If, however, digestion is not going on, the mouth of the bile duct is closed, and in that case the bile is carried by the cystic duct to the gall bladder.
Into this portion opens the bile duct from the liver with the duct from the pancreas, these having been first united and then entering the intestine as a common duct.
It buds off from the food tube just below the stomach, so that its waste tube, the bile duct —about the size of a goose quill—opens into the upper part of the intestine.
The liver still dumps its wastes into the intestines through the bile duct.