Nutrient Transport in Animals
Describe how nutrients and water are transported within animals, including the role of the circulatory system in delivering nutrients from digestion
What a learner can do afterwards
- Describe how nutrients from digested food pass through the wall of the small intestine into the blood
- Explain that blood transports dissolved nutrients and water to all parts of the body
- Connect the digestive system and circulatory system as working together to deliver nourishment
The lesson
You already know your small intestine breaks food into tiny pieces, and your circulatory system pumps blood everywhere. Now let's connect them. Once food is broken into nutrients small enough, those nutrients slip right through the thin wall of the small intestine and enter your blood.
Think about the sandwich you ate at lunch. The bread breaks down into tiny sugar pieces inside your small intestine. Those tiny pieces pass through the intestine wall into blood vessels right next to it. From there, your blood carries them anywhere your body needs energy, like your leg muscles when you run.
The digestive system breaks food apart, but it cannot deliver anything on its own. Blood is the only way nutrients travel from your gut to the rest of your body.
Digested nutrients cross into the blood at the small intestine, and blood carries them to every part of your body.
Watch it
Where it sits
This opens up
Nothing builds on it yet.
Where this leads
Jobs that lean on this skill. Follow one to see everything it is built on.
8 questions wait behind this lesson, each with its answer explained. Every answer feeds the sky: stars light as they are learned, and dim when it is time to come back.