Eli5 How does food and liquids remain inside the stomach and not “leak out of your mouth” whilst being in space?

Question

Eli5 How does food and liquids remain inside the stomach and not “leak out of your mouth” whilst being in space?

In: 82

Answer 1

All good answers and just reaffirming this is not a dumb question, humans and other mammals have a series of “valves” and muscles that keep pushing the food actively from the mouth to the butt.

Birds, for example, don’t. They need gravity to swallow and do the work. Hence why we sent monkeys, apes, and dogs into space to test early space ships and not smaller, easier, or cheaper animals.