Peeing in 21 seconds

Do you know how long it takes you to empty your bladder? How about your cat, dog or horse? Do you reckon that the time will be more or less for the elephants at the zoo? Would it surprise you to learn that there is absolutely no difference?

It turns out that it takes 21 seconds for a healthy mammal – of any species – to empty a full bladder. As you might expect, an elephant has a much larger bladder than a mouse, but the mechanism for emptying it compensates so that the peeing time is exactly the same.

This amazing discovery was made by Patricia Yang, a mechanical engineer based at the Georgia Institute of Technology, and the research earned her an “Ig Nobel Prize” – this being an award given to scientists whose work is either absurd or bizarre. In this case, the “bizarre” label seems to be more appropriate, as it conjures up a vision of the lady in question going round her local zoo armed with a stopwatch and waiting for various animals to go to the loo.

Patricia Yang did not stop there. She also worked out that all animals that poop in cylindrical form - including humans – take twelve seconds to do so. Personally, it always takes me a lot longer because I take the newspaper with me to the smallest room!

© John Welford

Animals make elements

The Ig Nobel prizes are awarded every year to scientists and others whose work is so bizarre or downright absurd that it deserves to be brought to public attention. The awards are made at Harvard University, and it is surprising just how many recipients actually turn up to be generally mocked for their efforts.

One such prize was awarded (in his absence) in 1993 to Louis Kervran, who had come up with the theory that living creatures could perform nuclear fission and fusion within their own bodies. This would explain, for example, how chickens produce the calcium needed to make eggshells – they combine atoms of potassium and hydrogen, apparently.

Kervran’s theory was based on atomic numbers. Every element has its own number, which is the number of protons in the nucleus of its atoms. Simple mathematics shows how, for example, a sodium atom (number 11) combines with an oxygen atom (number 8) to produce an atom of potassium (number 19). All such combinations, according to him, must involve either oxygen or hydrogen (number 1). Likewise, atoms can split to form new atoms that are their own number minus either 1 or 8.

Louis Kervran was convinced that these processes are going on all the time, but “official” science had always made the mistake of looking for chemical processes in “dead” matter and not living organisms. If only they had looked at animals they would have seen these transformations taking place all the time.

In his book “Biological Transformations”, Louis Kervran failed to explain exactly how this happens. According to him, it just does.

An Ig Nobel prize was never more fully deserved!

© John Welford