Bones are so important not just for us but for animals as well. Let’s discover five very interesting vertebrates facts for kids.
Vertebrates are animals which have a backbone. The human backbone is called the spine and it is a very important part of the human body. It helps us stand up straight, it supports our body when we run and jump, and it protects the spinal cord which is where messages travel from our brain to our body. If we didn’t have a spine we wouldn’t be a vertebrate, other animals which are vertebrates include dogs, monkeys, fish, and birds.
There arearound 54,000 species of vertebrates that live on Earth and scientists group them into different types to better study them. The five types of vertebrates are:
Mammals, that is the type that humans belong to, mammals have live young instead of laying eggs and mammals include dolphins, lions, and dogs.
Fish, they have bones that help their gills open and close so they can breathe underwater and hatch their young from eggs.
Birds which have hollow bones in their skeletal system to help them fly and hatch their babies from eggs which they usually have in nests.
Amphibians, this is the group that includes frogs, are born underwater and hatch their eggs in water.
And Reptiles, they are born with lungs on land and they include snakes and turtles.
The Antarctic blue whale can grow up to nearly 100 feet long and their tongue is as heavy as an elephant. They are also very heavy, growing to around 300 tones, which is 50 times heavier than an elephant.
The largest vertebrates in the world used to be the dinosaurs and the bones they left behind can tell us a lot about what they looked like.
The smallest frog in the world is the Paedophryne amauensis, this tiny frog was discovered by scientists in Papua New Guinea when they were recording the sounds of other frogs. This frog is very small and was measured at 7.7mm, that is less than a centimetre. 7.7mm is around half the size of a human’s finger nail. What a tiny frog.
The neck of giraffes are very long, they can grow to 6 feet long. Despite their necks being much longer than humans they have the same number of vertebrae in their neck. Humans and Giraffes both have necks made up of 7 vertebrae. The vertebrae that make up the neck of giraffes are just much larger.
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