…have more vertebrae than typical for their species, or longer than typical vertebrae?
I can’t say how it relates to tail length, but mammals certainly have a wide range in the number of caudal vertabrae. IIRC the Pangolin has the most vertabrae in it’s tail among mammals.
According to Wikipedia most cats have 22 - 23 tail bones but short tailed cats, such as Manx, have fewer.
I was interested learn recently that giraffes have the same number of neck bones as most other mammals, including humans. (7).
In general, within species I would expect individuals with longer tails to have a few more tail vertebrae, rather than longer individual vertebrae. However, I don’t have specific information on that.
Almost all mammals have 7 neck vertebrae regardless of the length of their neck, the exceptions being two-toed sloths with 5 or 6, three-toed sloths with 9, and manatees with 6.
Huh, two- and three-toed sloths have radically different skeletal structures. I probably should have realized that, but for some reason it never really occurred to me how far separated the two groups really are. Had to go looking at skeletons after learning the “weird” vertebrae counts.
Yeah, it’s particularly weird because there’s no particular reason why either kind of sloth should have different numbers of neck vertebrae.
Despite their superficial similarities, two-toed and three-toed sloths are not that closely related. Each is more closely related to different families of ground sloths, and they acquired their arboreal specializations separately.
It’s at least true for dogs, seemingly. Dogs have up to 23 vertebrae in their tails, with some of them having a lot less - “from 6 to 23” seems to be bandied about a lot. Presumably, the longer tailed dogs have more vertebrae in their tails. Of course, a lot of the variance may be due to us selectively breeding them according to our whims.
Off hand, I can’t think of any mammal species whose tails vary as much in length as dogs (and cats, in the case of the Manx cat). Of course this is due to selective breeding. Like other appendages, tails do vary a bit in other mammals but not by very much. In most cases, it’s probably due to adding a few caudal vertebrae.
Thanks, folks.
I was inspired to ask because a fuss was made at the vet’s over how long one of the kitten’s tail is - from nose to rump he’s 11" long and his tail is over 7" 