Human bones are referred to as a ‘skeleton’ and without them our bodies would flop.
Our bones also protect our soft organs such as our heart and they work with our muscles to help us move around.
Here are some interesting facts about our bones:
- We have 206 bones in our body
- The largest bone in our body in the Femur, which is located in our thigh and is about a quarter of our height
- The smallest bone in our body is the Stirrup bone, located in our middle ear and is no bigger than a grain of rice
- About eighty bones make up the human skull, backbone and ribs
- We have the same number of bones in our neck as a giraffe, seven of them
- More than a quarter of our bones are in our hands
- There are four main types of bones: Long, (like the femur), Short (like the heel bone), Flat (like the shoulder bone) and irregular (such as your vertebrae)
- We also have small round bones like our kneecap called Sesamoids
- Bones are made up of layers, hard compact bone on the outside and spongy bone beneath. Some spaces are filled with Bone marrow which stores fat and also produces new blood cells
- The reason we can bend and move our bones is the body has lots of joints and these work by joining two separate bones together helping them to twist and turn