Why do animals store energy in carbohydrates?

Question

How come animals can store energy in carbohydrates but not in lipids

Answer 1

Please let me set them all straight.

1) The body uses ATP as an instant form of energy that is universally usable for thousands of reactions. We do not store ATP in any single organelle.

2) Carbohydrates are a quick source of energy that mainly comes from our diet. But we do store them.

3) We do not store it as glucagon (which can be thought of as the opposite of insulin). We store it as glycogen.

Glycogen is stored in our muscles (for only our muscles) and mainly in our liver (stored for use anywhere in our body). Most of the stored glycogen in our liver is used up in our overnight fast. When our blood glucose runs low our liver chops up the glycogen into individual sugar molecules and sends it into our blood stream. Our brain cannot used fats and only a little protein for energy. It almost entirely depends on sugars, which our stored glycogen is quite good at providing.

Actually, animals can and usually choose to store energy as lipids (aka fats) because they store the high amount of calories in the least amount of space and weight.

Answer 2

In extreme cases all forms of tissue will be converted to burn before the organism dies of starvation.

There is a biochemical pathway reason why it is easier to use carbs to create the energy to make the ADP into ATP. The next easiest is the lipid category. Most difficult are the proteins, which is a good thing because that's mainly what we are made of & what holds us together!

;-)

Answer 3

Carbohydrates and lipids are very similar in chemical compilation. Human bodies use carbohydrates first as energy, and if they are not used in time they are then stored as lipids. I don't know if this helps tho. From what i remember last year…

Answer 4

Energy is never stored in the form of carbohydrates in our body. But carbohydrates contain or give energy. Energy is stored in our body in the form of ATP (adenosine Tri-phosphate) molecules. That was a good question

Answer 5

animals store energy in the form of glucogon. because it is more moblie.