Micropterus Salmoides (The Largemouth Bass)
The Largemouth Bass's urinary system consists of kidneys, ureters, a urinary bladder, and a cloaca. It uses its kidneys to maintain homeostasis with the water surrounding it. Because the bass cannot gain salt from the water outside, the kidney prevents an excess of solute loss because the bass contains more salt in its blood than the water around it. Due to the large concentration of salt inside the bass, large amounts of water will diffuse inside in what is called osmosis. Because of this large intake of water, the kidney excretes the urine as mainly water, while reabsorbing the salt that would normally leave the body. Therefore, the urine of largemouth bass is very dilute due to the large intake of water through osmosis and the need to maintain salt inside the body and they will urinate often to get all of the excess water out. Urine is excreted from the kidneys, through the ureters, into the urinary bladder, and then exits through the cloaca.
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Lithobates Catesbeianus (The American Bullfrog)The urinary system of the American Bullfrog consists of the kidneys, ureters, bladder, and cloaca. The kidneys of the bullfrog are the organs that excrete the urine. There is a ureter connected to each of the two kidneys. The ureters are tubes that pass the urine on from the kidney into the urinary bladder. The urinary bladder is a sac that stores the urine until it leaves the body through the cloaca. The American Bullfrog, being an aquatic species of frog excretes ammonia. Ammonia is extremely toxic but is also very soluble, which allows for aquatic frogs such as the American Bullfrog to excrete ammonia instead of having to convert it to uric acid or urea before excretion if it was on land.
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Haliaeetus Leucocephalus (The Bald Eagle)The Bald Eagle's urinary system consists of the avian kidneys, the ureters, and the cloaca. Avian kidneys are found in all birds and are usually large compared to other animals in the chordata phylum. These kidneys are divided into units called lobules, which are made up of a cortex (outer area) and a medullary cone. The urine is excreted from these kidneys to the cloaca through the ureters. The urine excreted from the bald eagle urate instead of urea, which is used in most of the other animals in the chordata phylum. Urea is very toxic and is excreted with a large amount of water. However, urate is much less toxic and requires very little water to be excreted while being largely insoluble. The main reason for the use of urate is due to the egg laying of the bald eagle and all other birds. The embryo is sealed within the egg before it hatches, but it still has to excrete waste. If the embryo released urea, it would require much more water thus taking up all of the space inside of the egg, while urate would excrete insoluble waste that can stay harmlessly in the egg until it hatches.
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