intestinal villus

The tiny hair-like projections that protrude from the inside of the small intestine that contain blood vessels that capture digested nutrients that are absorbed through the intestinal wall; the villi increase the absorptive surface area of the small intestine by approximately 30-fold. Every claim on this page comes from the Leumas anatomy graph and carries its source.

What the intestinal villus is

The tiny hair-like projections that protrude from the inside of the small intestine that contain blood vessels that capture digested nutrients that are absorbed through the intestinal wall; the villi increase the absorptive surface area of the small intestine by approximately 30-fold. The atlas records it as a tissue at the tissue scale in the human body.

Where the intestinal villus is

It sits within the digestive system. Only the system is known. The position shown carries almost no spatial information.

What the intestinal villus connects to

The atlas records 9 typed relationships for it, across 4 kinds of connection. part of intestinal epithelium.

Supply and innervation

This dataset asserts no arterial supply, venous drainage or innervation for the intestinal villus. Only a minority of structures carry those edges here, so an empty answer means nothing has been recorded — not that there is nothing to record.

Also called

Also recorded as enteric villi, enteric villous, enteric villus, intestinal villi, villi intestinales and villus, and 3 more. Searching any of those names reaches this page.

Source

Uberon multi-species anatomy ontology (Mungall et al.), CC BY 4.0. Term UBERON:0001213, version 2026-06-19, retrieved 2026-08-24. Licence: CC-BY-4.0.

• Part of: intestinal epithelium.
• A kind of: organ component layer.
• contains: blood vessel, striated border microvillus layer, epithelium of intestinal villus and lacteal.
• subtype: intestinal villus of duodenum, intestinal villus of ileum and intestinal villus of jejunum.

Questions

Where is the intestinal villus?

It sits within the digestive system. Only the system is known. The position shown carries almost no spatial information.

What does the intestinal villus connect to?

Part of: intestinal epithelium.

Is the intestinal villus the same in other species?

Leumas holds the same relationship vocabulary for every species it carries, so where another dataset records this structure you can put the two side by side on /compare.