Submitted by Easy-Care-7463 t3_11icot4 in askscience
CrazyisNSFW t1_jaxz3dw wrote
Reply to comment by Apotropaic_Sphinx in Where does nitrogen in urine come from? by Easy-Care-7463
And urea requires less water for excretion, something important when you're living on land. Although urea requires more energy, it's excretion is safer and conserves water.
Also, around 10% of kidney nitrogen excretion is in the form of ammonia (in normal conditions)
Further read: Urea excretion in humans
Apotropaic_Sphinx t1_jay0ge6 wrote
You are absolutely right. I wanted to touch on that but didn't want to get too wordy. Plus other land animals (like birds) have a different solutions for the toxic Ammonia problem.
This is one of those things that can get super complicated the further down you get into the minutia. OP's question was fairly simple so it's basically food+metabolism+liver=Nitrogen in urine.
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