4/24/2023

Animal Circulatory Systems

Function
• Series of tubes and pumps that transports circulatory fluid
throughout the body.

• Most animals have:

• circulatory fluid = “blood”
• tubes = blood vessels
• muscular pump = heart
• Exceptions include:
• Sponges, cnidarians (jelly fish)

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Three Types of Blood Vessels

• Arteries = carry blood away from heart
• Arteries narrow to become arterioles

• Veins = return blood to heart

• Venules enlarge to become veins

• Capillaries = Connect arteries to veins

• Capillary beds = networks of capillaries

Arteries: Built for high pressure pump

• Three tissue layers:
1. Connective tissue
2. Thick muscular walls (smooth muscle)
3. Endothelium

• Lumen - a hollow passageway through which blood

flows
• Narrow diameter in arteries
• Elasticity
• Elastic recoil helps maintain blood pressure even when
heart relaxes
• Pressure
• High relative to other vessels

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Veins: Built for low pressure flow

• Three tissue layers:
1. Connective tissue
2. Thin muscular walls (smooth muscle)
3. Endothelium

• Lumen – Wide diameter in veins

• Pressure
• Low relative to other vessels
• Maintained by
• “Muscle pump” - skeletal muscle contractions when we move
(squeezes blood through veins)
• One-way valves - allow blood to flow only toward heart

• Varicose Veins
• Caused by defective valves
• Blood accumulates within the veins, causing them to
distend, twist, and become visible on the surface of
the skin

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Capillaries: Built for exchange

• Tissue Layer
• Very thin walls!
• Lack 2 outer layers
• Only endothelium
• enhances exchange across capillary
• Function
• Diffusion: exchange materials between blood & cells
• Example: oxygen, carbon dioxide, nutrients, waste, water

Blood Flow Through Capillaries

• Blood flow in capillaries controlled by pre-capillary sphincters
• The main vessel through is called the vascular shunt.
• Supply varies as blood is needed
• After a meal, blood supply to digestive tract increases
• During strenuous exercise, blood is diverted from digestive tract to skeletal muscles
• Capillaries in brain, heart, kidneys & liver usually filled to capacity

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Exchange across capillary walls

Lymphatic
• Water & solutes flow out of capillaries to capillary
tissues due to blood pressure
• “bulk flow”

• Interstitial fluid flows back into capillaries

due to osmosis BP > OP BP < OP
Interstitial
• plasma proteins increase osmotic pressure (solute potential) in
capillary fluid

• About 85% of the fluid that leaves the blood at

the arterial end of a capillary bed reenters from
the interstitial fluid at the venous end, and the
remaining 15% is eventually returned to the
blood by the vessels of the lymphatic system.

Capillary
Arteriole Venule