Info About Bones

Bones give our wonderful body its structure. Without them, our motion, actions would just cease to exist. Let’s look at some fun facts about bones.

1. The smallest bone in the human body is the stapes or stirrup bone located in the middle ear. It is approximately .11 inches (.28 cm) long. We may owe all our hearing to this little bone shaped like a stirrup, because it transmits sound vibrations through our hearing system!

2. Human thigh bones are stronger than concrete, the Femur bone as it’s called – the biggest and strongest bone in our body. It is easily capable of lifting or supporting 30 times its own volume and weight!

3. There are about 206 bones in a grown-up’s body. But more than half of them are located just in our hands and feet!

4. We have somewhere around 300 to 350 bones that we are born with. As we grow up, the number reduces to 206. Well, they don’t go anywhere, except that sometime around the age between 12 and 14, some of our smaller bones, fuse into larger, big and stronger bones!

5. Apart from having more bones, another interesting baby fact is that they don’t have kneecaps! Well, actually they do but their kneecaps have not yet turned into hard bones, and are still soft cartilage, that gradually hardens into bones. This process is called ossification.

6. By the age of 20, the average young person has acquired roughly 98% of his/her skeletal mass.

7. There are around 14 bones are in the face, 8 bones are in each wrist, 27 bones in each hand, 23 bones are in each foot including the ankle and 30 bones in the skull.

8. Adult human bones account for 14% of the body’s total weight.

9. Bones consist of 50% water and 50% solid matter. They are hard, strong and very much alive like muscle tissue. They also have tons of living cells which help them grow and repair themselves. If bones weren’t made of living cells, things like broken toes or arms would never mend.

10. Bone marrow is found in the hollow bones, that produces new red and white blood cells. Consider it the factory for the blood constituents.

11. Our ribs move about 5 million times a year, every time we breathe!

12. When there’s not enough calcium in the bloodstream, the body attempts to pull calcium from the bones, which thins and weakens them. This causes osteoporosis, which leads to breaks and fractures.

13. Did you know that humans and giraffes have the same number of bones in their necks i.e. 8? Giraffe neck vertebrae are just much, much longer!
14. We have over 230 moveable and semi-moveable joints in our body.