Mondo Knows Facts
Placental villi create a vast exchange surface
Finger-like projections bathe in maternal blood to trade oxygen and nutrients The placenta sends villi into blood-filled spaces in the uterus, keeping fetal and maternal blood separated by thin membranes. Oxygen, glucose and antibodies cross to the fetus while carbon dioxide and waste move the other way. By term its exchange area is estimated at over ten square metres. 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: placenta, pregnancy, exchange
Placental villi create a vast exchange surface: the short answers
- Where does this come from, and can I check it?
- Finger-like projections bathe in maternal blood to trade oxygen and nutrients. The figure is taken from CDC, 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.