Image talk:Horseanatomy.png

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[edit] Tail bone

Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't think the tail bone goes that far out of the body. Isn't the tail almost entirely hair? Randall311 00:40, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

It would depend largely upon the breed of horse as to specific extension from the body, but in order to have any degree of movement over its tail any animal must have a fairly considerable bone element. Remember; muscles move appendages, muscles are connected to appendages by tendons, tendons are anchored to bone. So without bones, movement is rarely possible. What is perhaps deceptive about this diagram is that the tail bones are a little bigger and less clearly defined as seperate than is the actually the case, they are actually quite slender in reality but this was nessessary to actually show them, bearing in mind this is an 8" tall drawing representing something that could be 1.8m high. WikipedianProlific^(Talk) 13:02, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

I notice that the same bone in the left and right foreleg are called radius for one and ulna for the other. I'm not a vet, but I believe the name doesn't change based on right and left. In the human arm the two bones exist in the forearm and rotate over and under each other when the arm is turned. I don't believe horse legs have this same movement capability and from the drawing there appears to be only one bone there, which would make sense if that were the case. Could you please clarify this seeming inaccuracy?

The two bones run parallel to each other just as they do in the human forearm. One is behind the other as you view it from the side, so what you are infact seeing is the left side of the radius of the left foreleg and the left side of the ulna of the right foreleg. I hope this clears up any misunderstanding. I should add aswell, this isn't a perfect representation of a horse, it doesnt need to be for our purposes. Its about highlighting the overall structure of horse anatomy, I'm not trying to get every bump and lump to scale exactly as it would be. A small amount of ambiguity in a diagram like this is good for wikipedia because we can use it for all sorts of articles that way and not just specific to horse anatomy. Consider as well that there are many different subsets of equines with many different body builds, no two of which will be the same. WikipedianProlific^(Talk) 01:00, 20 July 2007 (UTC)