{"id":20051,"date":"2014-10-22T05:55:15","date_gmt":"2014-10-22T09:55:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/?p=20051"},"modified":"2014-10-21T20:06:05","modified_gmt":"2014-10-22T00:06:05","slug":"the-urination-constant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/2014\/10\/the-urination-constant\/","title":{"rendered":"The urination constant"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

I am a squeamish person, and I dislike talking about bodily functions.\u00a0 But I stumbled upon a finding that is so interesting that I had to share it with you.\u00a0 Did you know that virtually all animals, from a dog to an elephant\u2013including human beings\u2013take about the same amount of time to urinate?\u00a0 That would be around 21 seconds.\u00a0 See why after the jump.<\/p>\n

From Jason G. Goldman, Why a rhino urinates at the same rate as a raccoon \u2014 and why that\u2019s useful to know \u2013 The Washington Post<\/a>:<\/p>\n

You might think that elephants take longer to empty their bladders than humans do, because pachyderms are so much larger. But you\u2019d be wrong. Recent research shows that most animals, including humans, take the same amount of time to pee. . . .<\/p>\n

\n

Until now, the urethra was thought to be simply a pipe from the bladder to the genitals that expels urine from the body. But David Hu, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering and biology at Georgia Tech, suspected there might be more to it. What he found was that it is indeed a pipe, but with important size considerations. The key was in its length.<\/p>\n

The researchers led by Hu discovered that the smallest critters can\u2019t produce streams of urine. Instead, they pee in drops. But as soon as an animal tops about 6.6\u00a0pounds, it can produce jets. And no matter how big that animal is \u2014 from Fido to Dumbo \u2014 it takes the same amount of time to do it as other animals: roughly 21 seconds. Hu\u2019s team reported its findings<\/a> in June\u2019s Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s all thanks to the urethra. According to Hu, the time it takes to pee is constant, no matter the animal\u2019s size, because of gravity. \u201cConsider the pressure at the bottom of a swimming pool,\u201d he said. If you sat on the bottom of a 50-foot-long pool that was 10 feet deep, you would feel the same pressure from the water pushing down on you as you would at the bottom of a 500-foot-long pool that was also 10 feet deep. That\u2019s because pressure is determined only by the height of the water above it, not the width of the pool.<\/p>\n

An elephant\u2019s bladder is about 11<\/sup> \/ 2 <\/sub>feet tall. But its urethra is three feet long. If you could fit inside the end of the elephant\u2019s urethra, you\u2019d feel the pressure of 41<\/sup> \/ 2 <\/sub>feet of urine above you: the three-foot urethra plus the 11<\/sup> \/ 2<\/sub>-foot bladder.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s why a rhino or an elephant can expel urine in roughly the same time as a raccoon or a ferret, even though the larger animals have a lot more urine. \u201cOur model shows that differences in bladder capacity are offset by differences in flow rate,\u201d Yang writes, \u201cresulting in a bladder emptying time that does not change.\u201d In other words, as the bladder size increases, the urethra becomes longer to compensate, allowing gravity to produce a higher flow speed.<\/p>\n

Steven Vogel, a biology professor at Duke University who was not involved in the research, was surprised. \u201cWho would have expected urination time to be so nearly constant?\u201d he said. \u201cI wrote a whole book on biological fluid mechanics, even giving some space to one aspect of urination, and I never imagined.\u201d<\/p>\n

OK, I know many of you will be taking your stop-watch app into the bathroom and with you when you take your dog for a walk.<\/p><\/div>\n<\/blockquote><\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I am a squeamish person, and I dislike talking about bodily functions.\u00a0 But I stumbled upon a finding that is so interesting that I had to share it with you.\u00a0 Did you know that virtually all animals, from a dog to an elephant\u2013including human beings\u2013take about the same amount of time to urinate?\u00a0 That would […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1281,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33,40],"tags":[3395],"class_list":["post-20051","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nature","category-science","tag-urination"],"yoast_head":"\nThe urination constant<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"I am a squeamish person, and I dislike talking about bodily functions.\u00a0 But I stumbled upon a finding that is so interesting that I had to share it with\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/2014\/10\/the-urination-constant\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The urination constant\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I am a squeamish person, and I dislike talking about bodily functions.\u00a0 But I stumbled upon a finding that is so interesting that I had to share it with\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/2014\/10\/the-urination-constant\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Cranach\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:author\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/cranachblog\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2014-10-22T09:55:15+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2014-10-22T00:06:05+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Gene Veith\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Gene Veith\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"3 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/2014\/10\/the-urination-constant\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/2014\/10\/the-urination-constant\/\",\"name\":\"The urination constant\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2014-10-22T09:55:15+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2014-10-22T00:06:05+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/#\/schema\/person\/f9ca8670bcc51908a78994c0484dbfa1\"},\"description\":\"I am a squeamish person, and I dislike talking about bodily functions.\u00a0 But I stumbled upon a finding that is so interesting that I had to share it with\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/2014\/10\/the-urination-constant\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/2014\/10\/the-urination-constant\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/2014\/10\/the-urination-constant\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"The urination constant\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/\",\"name\":\"Cranach\",\"description\":\"\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/#\/schema\/person\/f9ca8670bcc51908a78994c0484dbfa1\",\"name\":\"Gene Veith\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/054d79faea5d476edd8f99e5f14fb17f?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/054d79faea5d476edd8f99e5f14fb17f?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"caption\":\"Gene Veith\"},\"description\":\"Gene Edward Veith, Jr. is a writer and retired literature professor, serving as Provost Emeritus at Patrick Henry College. 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