Now imagine continuously decreasing the size of the animal. Concomitantly, the number of area-preserving branchings where vessels are large enough to support pulsatile waves decreases until a tipping point is reached where the network can support only nonpulsatile DC flow. At that stage even the major arteries become so small and constricted that they are unable to support pulsatile waves. In such vessels, waves become so overdamped due to the viscosity of blood that they can no longer propagate and the flow shifts to becoming entirely steady DC, just like the flow of water in the pipes of
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