Wednesday, October 15, 2014

Spider Legs


Let's keep learning about spider bodies.

Spider legs can be long and fuzzy or short and shiny, but they have leg bones just like we do.

Our human legs mostly consist of 6 parts:
The femur or thigh bone, the patella or knee cap, the tibia and fibula for our lower leg bones, and the foot bones tarsus and metatarsus.

Just like us spiders have a femur, patella, tibia, metatarsus and tarsus.
They don't have a tibula, but they do have two other bones.
The coxa and trochanter are right before the femur, and the coxa is attached to the spider's body.

Spiders don't have any muscles in their legs, the muscles are all in their body.
So if a spider dies, the legs will curl up because the muscles aren't holding the legs out anymore.

When spiders are walking or running, they keep at least four of their eight legs on the ground.


(from: wikipedia - spider)


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