What is the only animal with four knees?
Of great interest is what this means. Their hind (posterior) legs bend backwards in flexion the same as their anterior legs. Since their legs, both fore & aft, bend backwards they look like two people walking in tandem with a five foot separation that can't quite get in step. They have only two gaits the walk and the amble but can cover nearly 7m/sec at top speed without running. Unlike horses at top speed they are well grounded. Their weight requires they move pied-a -terre. Elephant kinematics http://www.rvc.ac.uk/AboutUs/Staff/jhutc... http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/200... http://jeb.biologists.org/cgi/content/ab...
What is the only animal to have four knees?
You mean horses don't have four knees? wikipedia says they do: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knees#Anima... In humans the knee refers to the joints between the femur, tibia and patella. In quadrupeds, particularly horses and ungulates the term is commonly used to refer to the carpus, probably because of its similar hinge or ginglymus action.
Which animal has 4 knees?
the first post is correct.. The Elephant is the only animal with 4 knees. It is also interesting that Elephants can't jump. :) Edit : I beg to differ.. Wiki is full of it... Elephants do indeed have 4 knees look at this diagram. http://www.madsci.org/posts/archives/May...
What animal have four knees?
Knee as in Patela bone, none. The joint on the front leg we associate with the knee is made of carpal (wrist) bones. The knee is high near the body and the hock compares to ankle (tarsal) bones
What animal has no knees?
The only animals that have no knees are animals that have no legs (or their legs are vestigial as may be the case with some whales, for example). Elephants have the same normal knees as every other terrestrial tetrapod. If you actually do look at an elephant's skeleton this is pretty obvious. And just to cover all of my bases: yes, penguins have knees too. Look at a penguin skeleton.
Which animal has 4 knees?
Only the elephant. The camel DOES NOT have 4 knees! Their hind legs bend the same way as horses hind legs (and NOT like elephants)
What is the only mammal with four knees?
I fell for this popular misconception because it LOOKS like 4 knees. Then I Googled it and found out that the front ones are really elbows!
Which is the only animal with 4 knees?
Many animals have 4 knees... Horses, Zebras... I even know of a FISH that has 2 knees... It's called a 2-Knee Fish.
Is an elephant really the only mammal with four knees?
Knees flex and move the lower limb to the rear. When you squat your heel folds to your derriere. In camels, horses, cats and other quadrupeds that fold their legs the hind limb folds forward to touch the belly. These quadrupeds have a rear joint called a hock. If you look at the elephants back leg it is nearly straight with the angle between femur and tibia/fibula is close to 180°. This differs to the half-bent hindleg posture in most mammals so is most similar to humans. Since the elephants legs, both fore & aft, bend backwards with knees they look like two people walking in tandem. In fact Elephants have only two gaits the walk and the amble so they always a supporting foot on the ground. They cannot leap, bound, gallop or move so that they are airborne with no foot on the ground in a portion of their stride.
Why do elephants have four knees?
They don’t. All mammals have two arms, with elbows and wrists; and two legs, with knees and ankles, just like you. There are two facts that make you mistake an elephant’s arms for “front legs with front knees”.First, you mistake their wrists for knees because elephants walk on their fingers. If you, human, go on all fours, you’ll have to place your open hand palms against the ground to sustain your weight, and that will bring your wrists to the ground too, making them work like “front ankles”. Since elephants and many other mammals are adapted to walking on their fingers (or even nails) instead of their palms, their wrists do not reach the ground like yours, and are therefore able to work as “front knees”, instead of “front ankles”. But they’re still wrists, with the bone structure of a wrist, not of a knee.Secondly, the persisting misinterpretation of animal anatomy is cultural. You grow up hearing misconceptions like “four-legged animals”. This comes from our society’s cultural trait of denying the great biological similarities between humans and non-human animals. Humans are more than 90% genetically identical to any other mammal. However, we insist in denying this, by sticking to very old misconceptions about animals, like “four-legged”, dating back to times when no one had a clue about anatomy and genetics. We put aside all the advance of our knowledge and stick to old misconceptions because the false notion that animals are very different from us makes us feel better about exploiting them inhumanely for our commercial and scientific purposes.If you happen to like animals, you can do them a favor by telling the people you know about how they’re very similar to us, with arms, wrists and hands just like us, instead of “four legs”.