• Question: how deos your intestines work

    Asked by botter7r2 to Amy, Drew, Julia, Kimberley, Sara on 15 Jun 2011.
    • Photo: Julia Griffen

      Julia Griffen answered on 14 Jun 2011:

      Your intestines are there for digestion and absorbsion of the food that we eat.

      Within our intestines there are millions of bacteria and enzymes that act to break down the food that we eat into smaller molecules which out body can absorb. Our Small intestine have a huge surface area, due to the villi, basically lots of little fingers like a towel to increase surface area.

      The small intestine absorbs all the nutrients and the large intestine absorbs all the water to concentrate down the waste and the undigestables.!

      Anything we cant digest passes through…. Hope that makes sense Botter.. Good Q!

    • Photo: Amy MacQueen

      Amy MacQueen answered on 15 Jun 2011:

      Hey! Intestines work by a process called peristalsis – which is contraction of the smooth muscle causing our food to be pushed through! As it goes there are tiny little projections called villi which have only a single cell layer between the blood and the inner intestine allowing all the nutrients we need to be absorbed from our food. Most of the water is also reabsorbed and the waste gets dumped out the other end! (like Julia said) …and thats pretty much it! 🙂

    • Photo: Sara Imari Walker

      Sara Imari Walker answered on 15 Jun 2011:

      Hi botter! Great question. I like the bio questions you have been asking – I totally just learned something new from Julia and Amy’s responses!!

    • Photo: Kimberley Bryon

      Kimberley Bryon answered on 15 Jun 2011:

      I think that Amy and Julia have covered this really well 🙂

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