Name any 2 legged animals

Amp34 said:
And human babies...:p



For starters I didn't say arms, I said "arms" and have previously called them forelimbs.

Aside from that horses do actually have forearms, bit odd having a forearm on their leg right?:p

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equine_anatomy
http://www.horse-diseases.com/horseanatomy.html

same with dogs
http://www.lookd.com/dogs/anatomy.html
http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/dog-anatomy-from-head-to-tail.html

I'm sure there are probably similar definitions for other animals as well (but I can't be bothered to search for ages to prove this point.

Which scientific term is it you are looking for? Definition of arm? I don't think I've said they have any arms, just they weren't legs, however looking at the images I've linked to above I'm starting to think they may indeed be called arms

EDIT: Interesting thought about arms evolving from legs, however that would suggest that humans also have 4 legs, which would confuse this thread even more.:D
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You do realise that their forelimbs in quadrupeds in their entirety are still referred to as legs don't you?

In the case of the Horse, it is referred to as the Foreleg.....the same in Dogs. So while specific parts of their forelimbs are analogous to specific parts of a Human Arm, for example an Elbow and Metcarpals (although Horses have knees where a human would have a wrist for example...) they are still commonly referred to as Legs and not Arms.

Anatomy doesn't generally refer to Arms or Legs, it refers specifically to the individual anatomical features rather than their combined nature.
 
Amp34 said:
That's fine by me then. Suffice to say the back and front limbs of all mammals are significantly different and what this discussion seems to have brought up is that in fact there are no two legged animals according to the definition you have just given in that post.
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why are there no two legged mammals? Nothing in that post says that.
 
Amp34 said:
So to conclude, there are no mammals with only two legs and humans are among the mammals that have four.:p
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that doesn't make sense as Arms or Legs describes their use, not there anatomical makeup......that limbs have evolved differently from a common platform doesn't mean that bipeds have four legs or quadrupeds have two.....the uses are different thus the definitions are different.

Amp34 said:
Suffice to say, no mammal has 4 knees (we must all agree on that right?)
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Horses have knees in their forelegs, not in the hindlegs.....:)
 
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Castiel said:
that doesn't make sense as Arms or Legs describes their use, not there anatomical makeup......that limbs have evolved differently from a common platform doesn't mean that bipeds have four legs or quadrupeds have two.....the uses are different thus the definitions are different.
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So this. Sometimes being pedantic is fine, but in this case he's just wrong.
 

http://www.qi.com/talk/viewtopic.php?t=20715&start=0&sid=1d0f9157ad1ef9bb2e601ce64fd82e19

I don't really understand this idea... elephants have a pair of knee joints and a pair of elbow joints, just like the rest of the tetrapods (with the exception of the limbless forms).
If you've seen the way their forelimbs bend, you may think that the lower joint that is their elbow (thus looking like a "knee"), but in fact that is the articulation of the carpus (equivalent to the palm of our hands). Their elbow is higher on the limb.
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But yeah, I knew that was going to come up.. I'm not going to argue the point either way however...

Glaucus said:
So this. Sometimes being pedantic is fine, but in this case he's just wrong.
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I'll bow to superior knowledge them...
 
Glaucus said:
So this. Sometimes being pedantic is fine, but in this case he's just wrong.
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I don't know why anyone is even arguing about it.....legs in Humans are not necessarily anatomically the same as Legs in Horses and so on......whether it is a leg or an arm is defined by it's primary use, not it's anatomical make-up.
 
See my edit again. :D

TBH most of this is way over my head, i'm not a biologist, which is why I'm not going to argue either way. :)
 
Castiel said:
I don't know why anyone is even arguing about it.....legs in Humans are not necessarily anatomically the same as Legs in Horses and so on......whether it is a leg or an arm is defined by it's primary use, not it's anatomical make-up.
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And that's an interesting point. Anatomically all mammals can have 2 "legs" and two "arms" but primary usage wise some have 4 and some have two then?
 
Or that it has nothing to do with anatomy. And is primary use.

Why atomically is a cows front legs arms?
correct me if I'm wrong, but four legged creatures came first. So again if you are going to use pure anatomy which is pointless due to evolution. Then surely we have hands on our front legs.

But of course such a definition would be silly.
 
The "" were important in that sentence. I wasn't suggesting all mammals had arms in the human sense. I was suggesting anatomically all mammals had forelimbs that were (again) anatomically very similar to what humans call arms. Same with the "legs", anatomically hind limbs of mammals are very similar to what humans call legs.
 
Amp34 said:
And that's an interesting point. Anatomically all mammals can have 2 "legs" and two "arms" but primary usage wise some have 4 and some have two then?
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No, because collectively leg and arm are not strictly anatomical terms...they are general terms as to primary use.....anatomically each species is different, with similarities depending on how they evolved and specialised....hense a Horse has a Knee where a Human would have a Wrist, yet they both have metacarpals.....

By definition a quadruped has four 'legs' and a biped has two 'legs'....specificity beyond that is dependent on the particular species.....



Amp34 said:
The "" were important in that sentence. I wasn't suggesting all mammals had arms in the human sense. I was suggesting anatomically all mammals had forelimbs that were (again) anatomically very similar to what humans call arms. Same with the "legs", anatomically hind limbs of mammals are very similar to what humans call legs.
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In that case, each animal (or at least Mammal) has forelimbs and hindlimbs....however that doesn't define them as Arms and Legs as that is dependent on their primary use....Otherwise you could state that Whales had arms and legs, which they clearly do not.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/05/060523092737.htm

I like this because it talks about the Sonic Hedgehog gene which always makes me smile......
 
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Wow, this got embarrassingly pedantic.

To be honest, shame on anyone trying to imply something like a dog only has 2 legs, miserable pseudo-intellectualism :p
 
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