It's time for another episode of RTÉjr Radio's science podcast Let's Dive In! In this one Julie and Phil dive into the human body to find out how many organs you can live without.
Tune in to RTÉjr Radio at 7pm where we chat Tissue Handling Technician Hannah McGivern.
Listen above and subscribe to the podcast here!
Julie explains it all here...
Every week during school terms Phil and his team welcome a group of kids into the UCD Explore Lab to get their science on with questions and experiments.
One week, when they were talking about guts and blood and the heart and other icky stuff, Mila aged 10 asked: "How many organs can you live without?"
Well, Phil said…I don't know. So, we asked Tissue Handling Technician Hannah McGivern to help us out.
First of all, we need to know what an organ is. When we think about an organ, we have to think about the smallest building blocks we’ve got - cells.
"So we have trillions of cells in the human body. And groups of similar cells with the same job form tissues. And then if we have two or more types of tissue then we have an organ," says Hannah.
Now, how many organs do you think we’ve got? Go on, have a guess. List them out on a piece of paper or just talk to your grown up about it.
"There are around 78 organs in the human body." Wait, WHAT? Did you guess that? I certainly didn’t when I tried. Neither did Phil!
And this is because when we think of organs, we automatically think of those big "we-can’t-live-without-these" organs: brain, heart, lungs, stomach, liver, kidneys, bladder, intestines, skin. Those ones, the ones you draw at school and see in your biology books.
But actually, any groups of tissues are organs. Eyes are an organ made up of the lens, cornea and other bits! Teeth! An organ - part of the digestive organ system. Arteries and veins are organs.
OK, so let’s go back to Mila’s question: how many different organs can you live without?
"The kidney is probably the most-transplanted organ in the body," says Hannah. So, you can live without one kidney (but you definitely need the other one!).
"Some listeners may have had their appendix removed, may have had their tonsils removed…Other organs that you could live without are the Spleen gallbladder. You can also live without part of all of one lung."
But it does get to a point where you might need medication or artificial replacements to help your body function, says Hannah.
What about flipping the question on its head: which organs can’t we live without? "The brain, the heart, the liver… we do need at least one kidney and we do need at least one lung," says Hannah. "So, there’s five absolutely essential organs that we need."
Whilst we were putting together this episode I had lots of fun playing Operation with my kids - so if you’re keen to play a game AND listen to this podcast, that’s a good one!
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AND read all the Let's Dive In articles with experiments to try at home HERE!
