• Question: Are there any animals who use the exact same organs as humans?

    Asked by anon-202762 to Rebecca, Matthew, Gareth on 15 Mar 2019.
    • Photo: Matthew Smith

      Matthew Smith answered on 15 Mar 2019:

      There are, at least in terms of the job they do. For example, the heart of a human and a cow are very similar. They both act to pump blood around the body. The difference in this case tends to come in the size of the heart. The cow heart is bigger as it is a larger animal and the blood needs to travel further.
      There are differences in organs too, though. In cows for example, they have four stomachs (we only have 1). They need the extra stomachs so they can break down grass which is a big part of their diet. If you move further away from animals that are like humans (we call this group mammals). Then you find more differences. For example, a fish doesn’t have lungs like we do. To get oxygen in the body and carbon dioxide out (carbon dioxide is a product made by breathing and we don’t want to keep lots in our body), fish have an organ called a gill. The gill acts like a sieve and passes the water in the sea/lake etc. over its blood to get oxygen into the body.

      There are loads of really cool differences out there. The natural world is amazing!

    • Photo: Rebecca Gosling

      Rebecca Gosling answered on 15 Mar 2019:

      Yes a lot of animals have the same organs as us with some little difference. Especially mammals like cows and dogs and pigs and monkeys. Soem thins will be different like cows have 4 stomachs! This is partly becuase it has to break down tough things that it eats like the grass and hay. All animals have adapted slightly based on what they need! It is pretty clever really!

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