What is saliva? Detailed answer

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What is saliva? Detailed answer

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What is saliva?

Imagine that you have to eat a lemon. Think about how sour it is. Do you feel saliva start to come out? This is one of the features of our salivary glands. They do not act mechanically, but are controlled by the brain.

There are three pairs of salivary glands. One of them is at the level of the ears, one under the tongue, one under the lower jaw. The salivary glands solve the immediate problem of automatically regulating the quantity and quality of saliva. Animals have a small amount of saliva, as they eat raw food.

Salivary glands do not exist in fish, but they are highly developed in grain-eating birds. When a cow chews food, her salivary glands secrete about 50 liters of saliva. If she eats dry hay, the amount of saliva produced increases to 190 liters. And the largest amount of saliva that a person's salivary glands can secrete in a lifetime is 23 liters! Each of the salivary glands performs a specific function.

The largest gland - parotid - determines the water content of saliva. The main purpose of saliva is to moisten chewed food. The submandibular gland produces saliva of various kinds, which makes food "slippery". What kind of food we eat determines which salivary glands will produce more saliva.

If we taste a juicy apple that does not need to be moistened, the submandibular gland functions. But if we eat dry cookies, the parotid gland begins to work and produces a large amount of liquid saliva. Human saliva contains an enzyme called amylase. Amylase breaks down starch molecules into dextrin and then into glucose.

Author: Likum A.

Random interesting fact from the Great Encyclopedia:

What is oceanography?

Almost all objects and phenomena that exist in nature correspond to some kind of science that studies them. Oceanography is a complex of all sciences related to the study of the ocean, which helps a person to find out how the ocean appeared, what processes take place in it.

As you can imagine, this requires serious research! Let's see what's included.

You can start from the coastline. The seashore (or the boundary between land and sea) is constantly changing due to tides, winds, the daily impact of the sea on the coast, and the up and down movements of the land. The temperature and salt content of the oceans are also studied. And, oddly enough, man still does not have a satisfactory explanation for why the ocean is salty.

And the tides? Tides are regular movements of water associated with the attraction of the Sun and Moon. They are also constantly studied by oceanographers. Now let's move on to currents. Ocean currents are like rivers flowing through the ocean. They are warmer or colder than the waters they pass through. Because currents are of great importance to humans, they are constantly being studied. As we know, plants and living organisms of countless species live in the ocean. Oceanographers and this area pay a lot of attention. What is the depth of the ocean in different places? This is also very important for humans, and there are scientists who only measure ocean depths. A person is even interested in what happens at the bottom of the ocean.

We know that up to a depth of 3657 meters the ocean floor is covered with soft, silty mud. It consists of calcareous skeletons of tiny marine organisms. The animal and plant life of the ocean floor is studied from samples of silt taken from there.

In general, the ocean, which seems to most of us just a huge body of water, is actually a huge and complex organism, about which a person wants to know as much as possible. And oceanographers increase our knowledge of the ocean by continually studying everything it is made of and contains.

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