Mondo Knows Facts
Tiny folds give the intestine an enormous surface
Villi and their microvilli multiply the absorbing area to roughly thirty square metres The small intestine lining is folded into finger-like villi, and each villus cell carries thousands of microvilli. Together with circular folds in the wall, this arrangement creates a vast surface for absorbing nutrients. Each villus holds a blood capillary and a lymphatic vessel to carry absorbed material away. It sits in Mondo's human body collection, one of 200 facts that each trace back to the reference below.
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Facts that can change over time are reviewed and updated. If something here looks wrong, Mondo would rather know than be confidently incorrect.
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Tags: intestine, villi, absorption
Tiny folds give the intestine an enormous surface: the short answers
- Where does this come from, and can I check it?
- Villi and their microvilli multiply the absorbing area to roughly thirty square metres. The figure is taken from NIDDK, which is linked in full on this page. Every fact on Mondo Knows names its source rather than repeating an unsourced claim.
- Is this really a human body fact?
- Yes. It sits on the Human Body shelf, one of 2,600 sourced facts grouped into space, animals, the human body, history, science and more. Category pages collect every fact in the same field.
- What else can I read about it?
- The links under the fact point to a quiz, game, puzzle or calculator on the same subject, and the shelf below shows related facts. The wording here is original, and quoted phrases are marked as quotations.