Why do we (and animals) need to drink water?
In: Biology
Complex chemistry needs a liquid base for the ingredients of life to mix & interact. The primitive common ancestor of all life originated in water, and all its descendants have relied on water ever since. We’re made mostly out of water—humans are about 60% H2O by weight. It fills all of our cells, forming the foundation of our biochemistry.
There’s something called osmosis, which basically means that our cells need a certain amount of water through their membranes to function before they shrivel up and die.
You can see this in dehydrated plants how they become limp, and hydrated plants are firm. But we need to drink water and not just absorb it.
All our cells have functions and organelles inside them, which float around in the cytoplasm. The organelles are sort of like our organs, which do things to keep us alive. And the cytoplasm is watery fluid that lets them move and function.
So tl;dr without water, our cells cannot function properly.
As the other commenters describe, we are mostly water.
The reason we need to take in new water instead of just continuously using the same water is, dissolving waste products in water and getting rid of them in the form of pee is one source of water loss, and evaporation from the skin, eyes, and mouth is another. If we didn’t drink water, we would lose water in this way, and wouldn’t have enough for our cellular chemistry to keep functioning.
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