Mammalian Digestion

The mammalian digestion tract begins at the oral cavity and terminates at the anus (Stevens 2008). The digestive process allows the

food an organism consumes to be converted into a usable form of energy and it also provides a mechanism by which the unusable

parts of the food may be removed. After moving through the oral cavity the food will enter the esophagus, where it will continue to

be broken down by the organism's saliva (Stevens 2008). From there it moves on to the stomach and its compartments – which I will

discuss in more detail on a different page – and then into the intestines before reaching the colon and eventually being expelled from the

anus. During its time in the stomach and intestines all of the energy the organism can derive from the food is extracted (Baldwin 1984).

This image used in compliance with the Wikimedia Commons free license.

Figure 1: This figure is a diagram of the entire human digestive system, color-coded and labeled for ease of comprehension.

Please email Brian McRae at Davidson College with any questions.

This website was created as a part of a class project in the Animal Physiology Class at Davidson College.