• Question: What are the chances of your organs tangling up?

    Asked by yooda to Bob, Katie, Nisha, Sallie, Vee on 27 Jun 2012.
    • Photo: Sallie Baxendale

      Sallie Baxendale answered on 27 Jun 2012:

      Good question! On the whole your organs are pretty well packed into your body and they dont invade the space reserved for another one. But they can get tangled and mangled in accidents and very rarely they can sometimes develop abnormally and interfere with an organ nearby.

    • Photo: Bob Bonwick

      Bob Bonwick answered on 27 Jun 2012:

      Not easily, they are held in place by many things, bones, muscles, ligaments, sheets of thin tissue called facia. Sometimes things go a bit funny, the intestines can twist, this is called a volvulous, or it can pull itself inside itself, this is called an intersuseption, both rare and both easy to treat. It is also, despite popular believe, impossible to swallow your own tongue.

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