The Need to Take In

Food
Digestive System
• Metabolism
Refers to all the chemical rxns that take place inside an
organisms body.

• Nutrition
The intake of food from various sources and the
processes that convert food substances into living matter
Animal Nutrition
• Autotrophs
Plants that can produce their own food by converting
inorganic components into organic molecules.
• Heterotrophs
Animals that depend and consume organic molecules
from other organisms for nutrition
Three dietary categories:
• Herbivores
Exclusive to eating plants
• Carnivores
Exclusive to eating flesh (facultative and obligate)
• Omnivores
Eat both plants and animals
Types of Digestive System
• For single celled-organisms they process their food
rights inside their cells.
• Intracellular digestion, which happens inside the cells
through food vacuoles.
• This is true to protists, Amoeba, And Paramecium.
• Phagocytosis
• In most multicellular organisms, nutrients are absorbed into
the bloodstream after they have been broken down within
digestive cavity while wastes are excreted out.
• Extracellular digestion, happens when food is broken down
outside the cells, as observed in animals with a gastrovascular
cavity or incomplete or complete digestive system.
• Incomplete digestive system, true to simple animals such as
the Hydra, flatworms, and coelenterates.
• Higher forms of animals developed some specialization and
evolved into having a more complex alimentary canal that
contains one-way tubes with different openings for the mouth
and anus.
• The ingested food stays at different compartments or regions
of the digestive tract where ingestion, storage, digestion, and
absorption of nutrients take place.
• Most of the nutrition of higher vertebrate animals are linked
to the consumption of cellulose present in plants.
• However, most animals lack enzyme to digest cellulose.
• Certain gastrointestinal bacteria and protists are present
in the digestive systems of some animals. such as
cockroaches, termites, and herbivorous animals.
• For herbivores i.e. ruminants, they have a large stomach
that is divided into four chambers (foregut fermentation) where
they sequentially process the digestion of plants.
Ruminant Herbivores
Nonruminant Herbivores
Feeding Mechanisms in Animals
• Suspension feeding
- This is true to bacteria,
phytoplankton, and
zooplankton.
- Use their body parts to
move water toward a feeding
structure to sift through the
food suspended in water
• Filter feeding
- Animals such as
humpback whales that sift
shrimps known as krills, and
small fishes through their
baleen.
- They extract food particles
suspended in surface water and
sieve it to various filtering
structures.
 • Substrate Feeders
- They eat their way through
the soil while digesting and
excreting food as they crawl.
- In this way, they also help
the environment by aerating air
and fertilizing the soil with
their wastes.
• Fluid Feeders
- Ingest their food by
sucking nutrient-rich fluid
from a living host that is either
a plant or an animal.
 • Bulk Feeders
- They use variety of means
such as claws, pincers,
poisonous fangs, retractable
jaws, and sharp teeth to tear
the food source into pieces of
meat so they could take
mouthful of animal or plant
body parts.
Nutrient Uptake in Cells among Animals
Endocytosis
- Large molecules enter the cell through this process. The
cell membrane bends inward (invaginates), forming a vesicle
that contains the macromolecule to be transported.
- phagocytosis, pinocytosis, and receptor-mediated
endocytosis
Endocytosis
- Large molecules enter the cell through this process. The
cell membrane bends inward (invaginates), forming a vesicle
that contains the macromolecule to be transported.
- phagocytosis, pinocytosis, and receptor-mediated
endocytosis
• Phagocytosis “cell eating”
- A process wherein cells take in
large particles or solids through
the infolding of the cell membrane
to form endocytic vesicles.
• Pinocytosis “cell drinking”
- A process wherein cell takes in
fluids by the invagination of the cell
membrane that forms a vesicle or
vacuole.
• Receptor-mediated
endocytosis
- For specific molecules to
enter the cells, they must first
bind to specific receptors on the
plasma membrane.
Feeding Mechanisms in Animals
Ingestion

Digestion

Absorption

Elimination
Human Digestive System
Ingestion

•The initial phase of food processing, starts in the mouth or

oral cavity.
•mucin in saliva helps to soften the food
•salivary amylase, also begins the chemical digestion of
food.
•bolus (plural: boli)
 - peristalsis, rhythmic, wavelike contraction, which move food
along the gut.
- gastric glands:
1. parietal cells
2. chief cells
pepsin
pepsinogen
 •The partly digested food becomes
liquefied and, together with gastric
juice forms chyme, which passes in
small amounts into the duodenum

•The stomach is connected to the

small intestine through a muscular
valve called the pyloric sphincter, which controls the food that passes
into the small intestine.
• The small intestine is divided into
three:
1. duodenum
2. jejunum
3. ileum
• Further breakdown of food
happens in the small intestines
where the bile and enzymes they
produced continue the digestion
process.
Accessory Organs:

• Liver and pancreas, help the digestive process.

• The pancreas produces hormones responsible for controlling
the glucose level in the blood and releases bicarbonate that
neutralizes the acidity of the chyme.
• The liver aids in digestion by producing an alkaline,
greenish-yellow, which contains bile salts and bile pigments
called bile.
• It help in breaking up large fat particles into smaller ones.
• In the small intestine,
terminal digestion of
carbohydrates, lipids and
proteins occurs, as well
nutrients are absorbed by the
blood.
• Carbohydrates- simple
sugars
• Fats- fatty acids and glycerol
• Villi (singular: villus)
Assimilation

•When the cell have absorbed the nutrients, they will be

transported to provide fuel and essential raw materials that
the body needs.
• The simple sugars are converted to glycogen and stored
in the liver while some glucose is carried into the blood to
be distributed throughout the body.
•Fats, before they are used, are brought to the liver where
they are converted into forms that can be oxidized or
stored.
Elimination

• At the junction between the small intestine and the

ascending colon is a small sac, the caecum and the blindly
ending appendix.
• The main function of the large intestine is to absorb water
and mineral salts from undigested food material.
• Nutrients that are not absorbed in the large intestine form a
solid waste known as the feces.
• When the rectum contracts, the feces is expelled through an
opening called the anus.
Elimination

• The process of removing undigested matter from the body

is called egestion or defecation.