How Does A Giraffes Heart Work
The giraffe has one of the highest blood pressures of any mammal. It reaches pressures of up to 280/180 mm Hg, which is twice that found in humans . This is due to the fact that the giraffes head is on average 2 metres above its heart and the heart has to combat the forces of gravity to ensure that the brain gets adequate blood flow and oxygen. But how exactly is this achieved?
A giraffe heart weighs on average 11 kilograms and is composed of have two halves, the right and the left, which are each responsible for moving blood around the body. The right ventricle of the heart only has to pump blood a relatively short distance to the lungs.
The left ventricle of the heart, on the other hand, has to pump the blood around the rest of the body, including all the way up to the head. In order to reach the brain, the heart has to pump blood not only against gravity but also against the hydrostatic pressure of the blood already in the long vertical artery, requiring a tremendous amount of force. In order to generate this force, it was previously hypothesised that the giraffe had a much larger heart relative to its body size, but recent research has revealed that there is not enough room in the body cavity for a larger heart. Instead, it was found that the left ventricle of the heart has incredibly thick, well-muscled walls and small chamber radius giving each heartbeat enough power to push blood around the body.
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Animal Trivia Questions Ocean Animals
How many arms do squids have?
Answer: 10. They have eight arms and two longer ones that are called tentacles.
What is the fastest animal in the ocean?
Answer: The sailfish. It can reach 68 mph in the water.
How many bones does an octopus have?
Answer: Zero. The only hard structure it has is a beak, but that doesnt count as a bone.
What is something that sharks can sense but humans cannot?
Answer: Electric fields. Like rays and other predators in the ocean, sharks can sense small electric fields with a unique organ called the ampullae of Lorenzini .
This organ allows them to sense the tiny amount of electricity generated by muscles moving, and they use this ability to find prey.
What is the largest fish in the ocean?
Answer: The whale shark. Also known as the gentle giants of the sea, whale sharks can grow to as long as 39 feet . They eat only plankton.
Which animal eats jellyfish?
What Creates High Bp
What causes high blood pressure? High blood pressure usually develops over time. It can happen because of unhealthy lifestyle choices, such as not getting enough regular physical activity. Certain health conditions, such as diabetes and having obesity, can also increase the risk for developing high blood pressure.
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Animal Trivia Questions How Many Legs
How many legs does an octopus have?
Answer: Eight. Each of its tentacles has a mini-brain of its own to move somewhat on its own.
How many legs does a centipede have?
Answer: 10 to 300 legs.
How many legs does a scorpion have?
Answer: Eight. That includes its pincers and the six legs it uses to walk.
Why Do Most Mammals Large And Small Have Much The Same Blood Pressure
Features
It is a fascinating fact that the blood pressure, the mean arterial pressure, of mice and men is much the same. An obvious corollary is that it can thus have little to do with the absolute scale of total peripheral resistance or gravitational effects on the cardiovascular system, given how different we are from mice in both respects. It is the shared requirements of the mammalian ultrafiltration kidney that are predominant in setting the mean arterial pressure of mice and men.
A simple thought is rarely noted by the textbooks: why does blood pressure mean arterial pressure stand at the absolute level that it does? Considerable physiological effort is expended by the body in sustaining the regulation of MAP, but why specifically at around 100 mmHg in most mammals, large or small?
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Animal Trivia Questions Amphibians
What is the color of the most poisonous frog in the world?
Answer: Yellow. The most poisonous frog in the world is the golden poison frog from Colombia.
How many eggs can female frogs lay at a time?
Answer: Up to 4,000. Even though it varies from species to species, female frogs can lay up to that many in one sitting.
What kind of animal uses its skin to breathe?
Answer: The frog. Other than their lungs, frogs can also use their skin for breathing.
Looking for more ways to pass the time? Check out these fun facts for kids. The list covers animals, geography and so much more!
Which type of frog freezes during winter to hibernate?
Answer: The wood frog. Usually, when animals freeze, pointy ice crystals form inside their bodies, and these crystals puncture their cells and organs, killing them in the process.
However, the wood frog has natural antifreeze in its blood that prevents deadly ice crystals from forming in its center to protect vital organs, so it can survive the entire winter frozen, or rather, 60% frozen.
Heroes Should Be Medium
Water animals have no problem with gravity. The external hydrostatic pressure of the water compensates for any gravitational effects . The cardiac output pressure in fish is 2550 mmHg nevertheless, they do not experience orthostatic problems . For terrestrial animals, gravity does pose a problem. A water column of 1 m translates to a hydrostatic pressure difference of 73 mmHg! A human of 1.70 m in size and a systolic blood pressure of 120 mmHg at the level of the heart will have a systolic blood pressure of approximately only 70 mmHg in the brain and 190 mmHg within the toes. This simple calculation also explains why the heart is usually located in the middle of the body . As outlined above, early terrestrial animals generated a systolic blood pressure of only less than 3040 mmHg to avoid pulmonary oedema. For this reason, amphibians and reptiles always have a horizontal body posture . You will never meet a crocodile standing on its hind legsas it is often depicted in comics. The crocodile would feel dizzy rather quickly.
