Digestive system

MAIN CHARACTERISTICS

The digestive system is a big group of organs that makes the digestion. It is in charge of absorbing nutrients that give us energy. The process can take hours or days!

The digestive system has several stages and begins to work when you start eating. Each stage is important because prepares the food and the nutrients for the next one.

MAIN PARTS

- Mouth: It is in charge of crushing the food.

- Pharynx: It is a tube that joins the mouth and the esophagus.

- Esophagus: It is a muscular tube that joins the pharynx and the stomach.

- Stomach: It is a muscular saclike organ that digests food.

- Liver: It is a gland that storages nutrients and produces bile to break down fat.

- Pancreas: It is the responsible of making acids for the stomach.

- Small intestine: Most digestion is made in this tube. It is about 6 meters long.

- Large intestine: The nutrients that the body doesn’t need are turned into faeces here.

- Rectum: It is a bag where faeces are stored and then expelled from the body through the anus.

- Anus: It is the part used to get rid of the faeces.

FUNCTION

The function of the digestive system is to get nutrients and energy for the body and discard the unnecessary parts of the food in the form of faeces.

RELATIONSHIP

The nutrients that absorbs the digestive system are passed to the circulatory system because the blood transforms nutrients into the energy that needs the body.

FUN FACTS

- Food travels down through the esophagus to the stomach taking about 7 seconds to get there.

- The adult stomach can expand to hold up to 1.5 litres of food when it is full.

- Some animals such as cows have stomachs with multiple compartments. Others like seahorses don’t have stomach.

- Our salivary glands produce around 1.5 litres of saliva each day.