Good morning everyone, I'm Mimi Faatz, and this is Hello from the Van. We have recently been plagued by the flu at the Fotz house and have gone through our fair share of hospital emesis bags. And that brings us to today's topic. Which animals can throw up and which ones can't, and why? For the queasy amongst us, myself included, I will try to do this in the most sterile way possible so that it's educational but not nauseating. I will be using the words emesis or eject, because that's all that I can handle right now. So which animals can eject their food or things that they eat and which animals cannot? Emesis or ejecting can be seen throughout many different species of animals all throughout the animal kingdom. But for some species, it's just not a thing that they can do. Take, for example, rodents. We're talking rats, mice, squirrels, beavers, even guinea pigs. You see, they can't actually expel things. The reason is because their brain literally lacks the neural circuits that it needs to be able to perform that function. In fact, their stomach or their diaphragm doesn't even have the muscles capable or needed to perform that. So how do they handle it when they take in toxic substances? One of the things that they have been known to do or seen to do in nature is if they have access to something like clay, they will try to eat the clay to then neutralize the toxin that they've taken in. A lot of the time, they'll take in the toxin, and if there's not something powerful enough to neutralize it around, it will ultimately lead to their demise. If we swing to the other side of the pendulum and go large animals, what about those large animals? Can they also expel contents? You all know I love a quiz game, so I'm going to give you three animals, and you tell me whether or not you think that they can perform emesis. The first, a giraffe. Yes or no on the emesis front. I'll give you five seconds. Yes, a giraffe, much like a cow, has four chambered stomachs, it chews on a cud, and while it's not common for a giraffe to perform emesis on the regular, it is something that they can do. Next up, we have whales. Do you think that a whale can perform emesis? I'll give you five seconds. Yes, a whale can. In fact, whale emesis is very, very expensive. I found out that sperm whale emesis is called ambergris and is worth millions of dollars. No, I'm not punking you right now. This is actually a thing. Ambergris or amber grease is a waxy, flammable substance produced in the intestines of sperm whales, often called floating gold, due to its high value in the perfume industry as a fixative, meaning it makes the other scents that are in the perfume last longer. Ranging in color from gray to black, it matures at sea to develop a unique, musky, sweet, earthy scent. Historically used in food, no, I'm not joking, historically used in food, medicine, and incense, it is now primarily used in luxury perfumery, identified by its lightweight, waxy texture, and distinct aroma. Companies such as Dior, Hermes, and Louis Vuitton use it in their luxury line. It's out of my tax bracket, so not something that I need to worry about, clearly. If you're curious about the smell, after a lot of research, Amber Gree is routinely described as a warm, beachy, salty smell. I'm not quite sure what that's supposed to be, but that's the common theme in all of these perfumes that I found. Warm, beachy, salty smell. Whatever that means to you, apparently. Let's move on to our third and final animal, the horse. Can a horse expel its stomach contents? I'll give you five seconds. The answer is no. No, a horse cannot throw up. Horses have a very unique and highly specialized digestive system, and it's designed for constant grazing. It's a one-way system. What goes in must stay in. Us humans have a two-way system. What goes in can sometimes come out the way it came. Horses? Not so much. This can make it especially dangerous if they choke on their food, or if they have other problems such as colic. It can cause gas or things to build up in their stomach that can ultimately lead again to their demise. So before you feed a horse, make sure that you have talked to that horse's owner or know what to feed that horse. Stray things or the wrong things fed to a horse can be deadly. So far in our Emesis episode, we have talked about one-way systems and two-way systems. Humans, we have two-way systems. What goes in can come out again the way it came. We've talked about that. We also have the one-way system that applies to things like horses and rodents, but there's another type. Now I'm not quite sure what to call it, but in the science community they call it a full gastric aversion. There's not really a colloquial term for it. Basically, they purge their entire stomach out through their mouth, turn it inside out, clean it with their hands, and then put it back in their stomach. It's the ultimate turn it off and turn it back on again. Reset of the animal kingdom. As far as animal adaptations go, this one actually makes a lot of sense to me. If you think about where frogs live and how quickly they need to be able to eat and catch their prey, it makes sense that the frog then has a reset mechanism for its digestive system. Now, you're probably wondering, but why? Can't they just make sure that they're eating the right thing? Well, sometimes the frog's eyes can be bigger than its stomach, quite literally. A frog can expel its stomach for reasons like eating something that's noxious or poisonous, or simply too large for its stomach to digest. And when you're eating hundreds of bugs a day, you don't know which one is the noxious or poisonous one, so it's best just to start all over again. And with that, we have reached the end of our emesis episode. And I don't know about you, but even after going through the flu as an entire family, I sure am glad that us humans own a two-way system rather than a one-way system. It sure does solve a lot of problems. And with that, I'm Mimi Faatz, and this has been a rather um educational episode of Hello from the Van. And now to cite our rather disgusting sources. The first, the BBC Science Focus magazine, article, The Bizarre and Pretty Gross Science of Whale Vomit by Alice Liscombe Southwell, published February 23rd, 2021, National Geographic.com, Animals, Mammals, Facts on Giraffes, Central Lake's Equine Article Why Horses Cannot Vomit, published August 31, 2021, How Stuffworks.com, Frogs Cannot Vomit So They Eject Their Entire Stomachs, published January 15th, 2019. And finally, Forest Preserve District of Will County, Nature Curiosity article, Why Don't Squirrels Throw Up, published April 23rd, 2019.