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What Animal Has The Lowest Blood Pressure
reptileschelonians
. Consequently, what animal has the highest blood pressure?
The giraffe is a big-hearted animal. On the average, the mass of a giraffe’s heart is about 40 kg. The giraffe needs a big heart with very thick muscular walls to pump sufficient blood a long distance, up the length of the neck to the brain. As a result, the giraffe has the highest blood pressure of any animal.
Beside above, what is normal blood pressure by age? The American College of Cardiology still recommends getting blood pressure below 140/90 in people up to 80 years old, and the American Heart Association says blood pressure should be under 140/90 until about age 75, at which point, Dr.
Likewise, people ask, which animal has no blood?
Flatworms
What is a giraffes blood pressure?
The giraffe has an extremely high blood pressure , which is twice that found in humans.
Which Animal Has The Highest Blood Pressure
The giraffe is home to the most blood-pressure mammals. It can reach pressures up to 280/180 mm Hg, more than twice the amount is found in humans . This is because the head of a giraffe is at an average of 2 meters above the heart, and the heart must fight gravitys forces to make sure that its brain has adequate oxygen and blood flow. But how can this be achieved?
The heart of a giraffe weighs an average of 11 kg and is made up of two halves, one on the left and right, responsible for the flow of blood around the body.
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Animal Trivia Questions Ocean Mammals
What is the color of a polar bears skin?
Answer: Black. The black color can better absorb the suns warm rays, helping polar bears stay warm more easily in freezing temperatures.
How far away can the sound of a blue whale be heard?
Answer: Over 500 miles . However, much of the sounds wavelength is outside the humans hearing range, so we can only hear part of it.
What kind of animal is a killer whale ?
Answer: A dolphin. Orcas are actually classified as dolphins. Theyre called whales because of their large size.
What is the largest animal in the world?
Answer: The Antarctic blue whale. They can grow to weigh 400,000 pounds , which is as heavy as 33 African elephants. Plus, Antarctic blue whales can be as long as 98 feet !
How do dolphins find prey?
Answer: Echolocation. Just like radars, dolphins produce and send out a series of clicks that bounce back from objects, including their prey. When they receive the returning clicks, they use that information to find prey.
Giraffes Blood Never Floods The Brain
Because of all these special features, giraffes are well-adapted to their high blood pressure. So really they dont suffer the what we normally think of consequences for high blood pressure. In another mammal such a level of blood pressure would leave both the heart and blood vessels seriously ruptured.
Obviously, the source of the high blood pressure in giraffes is the small heart. It needs such a high blood pressure to be able to push blood from the heart all the way to the brain. However, the high blood pressure isnt just an issue for an upstanding giraffe. It gets worse when the animal bends over to have a drink. The blood pressure from the heart tends to increase due to the effects of gravity. What saves the giraffe are the special valves in the neck blood vessels. As soon as the giraffe bends, the valves close to stop the blood from flooding the brain.
Also, the giraffe also has the rete mirabile, a webbed collection of tiny blood vessels. Any excess blood that returns to the brain while the giraffe is bending is absorbed when these vessels expand. The blood, therefore, never floods the brain.
Clearly, the giraffe doesnt just have high blood pressure, but mechanisms to deal with it too.
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Dual Scale Of Blood Pressure Measurement: Systolic And Diastolic
Blood pressure is usually measured using a device called a sphygmomanometer. This machine is wrapped around the persons upper arm to measure blood pressure.
Sphygmomanometer: an instrument to measure blood pressure
According to the American Heart Association, the ideal blood pressure range is 120/80 mm Hg. A persons blood pressure is expressed in two values 120 and 80 in the previous case. The first value is the systolic blood pressure, while the value after the slash / symbol is the diastolic blood pressure.
- Systolic blood pressure: This unit indicates how much pressure blood exerts on the arterial walls when the heart beats at the time of measurement. This is when the heart pumps blood out of the heart and circulates it to various organs in the body.
- Diastolic blood pressure: This unit indicates how much pressure is exerted on the arterial walls when the heart rests between two beats. This is the period during which the heart opens its chamber to fill with blood.
To simplify things a little, consider systolic pressure as the maximum pressure exerted on the artery walls and think of diastolic pressure as the minimum pressure exerted on the walls of the arteries.
Giraffe Have This Huge Problem Of Having A Head That Is 2 M Away From The Heart So In A Really Big Animal How Does It Get Blood Up Thereprof Graham Mitchell Centre Of Wildlife Studies In Onderstepoort South Africa
The giraffe has an extremely high blood pressure , which is twice that found in humans. The heart can beat up to 170 beats per minute when a giraffe is running, but a resting/normal heart rate is around 40-90 beats per minute.
It was previously thought that a giraffe had a really big heart, but recent research has revealed that there isnt room in the body cavity for this. Instead, the giraffe has a relatively small heart and its power comes from a very strong beat as a result of the incredibly thick walls of the left ventricle.
