Original figure description: This photo shows a young girl reaching for an orange leaf on an oak tree. She is on a walkway near a creek. The opposite shore is a deep slope covered with more trees in autumn colors.
Hormones of the endocrine system coordinate and control growth, metabolism, temperature regulation, the stress response, reproduction, and many other functions. (credit: “seenthroughmylense”/flickr.com)
You may never have thought of it this way, but when you send a text message to two friends to meet you at the dining hall at six, you’re sending digital signals that (you hope) will affect their behavior—even though they are some distance away. Similarly, certain cells send chemical signals to other cells in the body that influence their behavior. This long-distance intercellular communication, coordination, and control is critical for homeostasis, and it is the fundamental function of the endocrine system.
Attribution. Anatomy and Physiology 2e, OpenStax, Rice University, and the original contributing authors credited in the preface. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International. CC BY 4.0. Original book at OpenStax ↗. EvidenceHelix text edition adapted from the pinned OpenStax source: CNXML converted to HTML; original prose, learning objectives, tables, exercises, glossary and captions retained. Images are not reproduced; external figure links and descriptions replace them. This is not the original full illustrated edition. No new scientific content was added. Source edition content may differ from current OpenStax revisions.