by Bart King
In One End, Out the Other
Next time you’re watching a vampire bat lapping up some blood, you might notice that it’s also peeing. That’s because vampire bats drink and pee at the same time!
Let’s get back to the astronauts. When a NASA shuttle goes into outer space, every pound of its cargo costs a lot of money. And water is really heavy! This means that the astronauts’ pee is recycled into usable water. You may recall the news story about the three members of the International Space Station drinking their own recycled pee in zero gravity. And for longer missions to Mars, the current plan is to reuse all fluids that come out of the astronauts: from their tears, sweat, breath, and pee. (This is sort of like the science-fiction novel Dune.)
unbepissed: Not urinated upon.
If you still think that drinking pee is horrible, I have bad news for you: one of every five people in a swimming pool goes pee in it. And since it’s really hard not to get a little water in your mouth when you’re swimming, you know what you’ve done! Sure, it was an accident. Tell that to the astronauts!
And now to solve one of the great peeing mysteries of all time! As we know, guys like to pee standing up. They also like to pee onto or into something. So if a man is in a huge field with only one tree really far away, he will usually hike to the tree and pee against it. And if a boy in the desert saw an empty coffee can, he would walk a mile to pee into it. (It makes a funny sound!)
My theory is that this must be an instinct! Researchers have learned that wolves and dogs go out of their way to pee on the most visible and easily smelled spot. (This is especially true for males.) Male wolves urinate on tall trees, while dogs prefer fire hydrants. Both animals try to aim their pee as high as possible so that the wind will carry the smell even farther. This is what is called “maximum territorial signaling.”
When men pee standing up, they are similarly marking their territory. (This sort of peeing sends a fine spray of urine around the room.) To reduce spray, some urinals now come with a mark on them, which men naturally aim at. The mark is put in a spot where pee spray will be reduced. Of course, another simple strategy is to have the man sit down while peeing. While this may sound like no big deal, it presents problems of its own! (See p. 141.)
Holding It
If you’re anything like me (and I hope you’re not!), when you go to a theater to see a movie, it’s almost guaranteed that about halfway through you’re going to think: “Uh-oh, gotta go!” I guess I should stop chugging liquids beforehand. But instead, I make a point of only going to theaters with thick carpets and absorbent seats. Kidding!
The Couple That Sprays Together
When a male porcupine sees a female he’s interested in, he sprays her with pee. If the female porcupine stays, she likes him! Now that’s love.
But as I squirm and cross my legs, I’m amazed at the other people who can “hold it” for hours and hours. (When will this stupid cartoon end?!) People who can hold it may call themselves “camels,” but they should actually call themselves “bears.” That’s because when bears hibernate during the winter, they never get up to go pee in the woods. Their body simply reuses the fluids!
pissupprest: The ability to hold in your urine.
But there is a time and place to pee your pants. Tycho Brahe (1546–1601) was a famous astronomer from Denmark. He died from pee poisoning after going to a formal dinner. You see, the custom at the time was that guests did not get up from the dinner table until the meal was finished. Apparently, Brahe really had to go, but he refused to leave! As a result, he “held it” too long, and his bladder burst. He died of internal pee poisoning days later.
Roll Out the Barrel
Viking households usually had a barrel full of human pee in the corner. This was used to clean sheep’s wool, make soap, and possibly to store food in so that vermin didn’t get into it!
Kids who wet their beds have the opposite of Brahe’s problem. And there are a lot of them! One out of every seven kids is a bed wetter, and 1 percent of all eighteen-year-old boys still wet the bed. If you are ever worried about this, try eating some crackers or having a spoonful of honey before going to bed. Either of these items will help you retain your water. (In ancient Rome, they used to make bed wetters eat boiled mice, so we’ve come a long way!)
Where Does Pee Come From?
Your kidneys are two bean-shaped organs. They are Command Central of your urinary system. Try reaching your hands behind your back and below your rib cage. Now make two fists. This is the approximate size and location of your kidneys! I hope your kidneys are not sleeping on the job, because if they are, you’d be the victim of kidney-napping. (Oh, I am really sorry about that!)
Your blood gets filtered through your kidneys. In fact, a quart of blood gets pushed through them every minute, which is actually pretty amazing. And your kidneys’ other important job is keeping track of how much total water you have in your body and getting rid of excess fluids.
About half of your body weight should be water. So your urinary system works with your intestines, lungs, and even your skin to keep those fluids just right. For example, if you’re sweating a lot, your urinary system might cut back on the flow of fluid to your urine. Your kidneys also keep tabs on your waste, salt, and sugar levels.
From your kidneys, pee travels directly to your urinary bladder. As your bladder fills, circular, rubber band-like muscles (called sphincters) tighten up so that it doesn’t leak. You can control these muscles. When you’re ready, you can relax those bladder sphincters, which releases pee to the bladder’s “exit,” a tube called the urethra. This tube then delivers your pee to, um, the outside world.
Yay.