The right ventricle pumps the blood a short distance to the lungs, and the muscle is about 1 cm thick. The left ventricle has to pump the blood all the way up to the head against the hydrostatic pressure of the blood already in the long vertical artery. A giraffes heart has evolved to have thick muscle walls and a small radius giving it great power to overcome this pressure.
The thickness of the muscle wall is related almost directly to the length of the neck. For every 15 cm increase in the length of the neck the left ventricle wall adds another 0.5 cm thickness.
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Adapting To Living On Dry Land: The Water
Since our days as amphibians, several adaptations have taken place that allowed us to become independent of water. For example we have encapsulated the primordial sea within us by the development of thick skin. The thin mucosal skin of amphibians, which also participated in gas exchange, became impermeable to water and gas in reptilian-like animals.
In addition, a water-retaining kidney developed twice in evolution, in a convergent, independent fashion. The first version of a water-retaining kidney was the mammalian metanephric kidney . Its novel feature was the loop of Henle including a medulla with extraordinary high osmolarity . The mammalian metanephric kidney consists almost exclusively of tightly packed but highly ordered tubules. In contrast to earlier kidneys , nephrogenesis was no longer possible in the metanephric kidney. The loop of Henle represents the most efficient water retrieval system on Planet Earth. This also explains why loop diuretics induce predominantly a loss of water rather than salt . However, importantly, the loop of Henle requires urea to function.
Interestingly, some animals switch from uricotelism to ureotelism after hatching, such as the freshwater turtle, because the synthesis of uric acid is quite energy expensive and the freshwater turtle obviously has sufficient access to water.
Oscillometric Blood Pressure Monitor
Automated oscillometric monitors use an inflating cuff to detect oscillations produced by blood flow and these oscillations are used to determine blood pressure.7,22,27 There are significant disadvantages associated with use of oscillometric monitors in exotic animal patients. First, automated monitors take readings at a minimum of every minute. Changes can develop rapidly in critically ill exotics so the intermittent nature of the information obtained can be a problem during periods of cardiovascular instability. 8 Additionally, oscillometric monitors tend to be most unreliable when the information is needed most: as blood pressure falls, the instrument may fail to obtain any readings at all.1,3,48,9,27 Oscillometric techniques can also fail to obtain measurements with rapid heart rates , small patient size, and hypothermia.9,27
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Farm Animal Trivia Questions
How many compartments do cows have in their stomach?
Answer: Four. The cows stomach allows them to swallow grass, even if it hasnt been adequately chewed.
They store the food in the first two compartments to break it down before regurgitating and rechewing it later.
What is the smartest farm animal?
Answer: Pigs. Contrary to common beliefs, pigs are not only one of the smartest farm animals, but they are also actually one of the most intelligent animals in the animal kingdom.
They have the intelligence of a 3-year old child and are faster learners than dogs and primates. Its even a popular household pet.
Do dogs sweat?
Answer: Yes, but mainly only through their paw pads, where their sweat glands are. Other than their paws, they also use their tongues to cool off.
What is a baby goat called?
Answer: A kid.
How To Take Blood Pressure Of An Elephant
How To Take Blood Pressure Of An Elephant?
What is the normal blood pressure for an elephant? While dogs and cats have similar ranges to human beings, elephants have a much higher average blood pressure to keep their much larger vessels open. While a normal value in human beings might be considered to be 120mmHg , in an elephant 180mmHg is average.
What is blood pressure in animals? Normal systolic pressure in dogs and cats is in the 120-130 mmHg range. An allowance of up to 160 mmHg systolic is often used since many of our patients are quite anxious in the hospital setting . Just like in humans, pets can have high blood pressure or systemic hypertension.
Which animal has highest blood pressure? Answer: Giraffes
Giraffes have the highest known blood pressure of any creature on earth for a very good reason: their hearts are fighting gravity every step of the way.
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Taking A Pets Blood Pressure
Measuring a pets blood pressure is often done the same way as it is with humans. An inflatable cuff is placed on the dogs leg or tail, and standard blood pressure measuring instruments check the pressure. One difficulty can be keeping the dog still long enough to get an accurate reading, and thats important.
Veterinarians have to calculate another number when taking a dog or cats blood pressure called MAP or Mean Arterial Pressure. A dogs or cats MAP is calculated by dividing the diastolic pressure + 1/3 by the systolic pressure diastolic pressure.
| Animal |
| 118.7 +/- 3.10 |
* Some variation depending on breed.
If your pet has already been diagnosed with, and is being treated for, hypertension, your veterinarian will need to treat the underlying condition that caused the high blood pressure. They will probably also want to measure your pets blood pressure every three months moving forward. The vet may also suggest performing other tests, such as a complete blood count, blood chemistry panel and a urinalysis, every six months.
For most of us our pets are part of the family, so make sure they get a regular annual check-up with their veterinarian. Dont ignore your vets advice, or at least get a second opinion before you make a potentially life and death decision on your fur-babys behalf.
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