Digestion in Humans
Digestion is the process of breaking down food to obtain glucose, an important energy resource, for our bodies. We must digest because necessary nutrients in food needs to be small enough for a cell to take in. After food is chewed and sent to the stomach, the clump of food called a bolus follows the digestive tract into the small intestine. There, nutrients are absorbed and the nutrients diffuse into your blood. Nutrients are transported by your blood and your cells. Nutrients diffuse from the where nutrients are highly concentrated (blood) into where nutrients are low concentrated (cell). The last destination for these nutrients, mostly glucose, are in the cell, and more specifically, the mitochondria. In the mitochondria, cellular respiration, the process in which the chemical energy stored in glucose is used to make ATP, occurs. ATP consists of three phosphate groups that contain much potential energy. Therefore, when one group breaks apart from the chain, it releases energy for your cell, who help function your body.
Digestion in White Spotted Jellyfishes
White spotted jellies mostly feed on microscopic zooplankton, which there is plenty of in the ocean [1]. Zooplankton are essential to the food chain, and because white spotted jellies travel in swarms, they become an invasive species because they consume much of the plankton. They also feed on shrimp and fish eggs [2]. White spotted jellies are filter feeders, aquatic animals that eat small organisms or particles in the water. Using their tentacles, they create a web to catch small food particles and strain it, and then slowly turn their tentacles in a corkscrew motion to bring to their mouths [3]. In their stomachs, digestive enzymes break down the food. Cells within the stomach absorb the nutrients from the food. The waste is then sent out of the body through the mouth, which also performs as an anus.