Hi! My name is Mr. cow and I'm going to lead you on a journey through the digestive system! First, as you see here, I enter the mouth. You sense the yummy food coming into yourmouth,so your saliva glands starts pumping out saliva,before the food even reaches your mouth. As you chew, the saliva mixes with me to create a soft lump of food called bolus.
The cow then travels down a long, skinny tube called the esophagus. The esophagus's muscular walls squeeze the cow down to the stomach, our next destination.
Once in the stomach, hormones tell the stomach walls to release acid that breaks down the bolus into a liquid called chyme. The hormones also alert the liver, gallbladder, and pancreas to start creating bile.
From there, I enter the small intestine. The liver sends bile to the gallbladder, which holds it until I arrive. Tiny projections called villi absorb my molecules and the leftover fiber, water, and dead cells enter the large intestine.
Then, I go through the large intestine, or the colon. The colon drains out most of the fluid through the intestinal walls. This leaves a soft mass called stool.
The large intestine deposits me in a small pouch where I am held until I leave the body through the anus. And this long journey through the digestive system, which takes about 30-40 hrs, finally ends.