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Animals, and perhaps all life, would not exist. We carry the ocean around with us in our circulatory system, from a long ago bootstrap in which some creature n
by gumby 3y ago
Animals, and perhaps all life, would not exist. We carry the ocean around with us in our circulatory system, from a long ago bootstrap in which some creature needed to drag part of its "home" with it when it left home.
Why? Well fresh water is pretty boring. Seawater, with all those polar ions in it, enables and facilitates all sorts of interesting (i.e. useful) chemistry.
One of the reasons we can't drink seawater is that our body needs to maintain homeostasis on the blood so the chemistry continues to work properly. If you drink a lot of seawater the kidneys can't excrete the salt fast enough. For that matter, if you drink too much fresh water the opposite happens and you die too.
- iancmceachern 3y agoExactly. We die if we don't get enough salt. There are all sorts of mechanisms in our body that rely on it. As an engineer, I like to think it's as simple as electricity not being nearly as conductive through pure water, various osmosis processes like happens in dialysis, etc.
- eru 3y agoIf the ocean's hadn't been salty, we would likely have biochemistry that doesn't rely on salt so much.. instead of just keeling over.
- iancmceachern 3y agoLife finds a way