Cloaca in the context of "Afrosoricida"

Feces (also faeces or fæces) are the solid or semi-solid remains of food that was not digested in the small intestine, and has been broken down by bacteria in the large intestine. Feces contain a relatively small amount of metabolic waste products such as bacterially-altered bilirubin and dead epithelial cells from the lining of the gut.

Feces are discharged through the anus or cloaca during defecation.

Sexual reproduction is a type of reproduction that involves a complex life cycle in which a gamete (haploid reproductive cells, such as a sperm or egg cell) with a single set of chromosomes combines with another gamete to produce a zygote that develops into an organism composed of cells with two sets of chromosomes (diploid). This is typical in animals, though the number of chromosome sets and how that number changes in sexual reproduction varies, especially among plants, fungi, and other eukaryotes.

In placental mammals, sperm cells exit the penis through the male urethra and enter the vagina during copulation, while egg cells enter the uterus through the oviduct. Other vertebrates of both sexes possess a cloaca for the release of sperm or egg cells.

Enteral respiration, also referred to as cloacal respiration or intestinal respiration, is a form of respiration in which gas exchange occurs across the epithelia of the enteral system, usually in the caudal cavity (cloaca). This is used in various species as an alternative respiration mechanism in hypoxic environments as a means to supplement blood oxygen.

Urine, excreted by the kidneys, is a liquid containing excess water and water-soluble nitrogen-rich by-products of metabolism including urea, uric acid, and creatinine, which must be cleared from the bloodstream. Urinalysis detects these nitrogenous wastes in mammals.

In placental mammals, urine travels from the kidneys via the ureters to the bladder and exits the urethra through the penis or vulva during urination. Other vertebrates excrete urine through the cloaca.

Defecation (or defaecation) follows digestion and is the necessary biological process by which organisms eliminate a solid, semisolid, or liquid waste material known as feces (or faeces) from the digestive tract via the anus or cloaca. The act has a variety of names, ranging from the technical (e.g. bowel movement), to the common (like pooping or crapping), to the obscene (shitting), to the euphemistic ("doing number two", "dropping a deuce" or "taking a dump"), to the juvenile ("going poo-poo" or "making doo-doo"). The topic, usually avoided in polite company, forms the basis of scatological humor.

Humans expel feces with a frequency varying from a few times daily to a few times weekly. Waves of muscular contraction (known as peristalsis) in the walls of the colon move fecal matter through the digestive tract towards the rectum. Flatus may also be expulsed. Undigested food may also be expelled within the feces, in a process called egestion. When birds defecate, they also expel urine and urates in the same mass, whereas other animals may also simultaneously urinate during defecation, but the processes are spatially separated. Defecation may also accompany childbirth and death. Babies defecate a unique substance called meconium prior to eating external foods.

Urination is the release of urine from the bladder through the urethra in placental mammals, or through the cloaca in other vertebrates. It is the urinary system's form of excretion. It is also known medically as micturition, voiding, uresis, or, rarely, emiction, and known colloquially by various names including peeing, weeing, pissing, and euphemistically number one. The process of urination is under voluntary control in healthy humans and other animals, but may occur as a reflex in infants, some elderly individuals, and those with neurological injury. It is normal for adult humans to urinate up to seven times during the day.

In some animals, in addition to expelling waste material, urination can mark territory or express submissiveness. Physiologically, urination involves coordination between the central, autonomic, and somatic nervous systems. Brain centres that regulate urination include the pontine micturition center, periaqueductal gray, and the cerebral cortex.

The kidneys are a pair of organs of the excretory system in vertebrates, which maintain the balance of water and electrolytes in the body (osmoregulation), filter the blood, remove metabolic waste products, and, in many vertebrates, also produce hormones (in particular, renin) and maintain blood pressure. In healthy vertebrates, the kidneys maintain homeostasis of extracellular fluid in the body. When the blood is being filtered, the kidneys form urine, which consists of water and excess or unnecessary substances, the urine is then excreted from the body through other organs, which in vertebrates, depending on the species, may include the ureter, urinary bladder, cloaca, and urethra.

All vertebrates have kidneys. The kidneys are the main organ that allows species to adapt to different environments, including fresh and salt water, terrestrial life and desert climate. Depending on the environment in which animals have evolved, the functions and structure of the kidneys may differ. Also, between classes of animals, the kidneys differ in shape and anatomical location. In mammals, they are usually bean-shaped. Evolutionarily, the kidneys first appeared in fish as a result of the independent evolution of the renal glomeruli and tubules, which eventually united into a single functional unit. In some invertebrates, the nephridia are analogous to the kidneys but nephridia are not kidneys. The metanephridia, together with the vascular filtration site and coelom, are functionally identical to the ancestral primitive kidneys of vertebrates.

Deuterostomes (from Greek: lit. 'second mouth') are bilaterian animals of the superphylum Deuterostomia (/ˌdjuːtərəˈstoʊmi.ə/), typically characterized by their anus forming before the mouth during embryonic development. Deuterostomia comprises three phyla: Chordata, Echinodermata, Hemichordata, and the extinct clade Cambroernida.

In deuterostomes, the developing embryo's first opening (the blastopore) becomes the anus and cloaca, while the mouth is formed at a different site later on. This was initially the group's distinguishing characteristic, but deuterostomy has since been discovered among protostomes as well. The deuterostomes are also known as enterocoelomates, because their coelom develops through pouching of the gut, enterocoely.