When a baby is born, the umbilical cord shrivels up and falls off. What happens to the rest of the internal tubage? Does it disintegrate and somehow absorbed by the body?
In: Biology
The internal tubage consists of the umbilical artery/vein which iirc bypass the liver. They do in fact shrivel up, and the umbilical vein becomes one of the ligaments associated with the liver (the ligamentum teres). In general fetal structures such as the umbilical vein and the ductus arteriosus (which bypasses the lungs since fetuses don’t breathe) become ligaments. In this case the umbilical vein becomes the ligamentum teres and the ductus arteriosus becomes the ligamentum arteriosum
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