Large intestine
last part of the digestive system in vertebrate animals, including the cecum, colon, rectum, and anal canal
The large intestine, also known as the large bowel, is the last part of the gastrointestinal tract and of the digestive system in tetrapods. Water and salts are absorbed here and the remaining waste material is stored in the rectum as feces before being removed by defecation. Although it is shorter than the small intestine, it is called the large intestine because it is wider in diameter.
In humans, the large intestine begins in the right iliac region of the pelvis, just at or below the waist, where it is joined to the end of the small intestine at the cecum, via the ileocecal valve. It then continues as the colon ascending the abdomen, across the width of the abdominal cavity as the transverse colon, and then descending to the rectum and its endpoint at the anal canal. Overall, in humans, the large intestine is about 1.5 metres (5 ft) long, which is about one-fifth of the whole length of the human gastrointestinal tract.
In human medicine, the terms "large intestine" and "colon" are often used interchangeably, but most sources define the large intestine as the combination of the cecum, colon, rectum, and anal canal. Some other sources exclude the anal canal.
Structure
The colon of the large intestine is the last part of the digestive system. It has a segmented appearance due to a series of saccules called haustra.
The public source identifies “Large intestine” as last part of the digestive system in vertebrate animals, including the cecum, colon, rectum, and anal canal. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Large, intestine and last.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 23, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q11083. The Library of Congress control number is sh85067571. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
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This entry incorporates text from “Large intestine” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.