{"version": "1.0", "type": "rich", "title": "\u201cX bodily fluid is just filtered blood!\u201d buddy I hate to break it to you but ALL of the fluids in your body are filtered blood....", "author_name": "kontextmaschine", "author_url": "https://kontextmaschine.com", "provider_name": "kontextmaschine", "provider_url": "https://kontextmaschine.com", "url": "https://kontextmaschine.com/post/673689800551858176/", "html": "
\u201cX bodily fluid is just filtered blood!\u201d buddy I hate to break it to you but ALL of the fluids in your body are filtered blood. Your circulatory system is how water gets around your body. It all comes out of the blood (or lymph, which is just filtered blood).
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\u201cOkay but why is it always so chemically roundabout and unnecessarily complicated\u201d well buddy, that\u2019s because your blood is imitation seawater. See? It\u2019s very simple.
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Blood is what now?
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It\u2019s imitation seawater what part is confusing
Buddy if anything is living in your blood (except for more parts of you) in detectable amounts then you have a serious microbial infection and need to go to the hospital.
Humans are seawater wastelands kept sterile of all but human cells, with microbial mats coating their surfaces.
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Thank you that\u2019s\u2026very disturbing
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It\u2019s not my fault you\u2019re human.
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Ok but \u201cIt\u2019s not my fault you\u2019re human.\u201d Is the best comeback ever.
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You can use it against anyone except children that you biologically helped to create.
Picture this: you are a Thing That Lives In The Ocean. Some kind of small multicellular animal a long time ago, before proper circulatory systems existed. \u201cWow,\u201d you think, metaphorically, \u201cit sure is difficult to diffuse chemicals across my whole body. Kinda puts a hard limit on the size and distance of what specialised organs I can have. Good thing I have all this water around me that\u2019s the same salinity as my cells (they have to be that way so I don\u2019t explode or shrivel up) so I can diffuse and filter chemicals with that.\u201d
\u201cWait a minute,\u201d you say a couple of generations later, because you\u2019re not actually a small animal but an evolutionary process personified and simplified to the point of dangerous inaccuracy for the purposes of a Tumblr post, \u201cinstead of losing all these important chemicals to the water around me, how about I put it in tubes? I can keep MY water separate from the rest of the world\u2019s water! Anything I want to keep goes in my water! Anything I don\u2019t, I dump back into the outside water! I\u2019m a genius! An unthinking natural trial-and-error process that\u2019s a GENIUS!\u201d
\u201cWow,\u201d you think a great many generations later, \u201cbeing able to have such control over such high concentrations of important chemicals is so great. Look how big I\u2019m getting. I even have a special pump to move my seawater around, and these cool filter systems to keep the chemicals in it right, and that control and chemical concentration has let me grow so many energy-intensive, highly specialised organs! Being big is so hard. I need special cells just to carry my oxygen around now, to make sure my enormous, constantly-operating body has enough of it.\u201d
At this point you are embodying a fish, and eventually, fish start straying into water with different pressures and salinity levels. (I mean, they do that since befor ehty\u2019er fish, but\u2026 look, I\u2019m trying to keep things simple here.) \u201cWhat the FUCK,\u201d you think. \u201cMy inside water is at a different salinity and pressure to the outside water?? How am I supposed to deal with that? I can\u2019t have freshwater inside my seawater tubes! My cells have a set salinity and they would explode! I need to start beefing up my regulatory and filter systems so that my inside seawater STAYS SEAWATER OF THE CORRECT SALINITY even if the outside water is different! Fortunately, adding salt to my seawater is a lot easier than removing it, and I want to be saltier than this weird outside water.\u201d At this point you beef up your liver and urinary systems to compensate for different salinities. (Note: the majority of fish, freshwater and saltwater, have a fairly narrow band of salinities they can live in. Every fish doesn\u2019t get to deal with every level of salinity; they are evolved to regulate within specific bands.)
You also, at some point, go out on land. This is new and weird because you have to carry all of your water inside. \u201cIt\u2019s a good thing I turned myself into a giant bag of seawater,\u201d you think. \u201cIf I wasn\u2019t carrying my seawater inside, how would I transport all these important chemicals between my organs and the environment?\u201d As you specialise to live entirely outside of the water, you realise (once again) that it\u2019s a lot easier to add salt to water than to remove it in great quantities. Drinking seawater in large amounts becomes toxic; your body isn\u2019t specialised for removing that amount of salt. Instead, you drink freshwater, and add salts to that. The majority of your organs are, at this point, specialised for moving your seawater around, protecting it, adding stuff to it, or taking stuff out. You have turned yourself into an intelligent bag for carrying and regulating a small amount of imitation seawater, and its salinity (and your commitment to maintaining that salinity) is based entirely on the seawater that some early animals started to build tubes around a long time ago.
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