A very thin blood vessel that connects arteries and veins and allows nutrients and gases to pass in and out of the blood.
The word comes from Latin 'capillaris', meaning 'of hair', from 'capillus', 'hair'. Scientists chose this word because capillaries are as fine and thin as hairs.
Your body is packed with hair-thin tubes whose name literally means 'hair-like'. If you lined up all your capillaries, they could stretch for thousands of kilometers—yet they’re so tiny you can’t see them without a microscope.
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