My Amazing Body 3-minute video · ages 4-8 · free coloring page
Why does my tummy growl?
The room is very quiet. Then, all of a sudden: grrrr! Your tummy growls, and everybody can hear it. Why does your tummy growl?
3 min
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Free coloring page
The scene from the video as a coloring page, plus the three-sentence answer, the experiment, and a QR code back to this page. One sheet, US Letter, black and white.
The answer in three parts
Why?
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Inside you there is a long, soft tube, and its walls are muscles.
Everything you eat and drink travels along it. The muscles squeeze, one part after another, and push everything along. It is like squeezing toothpaste out of a tube.
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In there are liquid and bubbles of gas.
Most of the gas is air you swallowed while you were eating and talking. When the muscles squeeze liquid and gas along together, it sloshes and gurgles. That is the growl! It is like the glug, glug sound when you pour water out of a bottle.
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An empty tummy growls the loudest.
When your tummy is full, the food soaks up the sound, like a pillow over a noisy toy. When it is empty, there is nothing to soak up the sound, so the growl gets nice and loud.
For grown-ups: A while after a meal, the muscles do big, slow squeezes that sweep the leftover bits along, like a broom cleaning the floor, and that sweeping makes noise too. Tummy sounds are perfectly normal; everybody's tummy makes them, all day long.
A tiny experiment
Try it!
Count the gurgles
You need: someone in your family who says yes
- Ask someone in your family if you can put your ear on their tummy.
- Stay very quiet and listen for one whole minute. How many gurgles can you count?
- Try again after dinner. Is it louder, or quieter?
What happened? Food soaks up the sound, like a pillow. With less food inside, there is less to soak it up.
Did you know?
Doctors even listen to tummy sounds, to check that everything is moving along.
When it is nearly time to eat, your brain tells your tummy, "Get ready, food is coming!" Your tummy starts to squeeze. So a growl often means it is time for a snack.
Your guide in this video
It's me, Seedy, the little watermelon seed. I once took a ride through a tummy!
Seedy is a little black watermelon seed. Seedy's tummy ride is in our watermelon seed video.
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