Seabirds and Salt Water

We observe seagulls around lakes, rivers, bays (no jokes about bay gulls, please), and so on. For some reason, they like to hang around our grocery store parking areas that are a long way from water. They also live up to their name, living around the sea. Did you know they can drink sea water? 

Seagulls Over the Waves, Ohara Koson, 1915

Those of us who live in areas where we can get drinking water out of a faucet or in bottles at the grocery store where the seagulls hang out may take our plentiful supply for granted. In fact, most of the water on Earth is salty. (Sure do hope they make progress on that graphene water purification study.) Several varieties of seabirds don't mind, since our Creator provided them with salt glands — and some fresh water-drinking birds can adapt to drinking salt water!

On Day Five of Creation Week, God created the birds and all creatures that live in the water. While some of these creatures live only in freshwater and others live only in saltwater, some creatures, including many birds, are able to live (and drink) in both freshwater and marine environments. Since about 97% of the earth’s water is saltwater, the ability to drink seawater presents a big advantage, but also a big challenge.

Seawater has about three times more salt than is found in the blood and other body fluids of most land-dwelling vertebrates. If any of these creatures are to survive drinking seawater, they must somehow rid themselves of excess salt.

You can read the rest of this short article by clicking on "Salt Removal On Demand".