I sometimes see people who aren't accustomed to drawing the structure of ungulate legs make them bend the way that canine legs and such do, so i sketched this up. It could have been done better, but ah well. I hope it is helpful.
Hooved animals are literally walking on the tips of their 'fingers' (hooves are basically fingernails!) whereas pawed animals walk on their entire fingers. The bones between joints 2 and 3 in my diagram are equivalent to our metacarpals, or the long bones in the back of our hand. While people might refer to joint 2 on a horse as his 'knee' it equates to his wrist, in terms of relative anatomy.
Yeah, dunno how to describe it better than that, but i think that's fairly clear. XD
EDIT: Oops, i meant to put this in scraps! There.
Hooved animals are literally walking on the tips of their 'fingers' (hooves are basically fingernails!) whereas pawed animals walk on their entire fingers. The bones between joints 2 and 3 in my diagram are equivalent to our metacarpals, or the long bones in the back of our hand. While people might refer to joint 2 on a horse as his 'knee' it equates to his wrist, in terms of relative anatomy.
Yeah, dunno how to describe it better than that, but i think that's fairly clear. XD
EDIT: Oops, i meant to put this in scraps! There.
Category Artwork (Digital) / Tutorials
Species Unspecified / Any
Size 527 x 526px
File Size 93.1 kB
God I've always hated that. As much as I still love the animorphs books it always pissed me off, because even as a seven year old I could tell that the knee was the same as a person knee and that the hock was an ankle joint. I don't unterstand how people can't understand comparative anatomy. Or homologous body parts for that matter.
This is super helpful I bet for a lot of people! Anatomy drawings are one of my favorite things out there, including skeletal structure, muscle and nervous system. ESPECIALLY those of horses. There is very little more facinating than a good horse anatomy book to read through occasionally.
When I did this sketch here: http://www.furaffinity.net/view/1964155/ I very much started thinking about ungulate anatomy.
The basic end result is realizing that ungulates actually have ENORMOUS feet, if by feet you mean the same bones analogous to a human's. For this reason, I've tried to ask commissioners drawing Mela to give him slightly more drawn out and longer hands than the same proportions of a human's.
Excellent work here, I'm sure it will help people out.
The basic end result is realizing that ungulates actually have ENORMOUS feet, if by feet you mean the same bones analogous to a human's. For this reason, I've tried to ask commissioners drawing Mela to give him slightly more drawn out and longer hands than the same proportions of a human's.
Excellent work here, I'm sure it will help people out.
Nice! Perhaps more useful in a larger context, however: a lot of the errors I see involving horse/unguligrade legs seem to involve the placement/angle of the shoulder and hip joints, not the lower legs so much. That one took me an embarrassingly long time to figure out, I'm sorry to say.
Wonder if it's worth contriving something similar for avian leg joints. BIRDS HAVE KNEES, IT'S TRUE. :>
Wonder if it's worth contriving something similar for avian leg joints. BIRDS HAVE KNEES, IT'S TRUE. :>
Haha me and my roommate were just discussing this as I went on a tirade of how ungulates both freak me out and yet completely fascinate me simply because they literately walk on their toenails, the very tips of their fingers/toes, using their knuckles as a joint to move and propel themselves. As apposed to even their palms or soles, then knuckles/fingers for grip. Especially friggin' Equidae having only one toe per 'had/foot' so to speak to balance themselves on.
Either way, it's a good reminder to people who have trouble recalling how their legs bend and function and exactly where the joints lie. 10/10
Either way, it's a good reminder to people who have trouble recalling how their legs bend and function and exactly where the joints lie. 10/10
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chrissawyer
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