• potoooooooo 🥔@lemmy.world
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      49 minutes ago

      But if you wrapped muscles around the rigid bone frame, we could probably still wriggle and flop about. We’d find a way, it’d be okay.

  • modus@lemmy.world
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    3 hours ago

    I once met a person with Fibrodysplasia ossificans progressiva. Her bones were fusing together and over time she became more and more immobile. She’s probably dead now. I hope that answers your questions.

    • NottaLottaOcelot@lemmy.ca
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      4 hours ago

      Because then they would be immobile without any joints between the bones. If they were one big bone, they’d essentially be a block of wood shaped like a hand/foot

    • Jax@sh.itjust.works
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      4 hours ago

      Can you imagine stepping on a rock when every bone in your foot/ankle is fused?

      Seems like a recipe for broken bones and never being able to run anywhere, ever.

      Edit: I shouldn’t need to explain why the bones in your hands aren’t fused, assuming this initial comment isn’t a joke in the first place.

  • Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    7 hours ago

    Having a bone is perfectly normal for around half of humans.

    For a human having two bones is not normal. Also for 3 bones, 4 bones and so on. Curiously having a few bones is normal for some animals, such as dogs.

    Then it’s normal again for humans to have around 206 bones.

    This is one of life’s great paradoxes.

    • Fedizen@lemmy.world
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      14 hours ago

      Cellular biology always reminds me how crazy animals are; how much time and how many generations animals must have taken to get here. Its awesome there’s just cells that show up, get supplied everything they need and build mineral deposits. And a fully separate cell type to deconstruct those.

      • zarathustrad@lemmy.world
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        4 hours ago

        Fraggle Rock helped me understand this part of cell bio (osteoclasts/blasts).

        In the underground caverns of your skeleton, a perfect symbiotic ecosystem exists between two distinct groups: the Osteoblasts (the Doozers) and the Osteoclasts (the Fraggles). Just as in Fraggle Rock, their survival depends on a continuous cycle of building and eating, ensuring the structural integrity of their world

        Like the industrious Doozers, osteoblasts are obsessed with construction.

        The osteoclasts are the carefree Fraggles of this system. They roam the bone surface looking for old, damaged, or unnecessary structures to “snack” on.

      • ChaoticNeutralCzech@feddit.org
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        14 hours ago

        It’s a robust system: when a bone is fractured and not straightened before healing, it will eventually get close to the right shape.