How does suffocation kill an animal?

Question

I am talking about on the cellular level. Thanks for your reply (the more specific/detailed the better).

Answer 1

Without oxygen, cell respiration cannot occur to produce ATP. ATP is the chemical energy of cells, used in countless cellular processes. Without it, cells can't power the critical membrane ion pumps. As a result, coagulative necrosis (a particular type of cell death) occurs as follows:

The sodium-potassium pumps that regulate the fluid and salt balance of the cell shut down. This lets salt and fluid rush into the cell, causing it to swell. The deranged salt concentrations render the cell's proteins unable to function, and they coagulate, lending this process its name. At this point, cell death is irreversible.

Brain cells die most quickly from suffocation, after only minutes without oxygen. At that point, the animal is considered dead.

Answer 2

Suffocation, or asphyxiation, is the depletion of oxygen and increase of carbon dioxide in the blood stream. Red blood cells contain large molecules called hemoglobin, which are responsible for carrying oxygen to cells.

Essentially, your cells lose their supply of oxygen, and are unable to oxidize glucose. The adenosine di- and tri-phosphate processes that move energy around in cells shut down. Your brain is the first thing to succumb, and you lose consciousness. Then your heart stops, and you die.

Physical strangulation can cause asphyxiation, but so can many other things. Carbon monoxide and hydrogen cyanide kill by way of strongly attaching to hemoglobin, so no oxygen can get in.

Answer 3

Lack of oxygen = suffocation
So...
- No oxygen reaches the blood cells.
- Carbon dioxide concentrations in the blood increase as the muscles and organs work harder and harder to try to respire on the little oxygen remaining in the blood.
- The brain becomes the first organ to suffer, lack of oxygen in nerve cells means that oxidative phosphorylation cannot continue - hence there is a dramatic drop in ATP synthesis.
- When the nerve cells run out ATP they cannot function properly, and begin to shut down.
- The vital sub-conscious processes such as breathing become affected, as the nerve cell continues to shutdown, so does the muscles and organs.
- Eventually all vital life proccesses cease, and the animal dies following brain death.

Answer 4

It starves the animal of oxygen by squeezing and tightening the airways and no air goes to the lungs. No oxygen in the lungs means no oxygen for the cells. No oxygen for the cells means no aerobic respiration. The cells get no energy and they die. When your cells die, everything else falls apart.

Answer 5

The build up of carbon dioxide kills the cells, including brain cells and all important organs. Eventually(a few minutes), everything shuts down and the body gives up.

Answer 6

carbon dioxide is a waste produced and when u exhale u release the waste if u dont release it then i guess it is poison to your body

Answer 7

because suffocation means they cant breath, they lack oxygen that's why they can't breath and if they can't breath they will die..