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If I were a professor and the question was "why we can't drink sea water", I'd give the article a higher score than yours.

Your comment is about the best method to hydrate oneself. His article is about "why we can't drink seawater".



It might be about that - but it's wrong. The obvious proof is that Penguins and Fish can drink sea water.

At least the comment was correct, although about a somewhat different subject.


I wouldn't go as far as saying it's wrong, but rather that it's not complete. The article simply focused on osmosis to explain the process of dehydration at a cellular level (blood). In that, I'd say it was rather accurate.

Now, if you absolutely want the bigger picture, we could go as far as stipulating that the human renal system (kidneys) have limitations and is unable to excrete salt at seawater's concentrations, which is how dangerous levels of sodium chloride could find their way into the bloodstream, when someone drinks seawater.

Penguins can drink seawater because, in addition to kidneys, they have a gland that is very efficient at excreting salt from their body. So efficient, in fact, that the byproduct is a saturated saline solution (which is what you see when a penguin has a "runny nose"). A penguin with a defective supraorbital gland would die of dehydration, like any human, if it drank seawater.


"The article simply focused on osmosis to explain the process of dehydration at a cellular level (blood). In that, I'd say it was rather accurate."

Cellular osmosis and dehydration have almost nothing to do with one another. The article is, indeed, wrong, in trying to associate these things with one another.




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