We're now going to learn how to identify different types of bones, and we're going to start by just saying that bones are characterized based on their shape. Now eventually, you're going to learn how to identify all the different bones in the body individually. We're not there yet. Right now, we just want to be able to pick up a bone and put it into one of these 5 categories based on shape. So let's take a look.
We have this anatomical model. We can see the skeleton, and then we have 5 bones pulled out as an example. Let's go through each one. First up, we have a long bone. And as our example bone here, we can see the humerus.
The humerus is your upper arm bone. A long bone is going to be shaped much like a rod. And by that, I mean, it has a shaft and then it also has these expanded ends. So when you look at the humerus, you can see the shaft and the 2 expanded ends on each end. Now, this is often like the type of bone that a kid will draw.
It's sort of the classic bone shape is a long bone, shaft with expanded ends. Now importantly, not all long bones are long. The bones of your fingers and toes, those are long bones, even though the bones are quite short. They're called long bones because of their shape. They have a shaft and widened ends.
Long bones, you're going to find in your arms and your legs. Okay. That brings us to the short bones. The short bones also based on shape, They are going to be roughly, we're going to say cube shaped here. You might say sphere shaped.
Sometimes I just sort of say lump shaped. Now, of course, every short bone is very specifically shaped based on what bone it is, where it is, and what it does. But because they're all sort of just these small sort of lump shaped bones, they tend to be the hardest bones to identify individually one from another in a disarticulated skeleton. Short bones, you're gonna find in the wrists and the ankles, the car
