A rhinoceros has a bigger vesica than a dog , and generatesurineby the bucketful . So which animal spend more time wee-wee ? In 2014,scientists from Georgia Techendeavored to project that out and determine that , in general , declamatory animals would pee for longer . To test their hypothesis , they set up eminent - swiftness camera to record Zoo Atlanta animals as they “ did their job , ” and append that footage with videos from YouTube . whole , they analyzed the urination of 32 differentanimals , from mouse to panther to gorilla to elephants .
Surprisingly , it bend out that mammal that weigh more than 6 pounds urinate for roughly the same duration of time , regardless of their size of it . Specifically , they wee for an average of 21 seconds — give or take 13 seconds . “ This invariance is noteworthy,“the scientists wrotein the journalProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences , " consider that an elephant ’s bladder , at 18 liters , is nearly 3600 times heavy in bulk than a cat-o'-nine-tails ’s vesica at 5 milliliters . ”
The reason that an elephant can let go of the equivalent of nine tumid soda bottleful worth of urine in the same amount of time that it take a computerized tomography to recede a spoonful of water boils down to flow rates . An elephant pees faster than a cat because its urethra — the tube that delivers urine from the bladder and out of the eubstance — is wider . The elephant ’s urethra is also longer , set aside the force of gravitational force to act more strongly on fluid flowing through it .
Mice and rats and other animal matter under 6 pounds do n’t conform to the 21 - bit formula , however . That ’s because their urinary tracts are so small that they have to combat capillary activeness , which is the tendency for a fluid ’s molecules to vex to themselves and to the wall of a container and flow upwards . The pissing is more viscous , and moves so slowly that smaller animals ca n’t beget a cat valium of pee . or else , the urine falls out in tiny droplets .
For the rest of the mammals , it ’s not exculpated why the 21 - second dominion holds across animals with widely varying sizes . The investigator suggest that it is a matter of cathartic rather than evolutionary adaptation .
The scientists say their research could be helpful in diagnose urinary problems in animals . For illustration , if a zookeeper notices a Gorilla gorilla is piddle for a quite a little more or a portion less than 21 seconds , it could indicate that something is untimely .
curiously enough , this eldritch surface area of research could also have implications for infrastructure . As the newspaper indicates :
[ B]y providing a water supply - tight pipe to direct piss downward , the urethra increases the gravitational force acting on urine and therefore , the rate at which urine is expel from the body … Engineers may utilise this outcome to design a arrangement of pipes and reservoirs for which the drain time does not count on system sizing . This construct of a scalable hydrodynamic system may be used in the plan of portable reservoirs , such as water towers , water backpacks , and storage tanks .
Who know , perhaps this research will pave the way for a “ vesica ” future .
A translation of this story ran in 2014 ; it has been updated for 2022 .
