestine has just one function to perform, is to extract the water and compact the rest of the waste material from what is left of the chyme into a small compact mass, where it is stored in the rectum until it is finally expelled through the anus.

Finally, I have finished the whole digestive system of a omnivore, carnivore and a herbviore. AND in the next post, I will dicuss the differences between each and one of them. This is going to be interesting...