Encyclopedia > Vomit

  Article Content

Vomit

Vomiting or regurgitation is the sudden expulsion of vomit (the contents of the stomach) through the mouth. It is the body's mechanism for expelling poisons, feeding the young, or staving off predators. It sometimes occurs as the result of drunkenness, and also when the body is tricked into thinking it is poisoned, as in motion sickness. It is often referred to as "throwing up" (a phrasal verb[?]).

The feeling that often precedes vomiting is called nausea.

Adult birds will regurgitate food to feed their young. The food can be either incompletely digested or partially predigested, depending on the species.

Some bird species may also use regurgitation as a form of defense, vomiting when wounded or molested. When an intruder or a predator comes near a fulmar on its nest, the bird vomits oil up to 3 feet[?] at the enemy.



All Wikipedia text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License

 
  Search Encyclopedia

Search over one million articles, find something about almost anything!
 
 
  
  Featured Article
Christiania

... name of Oslo, from 1624 to 1925. The Free State of Christiania - a partially self-governing neighborhood in the city of Copenhagen. This is a disambiguation page; that ...

 
 
 
This page was created in 23.5 ms