Tiger
Tiger Digestion
- The tigers jaw contains incisors, canines and molar teeth in both jaws. The molars are ridged and the movement of the jaw goes up and down, which indicates that they are used for tearing or crushing to brake down the foodstuffs. The salivary glands serve just to lubricate (saliva does not contain any enzyme, so does not have any important function in digestion).
- The stomach is at the same time a reservoir and helps to liquefy the meals. Is kind of small compared to the tigers size but is enough for a carnivore due that their diet is based in meat and fat (dense nutrients) which digestion can take hours. It also subject the food to concentrated solution of hydrochloric acid, which dissolves the food. So far very little digestion has taken place and, in the carnivore, the stomach is not an essential organ.
- Small intestine is vitally important due that without it, no digestion could take place and the tiger could not survive. The liquefied food leaves the stomach and enters the small intestine. Is in there were food is digested and nutrients enter the bloodstream. Pancreas and liver supply and deliver the enzymes needed to break down the fats and proteins into their component fatty acids and amino acids (only way to pass through the gut wall into the bloodstream). The pancreatic enzymes break down the chyme into its basic components and continue to do this throughout the chyme's passage along the small intestine.
- Between small intestine and large intestine. Small appendage, (two or three inches). No use in carnivores.
- By the time the chyme has passed through the tiger’s small intestine, the process of digestion and absorption of the nutrients in the food is complete. The large intestine allows water to escape and so the colon extracts the water and compacts 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.