Why Ostriches Eat Lots of Rocks

From one to four to none at all, stomachs enjoy a stunning variety across all the creatures who have (or don't have) them. And with our stomachs all happily full of spooky month treats, we thought it was the perfect time to learn all about this weird, wobbly, wonderful organ.

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[This, That, or the Other: Stomachs ROCK]

Bird with over 1% of their total body weight of gastroliths

Aquatic animal helps control buoyancy by swallowing silt 

Animal eats its exoskeleton that stores calcium in stomach

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8342792/#bib0037

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/6549149_No_gastric_mill_in_sauropod_dinosaurs_New_evidence_from_analysis_of_gastrolith_mass_and_function_in_ostriches

https://bonndoc.ulb.uni-bonn.de/xmlui/handle/20.500.11811/2110

https://www.jstor.org/stable/4098635

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26818557/

[Trivia Question]

Mammal species without stomachs

https://www.livescience.com/41661-why-platypus-wont-regain-stomach.html

https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2013.2669

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/how-the-platypus-and-a-quarter-of-fishes-lost-their-stomachs

https://www.ucl.ac.uk/museums-static/obl4he/vertebratediversity/monotremes.html

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=A5Rzx7yeh7c

[Fact Off]

Ghost crabs use their stomach teeth (gastric mills) to growl

https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2019.1161

https://www.science.org/content/article/listen-ghost-crab-frighten-away-enemies-its-stomach-rumbles

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2019/sep/11/ghost-crabs-use-teeth-in-stomachs-to-growl-at-predators

Someone ate a shrew to study what human digestion does to rodent bones 

[Ask the Science Couch]

Borborygmus and the biology of stomach rumbles  

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-does-your-stomach-gro/

https://www.etymonline.com/word/borborygmus

https://www.nature.com/articles/nrgastro.2012.57

https://journals.physiology.org/doi/full/10.1152/ajpgi.00212.2015

Patreon bonus: Stomach and brain communication for hunger/satiety (or other things) 

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3174087/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK555906/

https://journals.physiology.org/doi/full/10.1152/ajpgi.00448.2003

https://www.livescience.com/health/food-diet/does-it-really-take-20-minutes-to-realize-youre-full

https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10.1086/693111

[Butt One More Thing]

Florida carpenter ants swallow their own formic acid to help protect their stomachs

https://elifesciences.org/articles/60287

https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/491275

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