Why is the aorta so large?

Answer 1

The aorta is sometimes concidered to be an organ because it is so large that it is made up of several different tissues (a simple definition of an organ being that it is made up of more than 1 tissue) although it is still only a very large artery and so is not usually described as an organ but a large blood vessel.

Answer 2

The aorta branches into several different arteries which carry oxygenated blood from the heart to different parts of the body. The aorta is the artery that carries oxygenated blood from the left ventricle.

Because the aorta can stretch (expand), the pressure of the blood leaving the heart is more slowly and regularly transferred to the arteries. A pulse is still detectable in distant vessels, but the pressure is constant rather than intermittent.

All the arteries in the blood (except the pulmonary vein) can be traced back to a starting point somewhere along the aorta.

Answer 3

It needs to distribute blood to the systemic circuit. For this reason it needs to be very large in order to distribute huge amounts of blood at once.

Answer 4

It is the only artery that comes off the left ventricle which pumps blood to the rest of the body and has to accommodate a significant volume of blood under enormous pressure.

Answer 5

That's the main systemic outflow vessel from the heart.

Answer 6

So a lot of blood can go through it. Because if it was small your heart wouldn't be able to pump blood fast enough.

Answer 7

because it is the main artery that delivers blood to the body and all the other arterys bringing blood to the body branch of of the aorta.

Answer 8

Any structure in the body, composed of living cells, that performs a specific function, qualifies as an organ.

Answer 9

An aorta is the great artery which carries the blood from the heart to all parts of the body except for the lungs.