The #1 Tax
All sorts of things have been taxed over the years, like candy bars, gasoline, and even beards. (Really!) But the Roman emperor Nero was the only person to put a tax on pee.
About two thousand years ago, Roman tanners collected pee from public restrooms. That’s because the ammonia in pee could be used for things like laundry bleach. And since the pee could be had for free, but the tanners charged a fee to bleach people’s laundry, Nero decided to take a cut of the pee-pee action!
So what ends up in your pee? Water. Unused vitamins. Salt. Waste proteins. One particular waste that is removed from your blood is called urea. Urea is sort of a weird substance. Once it sits around, urea breaks down into ammonia, which stinks but can be good for cleaning things. Urea is often found in lotions because it’s supposedly good for curing acne and other skin conditions. (An old Mexican custom was to use a boy’s warm urine on skin rashes!)
Pee can have a number of different colors. For example, I was once convinced that I was peeing blood because my pee had a strong rusty color to it. Not to worry! It turns out that the beets I had eaten the night before were staining my urine. And vitamin B will give your pee a bright yellow color. If your pee is a dark brownish-yellow color, you need to drink more water. Your body needs lots of clear fluids to flush itself out properly, and really dark urine can be a sign of dehydration.
As for stinky pee, nothing beats asparagus. And while it can take hours for the red color of beets to get into your urine, the asparagus smell seems to happen in just an hour or so. Awesome!
Before I end this chapter, let me give you some free medical advice: If you’re ever in a hospital, don’t drink anything that looks like apple juice. Thank you, and good night.
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[6] Wetting your astronaut pajamas is WAY worse, take it from me! (For one thing, pajamas take longer to dry out.)
Animals!
As a person who loves animals, I’d like to point out that NO animals are gross. It is only our reactions to our fellow creatures that make them seem gross.
This is very childish on our part!
Take the candiru, for example. It’s a wee South American catfish that looks like a five-inch-long eel. It likes nothing better than minding its own business. Sure, the candiru feasts on the blood and soft tissues of other fish
by swimming into their gills. But who are we to judge?
One scientist studying the candiru learned just how much it likes blood. The scientist was standing in a river, and the fishy dove into a little cut in his skin, burrowed into it, and headed for an artery. This scared the heck out of the scientist, who managed to stop the little troublemaker before it swam into his heart. Okay, I’ll admit it, that is pretty bad. But wait, it’s not as frightening as something I just heard about. Apparently, a man was peeing into the Amazon River when a candiru swam up his urine stream and . . . made a home in the place the urine was coming out of. Ulp. It was days before a surgeon was able to get the fish out. The man survived, but the candiru ended up doing some traveling inside him before everything was said and done.
What horrible little beasts! kill them all!
Whew, I’m sorry! I got a little spooked there. As I said before, animals cannot be disgusting. To prove it, I’m visiting the zoo right now. (They let me bring my typewriter inside!) I asked the zookeeper to direct me to the most allegedly gross animal. And so even as I write, I’m looking at an African rodent called the naked mole rat. Ha! Only an uptight human could look at an innocent creature and call it “naked.” All animals are naked.
And so what if the only hair a naked mole rat has is . . . in its mouth. And big deal if baby naked mole rats have pink skin that’s so transparent I can actually see all of their internal organs pulsing inside of them.
Blech! (Dang it, I just dropped my typewriter!)
I guess animals can be disgusting—just like us! Here are some notables:
Slimiest of the Slimy Award Winner: The slime eel is such an overachiever, it even has a charming nickname: “hagfish.” But whatever you call this fish, it’s covered in mucus. It has ninety pores on its body that produce slime!
But the slime eel’s slime isn’t just any slime. As the slime comes out of the eel’s body, it has the consistency of a horrible gelatin. If you were to get some of it on you, washing it off wouldn’t work. The more water comes into contact with it, the thicker and slimier the slime gets! Apparently, the best solution is to peel it off.
As if that weren’t enough, the slime eel also has lips with tentacles attached to them! It swims along the bottom of the sea floor and looks for fish that are either dead or sick. It then goes in the fish’s mouth (or gill or eye or butt) and eats the fish from the inside out. How? It uses its tooth-covered tongue to scrape the fish to pieces. Oh, and it gets a bonus score for being made up entirely of intestine. The slime eel has no stomach—and four hearts! And it doesn’t have any bones, either. Good grief, is this thing even from our planet?
Undertaker Prize: The burial beetle, also known as the carrion beetle, looks like an oversized ladybug. But it doesn’t fly away home. Instead, it comes out at night and starts looking for dead rodents or birds. When it finds one, the beetle crawls all over the carcass, leaving behind anti-fungal juices. This slows the rotting process. By keeping the stink down, the burial beetle improves its chances at not having to share with other scavengers!
Then the beetle digs under the corpse until the rodent or bird slowly sinks into the ground. This might take all night, and by the time the sun has come up, the beetle can start chowing down and laying eggs. When the beetle’s larvae hatch, it thoughtfully bites off chunks of the carcass and then barfs them back up for the babies to eat!
