In elephants, the knee joint plays important roles in weight bearing and locomotion, but anatomical data are sparse and lacking in functional analyses. In addition, the knee joint is affected frequently by arthrosis.
The answer is... Elephants! Elephants are the only animal to have four forward-facing knees. All other four-legged animals have at least one pair of legs with knees that face backwards.
“It's a bit like putting the door handle further from the hinge,” says Regnault. “It requires less force to open the door.” But the ostrich kneecaps did the opposite. “The upper kneecap actually seems to decrease the leverage of the knee muscles, not increase them,” says Regnault.
However the popular misconception that the elephant is the only animal which has four knees isn't quite accurate. What appear to be the elephant's front knees are in fact its wrists and elbows. Like other four legged animals the elephant has two knees at the back legs and elbows and wrists at the front legs.
Elephants are the only animal to have four forward-facing knees. All other four-legged animals have at least one pair of legs with knees that face backwards. Hanging around the savannah is thirsty work and the average elephant drinks more than 200 litres of water per day.
Fun fact: Horses only have knees on their front legs! Cannon – The large bone that sits underneath the carpal (knee) joint. Also known as the third metacarpus. Horses have four cannon bones, one on each leg.
INTRODUCTION: The most common fact to know is that spiders have 8 legs while insects have 6 and also, spiders have 48 knees- 6 knees on each leg.
Spiders, scorpions, mites, ticks, whip scorpions, and pseudoscorpions are all arachnids that can be found in Everglades National Park. Unlike insects, arachnids have eight legs and no antennae, and their body is divided into two main segments: a cephalothorax and abdomen.
Horses and rhinos are known to have developed adaptations of the knee joint to re- duce muscle fatigue while standing for long periods of time (Hermanson & MacFadden 1996).
Adult female elephants have two breasts, or mammary glands, located between their front legs. When a female becomes pregnant or is nursing her young, her mammary glands become more prominent, remaining more noticeable even after she's done breastfeeding. This is a telltale difference between male and female elephants.
Her mammary glands are located between the forelegs, with one nipple on either side, looking very much like human breasts.
Each elephant foot has 5 toes, but not every toe has a nail. The African forest elephant and the Asian elephant both have 5 toenails on the front feet and 4 on the back feet. Their feet are flat because of a large pad of gristle under each heel which acts as a shock absorber and helps them walk quietly.
Their front leg joints bend backwards, like the wrists of humans, which is the opposite of most other four-legged mammals. Their back legs are slightly longer than the front, but their high shoulders make the front limbs look longer. The back legs have knees with kneecaps.
Leg anatomy
In dogs, the ankle joint is referred to as the hock or tarsus, and the wrist joint is the carpus. Dogs also have two knees and two elbows. The bones above the carpus in dogs are the same as in human arms—the radius and ulna.
Dentition. Both African and Asian elephants have a total of 26 teeth including two upper incisors (tusks), 12 premolars (non-permanent teeth similar to baby teeth), and 12 molars.
Its genus, Eumillipes, is derived from the Latin words for 'true', 'thousand' and 'foot', recognising it as the first, and so far only, millipede to have more than 1,000 legs.
One rare species of millipede can have over 700 legs, more than any other animal. Having so many short legs so close together makes the millipede a relatively slow mover.
Unlike most other invertebrates, spiders - like humans - have more centralised organs such as the heart and the brain.
Additionally, there is ONE accepted patellar region on each leg of a spider, and that sits between the femur and tibia. This means that a spider has exactly 8 knees.
Spiders usually have eight eyes (some have six or fewer), but few have good eyesight. They rely instead on touch, vibration and taste stimuli to navigate and find their prey.
In a recently published study, researchers suggest horses still have all five digits, they're just in various forms of development. Horses evolved from five toes, to four toes, to three toes, and eventually to a single toe that's embedded inside the hoof.
With no visible testicles on an adult horse, it is reasonable to assume the horse is a gelding but…he if he exhibits otherwise stallion like behavior, he could be cryptorchid. This means that he retained one or two testicles.
Cat's elbow and knee joints are located further up on their limbs than human limbs. Felines have a elbow-like hinge joint on each front limb and a condylar knee-like joint on each back limb. This means that a cat has two elbows and two knees.