This is the second post about animal anatomy. This week I wanted to point out some other facts which they weren’t in the previous post, the ones I find also interesting and wanted to add.
Last week mentioned that human and vertebrate animals share the same construction of the skeletal and muscular systems, bones in different numbers(e.g. human 206–cat 230), proportions and sizes; shaped by the differences in their needs.
Major masses: a skull, rib cage, pelvis, (combined with a central) spine, limbs.
A bit more detailed: a skull, mandible, humerus, ulna, radius, carpal bones, phalanges, ribs, scapula, spine, pelvis, femur, tibia, fibula, tarsal bones, phalanges.
Mandible of human is ‘u’ shaped, the pelvis is bigger than animals, has robust upper limbs, nails, walking on the entire foot…
Mandible of animal is ‘v’ shaped, smaller pelvis, longer feet, claws, walking on toes…
Animals’ teeth are also for hunting and more specialized according to human. Some animals -like cat&dog- have longer muzzles(and dogs’ are longer than cats’).
The dietary of animals(carnivore, omnivore, herbivore) is another factor in the skeletal structure-like the length of the limb bones- and teeth and more.
This is a drawing of a human skull, from ‘Skull and Head Muscles’ tutorial on a grey carton. Human skull on our drawings is like a circle+mandible in the most general talking. We are more like a flat-faced in compared to animals.
What about animal skulls?
The first skull belongs to a dog, second one to a horse. Quite different shapes than ours, aren’t they?
Also last week there were some animal skeleton drawings (cat, dog, giraffe, horse, cow). And here is another comparison and a look at phalanges, carpal bones and limb bones for a horse, human, dog and cat.
What we have for a hand is two bones at the lower arm(radius and ulna)->wrist joint->carpal bones->metacarpal bones->phalanges
We have two bones at the lower limb(tibia and fibula)->ankle joint–>tarsal bones->metatarsal bones->phalanges
This is the same order for animals, too. For different species, bones appear in different forms. Thinking that a human has five fingers/toes on a hand/foot; that’s just one toe for a horse -and it’s like walking on the fingertip.
Bones are fused together in a bird and splayed out in a bat for the wings.