Most Disgusting Way to Say “I Love You” Prize: The anglerfish is one ugly denizen of the deep. It has a stalk coming out of its head with a glowing light at the end of it. This is how it attracts prey to its huge jaws and colossal teeth.
At least that’s what female anglerfish do. The males are much smaller than the females, and they don’t live long. As soon as a male anglerfish is fully grown, his digestive system dissolves! So his job is to find a female anglerfish, and fast. Look, over there, a light! Then the male has to swim over and bite the female on the side. Don’t let go! He has to keep biting and burrowing into her skin until all that’s left of him is his back half sticking out of her side. Then he stays put! His head and the front half of his body eventually disintegrate inside the female. Older female anglerfish can have more than seven males sticking out of their body. (If that’s what love is, I don’t want any part of it!)
Best Animal to Walk With on a Cold Day: Besides their drool and vomit, dogs aren’t gross in the slightest. And they can even keep your hands warm on a cold day! You see, dogs have an interior temperature of 101 degrees Fahrenheit. That’s pretty warm. Let’s say that you’re out walking Fido on a cold morning and you’ve forgotten your gloves. Don’t despair! After Fido busts a grumpy, just bag it and then put it in your pocket. Now you have your very own hand warmer!
But don’t forget to get rid of that bag before hanging up your coat.
Most Horrible Way to Be Born Award Winner: Would you like being born in a blister? That’s how little baby Surinam toads come into the world. Here’s how it works:
A female Surinam toad releases her eggs into water, where the male fertilizes them. Using toad acrobatics, the female manages to get about a hundred of the fertilized eggs onto her back. And there they stay!
Over the next few hours, the eggs nest into the female’s back, and a layer of skin forms over them. Then during the next few weeks, little toad tadpoles hatch within these bubbles. When they’re ready, the baby Surinam hoppers break free of their bubbles and launch themselves into the world. (Hey, if one female toad met another female toad from the same mother, it could say, “You’re my sister from another blister!”)
And Mom is left with a back covered with popped blisters.
The Big Horse Apple
In the 1970s, New York City became the first major city to require dog owners to clean up their dogs’ poop.
Most Disgusting Babies Prize: The female Australian social spider gives birth to many babies at once. Unlike other spiders, she then lets her babies suck her juices out. Then the little brats puke all over her and eat the dissolved mess.
Weirdest Way to Eat Champion: A starfish actually upchucks its stomach onto the things it wants to eat. This releases digestive juices right on the food. Then the starfish swallows its stomach, slurping down the liquefied food right along with it!
“Dam Rodents” Prize: Beavers are sort of cute, and very industrious. But they can have an intestinal parasite called giardia. Also nicknamed “beaver fever,” giardia is the second-leading waterborne disease in the United States. If a human gets giardia, it can mean diarrhea, and lots of it. So if you’re backpacking in beaver country, remember to boil your water. If you don’t, you’re going to need the beavers to build a dam behind your butt!
The Most Well-Developed Anal Glands in the World Award: A skunk has anal sacs that are filled with extremely stinky fluid. And it can shoot this fluid a long way. But incredibly, the skunk doesn’t win this award. Instead, it goes to an African animal called the zorilla. The zorilla actually looks like a skunk, but it smells even worse. A famous zoologist said that it has the “most well-developed anal glands in the animal kingdom.” The stink of a zorilla’s anal gland is so bad, these animals don’t even hang out with each other!
Neither Plant Nor Animal
For the record, there are five “kingdoms” of life: plant, animal, fungi, bacteria, and . . . slime mold! A slime mold is neither a plant nor an animal. So what is it? One scientist called slime mold “a bag of amoebas.” While there are more than a thousand slime mold species, nearly all begin life as an innocent little oatmeal-like glob that oozes around the forest floor, engulfing the bacteria it finds in rotting wood. This organism is also sometimes called “dog vomit mold” because people who come upon it in their backyards assume that their dog just blew chunks. Amazing!
Even more amazing, I have it on good authority that people in some parts of Mexico collect certain slime molds. Then they make a scramble of them in a pan, like eggs. The dish is called caca de luna, which translates to “poop of the moon”!
&n
bsp; Slime Time
Here’s a slimy activity:
Build a maze and put some delicious spores and bacteria at one end. (Don’t eat them yourself—they’re for the slime mold!)
Now get a slime mold. (Your local pet store probably has some. Or not. But you really can order slime mold growth kits from most biological supply houses.) Carefully cut the slime mold into pieces and drop them into the maze. (Don’t worry, this doesn’t hurt the slime mold.)
Watch as the slime mold parts put themselves back together again. Now watch as the original slime mold starts to move through the maze! See how it learns to avoid dead ends? Notice how it heads for those delicious spores? See how the now-larger slime mold picks up the knife you used to cut it up with and—Eeep![7]
