In nature, most animals maintain the habit of walking with all legs. If one of the legs is lost, will it have a great impact on the animals?
Free-spirited horse
Elephant who loses one leg can survive, but a horse with broken legs is basically sentenced to death. Why is this?
The impact of three legs
For most animals, the impact of only three legs is actually not that great.
For example, stray dogs with broken legs, although they limp, they can still walk and find food in the garbage dump. In a short while, they can play on the streets again.
People often say "harm the muscles and bones for 100 days", but this does not apply to animals in nature. They have strong physical recovery ability. After a leg fracture, they can basically recover within half a month to a month, and walk in the ground with .
As long as you endure this inconvenient period, you can live like a normal animal.
Stubbornly surviving stray dog
Even the largest creature on land, the elephant, can survive with a broken leg.
Broken-legged elephant
In a previous news report, an elephant was installed with a prosthetic limb and lived well in the zoo.
The elephant is called Sama . In 2006, it accidentally entered the minefield and its left leg was blown to pieces.
Fortunately, people found out in time and sent Satsuma to the local animal rescue clinic.
The veterinarian rescued the veterinary body in time and had an amputation for Satsuma, which saved his life. However, the problem also arises. The legs are an important part of the elephant's body. If one thigh is lost, it will be difficult for the elephant to survive in the wild.
In order to make Satsuma live like an ordinary elephant, the Animal Protection Foundation raised funds from the society, and tailored a prosthetic for it.
Soon, the smart Satsuma adapted to the prosthetics people made for it, and could run like other elephants. As long as you don’t perform intense exercise, the broken leg will not cause any inconvenience or pain to Satsuma.
Samo
As the body size grew, the foundation also modifiedSamo's prosthesis to make the prosthesis more fitting to its body.
Wait for Satsuma to fully adapt to prosthesis, and you can return to nature.
Since the elephant can solve the problem by installing a prosthetic limb after its broken leg, why can't the horse install a prosthetic limb like an elephant?
sexual prosthesis
several injury to horse legs
The key factor for horses not to install prosthesis is the special structure of their legs .
In everyone's perception, horses' legs are very strong and powerful, run fast and long, and their legs must be very developed.
But in fact, horse bones are very fragile . The reason why they run so fast is related to the muscles and ligaments on their thighs.
Generally speaking, the legs of an adult horse are basically as thick as sugar cane. Therefore, if you run too fast, it is easy to cause a fracture after the ligament is opened and closed.
Horse bones
A horse named Jet Set was once in the competition because of its hind legs that were too hard, resulting in a fracture.
In the end, the horse was euthanized at the advice of a doctor. Once the incident was reported, it aroused strong dissatisfaction among members of the Animal Protection Association.
The horse clearly broke one leg, so why did he euthanize it? Do humans look down on life too much? Actually, everyone misunderstood.
First of all, for Malay , losing one leg means that you cannot maintain body balance , and you basically lose your ability to walk.
A horse breaks its legs and dies
Of course, horses can also learn how stray dogs limp.
However, this does not conform to the behavioral characteristics of a horse and it takes a long time to adapt. Moreover, the horse is much heavier than a stray dog. Once it falls to the ground due to physical imbalance, its internal organs will be damaged.
Therefore, if a horse in the wild is seriously injured and cannot walk, basically means death .
Secondly, the horse's legs also undertake part of the blood circulation . The blood circulating in the body will wander around the horse's hooves, and pass the "water pump" of the hard tissue of the horse's hooves and then supply it to the whole body.
Vein distribution of horses
This is also one of the reasons why we cannot install prosthetic limbs on horses.
From the perspective of human current technology, it requires a high cost and technology to simulate a structure that is exactly similar to a normal horse's legs on a prosthetic limb.
Very few people can afford this expensive fee, and even if they have money, the source of technology is a problem.
The reason why elephants can install prosthetic limbs is mainly because the limbs of elephants play a supporting role and do not participate in blood circulation much.
The thigh bones of elephants are much thicker than those of horses
People only need to make a prosthetic limb that is hard enough and suitable for the shape of the legs of an elephant.
And the elephant is very smart and can learn to walk with prosthetics.
On the other hand, once the horse lacks legs, the blood circulation in the body will be affected, which is likely to lead to metabolic disorders, normal physiological dysfunction, etc., which will make more uncomfortable than death .
Instead of letting the horse die in painful torture, it is better to let it die in ease.
Finally, the special structure of the horse's legs makes it difficult to recover once it is severely damaged.
Although the overall structure of the horse's legs is a connected whole, its components are actually very delicate and composed of more than a dozen different bones, each of which is crucial.
Therefore, once the horse's legs are seriously injured, different surgeries and medications are required for different bone parts, which undoubtedly increases the medical difficulty and cost of .
There are several parts of the leg bones of horses
As for the possibility of self-recovery, it can only be said to be slim.
sends the horse to "leave" safely, counting the kind of tenderness of humans to animals.
Speaking of this, you may be more curious about how the special structure of horses evolved?
Evolutionary history of horses
About 50 million years ago, horse ancestors appeared in the Americas and Europe. They are called ancestor horses .
The ancestor horse is very different from the horses we see today. The ancestor horse does not have a horse's hoof structure. The forelimbs have four fingers and three fingers at the hind limbs.
The front and rear limbs of the ancestor horse
Their body is about the same size as today's fox , and its body is small and flexible, and can freely shuttle between the jungle.
With the changes in the climate environment, magnificent grasslands appeared on the earth.
The first ancestor horse who migrated here discovered that the grassland was endless and there was no hidden space. Once discovered by carnivores, they could not get rid of a life-and-death pursuit, and at this time they had an absolute advantage in speed.
Horses' ancestors of different periods
However, during the running process, stones often prick the feet. In order to survive on the grassland, the ancestors had to degenerate the original phalanx structure and evolved into a hard horse's hoof structure.
and in the process, in order to make the body lighter, the bones on the legs also become smaller and thinner.
At the same time, the superior environment and sufficient food on the grassland also allow horses to evolve into larger sizes and avoid many small and medium-sized predators in and .
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The evolution of horses is a very long process. Scientists have discovered that horse herds began to differentiate between 4 million and 5 million years ago, and the prototype of today's horses was only taken about 2 million years ago.
Now, with the improvement of human living standards, people have begun to raise various animals, including pet horses.
soft and cute pet horse
pet horse is hybridized by other horses, following the characteristics of the ancestor horse's small body, and its appearance is also very beautiful, with high feeding value.
Behind the more "diversified" species, we have to reflect on whether human gene technology will bring disaster to species like Pandora's box .
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