Kidney Kidney The kidneys are two bean-shaped organs found in vertebrates. They are located on the left and right in the retroperitoneal space, and in adult humans are about in length. They receive blood from the paired renal arteries; blood exits into the paired renal veins. Each kidney is attached to a ureter, a tube that carries excreted urine to the bladder. The nephron is the structural and functional unit of the kidney. Each adult kidney contains around 1 million nephrons. The nephron utilizes four processes to alter the blood plasma which flows to it: filtration, reabsorption, secretion, and excretion. The
Bladder Festival Bladder Festival The Bladder Festival or Bladder Feast ("Nakaciuq" "something done with bladders" or "Nakaciuryaraq" "the process of doing something with bladders" in Yup'ik), is an important annual seal hunting harvest renewal ceremony and celebration held each year to honor and appease the souls of seals taken in the hunt during the past season which occurred at the winter solstice by the Yup'ik of western and southwestern Alaska. On the Yup'ik Eskimo shamanism, while the hunter kills the body of the animal, he does not kill the "yua" (spirit or soul), which resides in the animal's bladder ("nakacuk" in Yup'ik)