Blood flow through the kidneys
The renal artery carries the blood supply to the kidney – we know that the blood supply to the kidney has been pumped from the heart and that arteries take blood away from the heart. We also know the kidney is the renal system, hence renal artery.
Think of a crowd of people flowing into a regal art gallery (renal artery).
The blood then goes through smaller arteries and reaches the afferent arteriole, a tiny vessel which take blood into a cluster of capillaries – miniscule blood vessels.
There are many affluent people (afferent arteriole) among the crowd attending the gallery.
The cluster of capillaries is called the glomerulus. This is where substances from the blood, including urea, glucose, salts and water, are squeezed out through tiny holes in the vessels into Bowman’s capsule, to begin their journey along the tubules as described previously.
Each affluent person at the art gallery is holding a glamorous cat – a glamour puss (glomerulus).
The blood vessel that takes blood away from the glomerulus is the efferent arteriole.
There are so many cats that there is loads of effluent in the art gallery (efferent arteriole).