Leg
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
For other uses, see Leg (disambiguation).
A leg is the part of an animal's body that supports the rest of the animal above the ground and is used for locomotion. The end of the leg furthest from the animal's body is often either modified or attached to another structure that is modified to disperse the animal's weight on the ground (see foot). In bipedal vertebrate animals, the two lower limbs are usually referred to as the 'legs' and the two upper limbs as the 'arms'.
Legs typically come in even-numbered quantities. Many taxonomic groups are characterized by the number of legs its members possess.
- Uniped: 1
- Biped: 2
- Tripedal: 3
- Quadruped: 4
- Quinped 5
- Arthropoda: 6, 8, or 12
- Some arthropods have more than a dozen legs; a few species possess over 100. Despite what their names might suggest,
- Centipedes typically have fewer than one hundred legs
- Millipedes have fewer than one thousand legs.
- Some arthropods have more than a dozen legs; a few species possess over 100. Despite what their names might suggest,
[edit] The human leg
The bones of the human leg are:
- Femur, or thigh bone, which attaches to the pelvis
- Patella, or knee cap
- Tibia, or shin bone
- Fibula, or calf bone
[edit] See also
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