Quote:
Originally Posted by MyFairLacy  Okay....let me try to explain this without pictures..LOL. Okay..look at your hand. Your wrist is called the "carpus" and is made up of three carpal joints. The bones between your wrist and fingers are the metacarpal bones. Then you have your fingers that are made up of three phalanx bones each, except for your thumb which is made up of only 2 phalanx bones. Your thumb is digit one, and your pinky would be digit 5.
Okay...so dogs basically have the exact same structure to their paw as we do for our hands. They have a carpus (ie wrist), metacarpal bones, and 3 phalanx bones per digit, except for the declaw which has 2 phalanx bones just like our thumb does.
Dogs have 4 weight-bearing digits (2-5). Digit 1 is the dewclaw (the equivalent of our thumb). It is higher up..just below the carpus.
So far as the pads..dogs have three types of pads on their front paws. The little pad near where the declaw would be is the carpal pad (because it is on the carpus). The large pad is the metacarpal pad (because it is under the metacarpal bones). And the 4 little pads are the digital pads (because they are on the weightbearing digits).
Hope that helps |
Thanks, MyFairLacy! That was very informative!
Do you know that a dolphin (since being a mammal) has the same hand/arm structure its just bent up and not used inside of the flippers!! Its so crazy to think about it.