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What number of bones do penguins have? – Sawyer, age 7, Media, Pennsylvania
As a zoo and wildlife veterinarian, I typically maintain penguins – each within the wild and in aquariums and zoos.
I’m at all times fascinated when I’ve to take X-rays of an injured chicken that may have a damaged bone, is sick or having issue shifting. Whereas penguins would possibly seem like easy, torpedo-shaped ice-waddlers, their our bodies are literally fairly complicated.
Although they give the impression of being nothing like individuals or animals chances are you’ll encounter day-after-day – like canine and cats – they’ve related skeletons and joints. They even have knees and elbows, however have about half as many bones. A human skeleton is made up of 206 bones. A penguin has simply 112 in its complete physique.
X-ray of a penguin.
College of Tennessee Faculty of Veterinary Drugs, Creator offered
All birds developed for flight, with feathers, wings and a physique that enables them to soar excessive within the sky. To realize liftoff, over time penguins developed to have fewer bones of their skeletons.
How did they try this? A few of their bones truly fused collectively, together with their ankles. In contrast to people, who’ve two major ankle bones, a chicken’s leg bone connects instantly with its ft and toes.
Birds even have fewer bones of their spines than many animals. Their decrease again bones joined collectively into only one bone, known as the synsacrum. The one different animals to have this sort of spine had been the dinosaurs. For the birds, this helps them preserve their our bodies in a horizontal place with out tiring out their again muscle tissues whereas flying or swimming.
Wild Humboldt penguins.
Julie D. Sheldon, Creator offered
Hen bones usually are distinctive. They’re light-weight and hole, which permits the animal to take flight. As a result of birds want plenty of oxygen for an intense exercise like flying, their bones are full of areas for air and so they even have 9 air sacs that encompass their lungs.
However wait, you could be pondering, “Penguins don’t fly in any respect.” That’s proper, they developed for a life on land and within the water, and so they have a novel skeleton in comparison with many different birds.
The primary penguins, which appeared shortly after the dinosaurs went extinct about 66 million years in the past, had been flightless. Ten million years later, they’d turn out to be nice swimmers. Current-day species spend as much as 75% of their time within the ocean. That meant they needed to develop heavier so they might dive underwater to hunt for meals.
Penguins developed dense, hefty bones that don’t have the air pockets that flying birds have. That helped make up for the air sacs round their lungs. Their cumbersome bones preserve them from floating as much as the water’s floor, like a scuba diver who straps on a weight belt to submerge.
Penguins are uniquely tailored to swim underwater.
Penguins’ wings are additionally completely different as a result of these birds have to swim, not soar into the sky. Penguins’ wings morphed into what seem like brief, flat, stiff fins that don’t bend like flying birds’ do. In addition they have fewer bones than different birds.
Their wings act like paddles, serving to them race by way of the water at excessive speeds. Gentoo penguins can swim as much as 22 mph. That’s a lot quicker than Olympic champion swimmer Michael Phelps, who broke a world document for people at 5.5 mph.
The mix of hefty bones and highly effective finlike wings permits penguins to descend shortly and dive extremely deep to hunt for fish, krill and different meals. An emperor penguin can go all the way down to at the least 1,500 ft, which is concerning the size of 5 soccer fields.
Because of their fewer variety of dense bones and different cool variations, penguins are champions of open water.
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