Wolf's Small Intestine Research Paper

Wolf’s small intestine is similar to other mammals in structure and function. Except that wolf’s small intestine is shorter than other non-ruminants. There is a trend in digestive system lengths correlate to an animal’s diet (Strack and Linzey.) Carnivores like wolves have less complex and less variety of diet (Strack and Linzey.) Unlike humans, wolves have smaller pancreas, which mean less enzymes produced(Griffiths and Ruish.) Wolves need to eat digested food with enzymes or easily digested food to increase absorption. That is the reason why they sometime eat feces and digested contents of a dead animal. Wolf’s saliva do not contain enzymes to breakdown starch (Griffiths and Ruish.) Therefor they focus on water, protein, and fat absorption. Which lead to wolves have less digestive tract in length compared to omnivore and herbivore (Strack and Linzey.) …show more content…
It is shorter because they only focus on absorptions. Small intestine are divided into duodenum, jejunum, and ileum. It have kerckring folds to slow down passage of ingested food. Circular folds increase surface area. Which lead to increase in number of villus and enterocytes in . Allowing increase in absorption. In the small intestine, there are also crypts between each villus. Crypts are where stem cells located, it renews the enterocytes on the villi throughout the day. Small intestine performs peristalsis to push its contents along the digestive tract by rings of muscular contraction. It is constantly moving its digested food down to the