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Red Fox Research Paper

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The Red Fox is a carnivore, implying that it consumes animal matter that is composed of cells, particularly because animals only have a cell membrane and not a cell wall, thus, their contents are more readily usable and digestion is made easier. Animal matter is low in fibre, high in protein and generally has a higher energy content than plants. The muscles, skin and internal organs of their prey provide the protein and fat in the diet and the cartilage and bones that are consumed provide a small amount of fibre. The diet of a carnivore has a small amount of fat and a tiny amount of carbohydrates associated with their diet.

The gut of a Red Fox is relatively short and unspecialized and protein and fat are deemed easy to digest, as opposed …show more content…

At the opening of the digestive tract in a Red Fox, the food enters the mouth where mechanical digestion, which includes the chewing, takes place. The chemical digestion with digestive enzymes discovered in the salivary gland also occurs. Foxes have sharp canines that are conical in shape which are suited to tear apart their food because they eat a lot of meat that can be very tough. The molars of a Red Fox have deep cusps that enable the animal to briefly chew the meat, which increases the surface area before they proceed to swallowing it. Subsequently, the esophagus transports the food down into the stomach of the fox where most of the digestion occurs including both mechanical and chemical digestion. In the stomach, gastrin is released when distension of the stomach occurs due to …show more content…

The gastrin that is now released stimulates parietal cells to produce Hydrochloric Acid (HCL). This assists the Red Fox so that no bacterium grows in the stomach as the HCL maintains the stomach at a low Ph. level. The HCL that has now formed also initiates the degradation process, which converts pepsinogen that gets released from chief cells, to the active form of an enzyme – pepsin. Protein that is obtained from what the Red Fox eats is denatured by pepsin and thus, it begins to get digested by breaking down into polypeptides. The protein breakdown later takes place in the duodenum. Any mucus that has been secreted in the stomach assists in the protection of the stomach from HCL, which is very acidic. Consequently, polypeptides are further broken down in the duodenum by the pancreatic proteases, which are involved in the trypsinogen cascade where trypsinogen is then secreted as an active form of trypsin, proceeding to enter the lumen. In the lumen, the trypsinogen reacts with the enzyme enterokinase, converting the trypsinohem into the active trypsin. The trypsin proceeds to convert procarboxypeptidase and chymotrpsinogen

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