Podcast Teaser: Of all the vertebrate animals, only mammals have muscles of facial expression … why? Along the Backbone – Episode 8: Face the Face Transcript: You are more than just a pretty face. Your face contains facial muscles that allow you to express and emote to fellow human beings and, some recent data indicates, even to your dog. But in e-…

This podcast was chosen by popular demand by the followers of this blog. Thanks for your continued interest in Along the Backbone. The ability to open doors depends on two things: 1) being able to grip the door handle and 2) being able to rotate the hand so that the door handle turns. Could a hungry Velociraptor turn a door handle to get at you, th…

Why don’t mammals continuously replace their teeth? The answer may surprise you. Podcast Teaser: I hate the dentist. Well, I like my dentist, but I hate going. I suspect many of you don’t put a visit to the tooth doctor up on your list of favorite things, either. You can blame a number of things for the necessity of dentistry: our love of sugar top…

Unlike a lizard where the limbs are sprawled out to the sides, most mammals have drawn their limb bones vertically beneath the body. What are the functional advantages of such a posture? And what does all this have to do with Dr. Bonnan almost being creamed by an African elephant? Podcast Teaser: I learned the real meaning of the word “awesome” dur…

Many of us enjoy eating meat, but few of us pause to think about how important its pre-meal form, skeletal muscle, is for vertebrate life. Or why you eat different parts of fish and tetrapods for that matter. Podcast Teaser: I don’t know about you, but I enjoy a good steak, especially fillet minion. In fact, many of us enjoy eating meat, but few of…

It seems only fitting that a podcast series called Along the Backbone should discuss the formation of the backbone in one of lengthiest vertebrates: snakes. Podcast Teaser: Snakes are lizards. More specifically, snakes are limbless, eyelidless, earless lizards with megakinetic skulls and well-developed salivary glands that often produce venom. Amon…