The Digestive System

The Digestive System is a series of hollow of organs that we use to break down and process nutrients and energy we need to function. It is pretty much the first step to How To Make An Animal.

The blastula, that little wad of cells that we used to be, turned into a little wad of cells with a tube running through it. That tube is your digestive system. Pretty much every animal has a digestive system of some kind but they are not all alike. Animal tracts are adapted to animals feeding behaviour and diet. For example a house fly eats mostly liquid or very finely granulated food. But first it must puke it’s digestive juices over it’s lunch before it sucks it up into it’s mouth. Most vertebrates put their food through one end of the tube, our digestive system processes it then it gets rid of the waste through the other end of the tube. The whole process is run by our autonomic nervous system, so we don’t have to think about it, until the last step when you’re in traffic and you’ve just had two cups of tea and a bran muffin. Among vertebrates, the digestive tract might be short or long or have organs that do different things, depending on what it’s feeding habits are

For example, dogs are mostly carnivores and also scavenger. They mostly eat meat but sometimes that meats been dead for a while, so the dogs digestive system has developed to take food in and then dump it onto somebodys lawn, all in about a period of six hours. Dogs have an extremely short digestive tract because if you’re in the habit of eating meat, you’d better be able to digest it fast. Cows on the other hand take a very long time to digest there food, about 80 hours because they have to process plants, mostly grass.

Now we’ll start talking about the human’s digestive system because you’re probably a human and you’ll be wanting to know how your body works. Like most animals, humans have a bunch of different acids and enzymes in our digestive system that break down food. The digestive system starts in the mouth. Saliva is produced by the salivary glands in your mouth which is the first step in breaking down your food. You then use your teeth to chew up the rest of the food which you then swallow using your tongue. Your food exits the mouth and goes down your throat or Esophagus. When the food gets close to the trachea, your breathing pipe, a flap closes over it so your food doesn’t go into your lungs. Choking is your body’s reaction when food ends up in your trachea. After, your food enters your stomach where acids and enzymes begin to break down and take in the protein. Your stomach turns the food into a soup-like liquid which you would have seen the last time you had a tummy bug. Next to the stomach is the liver. The liver produces a digestive juice called bile which is the acid that dissolves fat. You begin to vomit out bile when there is no more food in your stomach, when you have a tummy bug. The gallbladder stores bile between your meals, when there is no fat to dissolve. Meanwhile, the pancreas, a digestive organ, produces pancreatic juice, containing digestive enzymes that help digestion, pumps other acids into your stomach. Your food then goes down into the small intestine where it squeezes out the starches, protein and carbohydrates which your body will use for other things. The average male humans small intestine length is 6.9m.

Your food is then pushed into the large intestine which squeezes the mushy liquid into a lump. Next it passes through the rectum which is the end of the large intestine. The lump comes out of your anus or bum, hopefully landing in the toilet.

Now you know how your food is digested. Next time you're eating food or going to the toilet you will know how it happens.