Why you shouldn't declaw tigers or other big cats

Declawing house cats to keep them from scratching people and furniture is controversial—and even banned in some countries and areas in the U.S.—but the practice is not limited to house cats. In a new study, researchers ...

New species of Hero Shrew found in equatorial Africa

Scientists at Chicago's Field Museum and international collaborators have described a new species of Hero Shrew – the mammal with the most bizarre lower spine on Earth. The interlocking vertebrae of the Hero Shrew render ...

Angry bird's unique wing weapon revealed

(Phys.org) —The solitaire bird was a giant flightless pigeon that, like its closest relative the dodo, became extinct soon after European explorers settled in its habitat. It had a strange knob-like ball on its wing and ...

Researchers build robotic bat wing (w/ video)

The strong, flapping flight of bats offers great possibilities for the design of small aircraft, among other applications. By building a robotic bat wing, Brown researchers have uncovered flight secrets of real bats: the ...

Muscle

Muscle (from Latin musculus, diminutive of mus "mouse") is a contractile tissue of animals and is derived from the mesodermal layer of embryonic germ cells. Muscle cells contain contractile filaments that move past each other and change the size of the cell. They are classified as skeletal, cardiac, or smooth muscles. Their function is to produce force and cause motion. Muscles can cause either locomotion of the organism itself or movement of internal organs. Cardiac and smooth muscle contraction occurs without conscious thought and is necessary for survival. Examples are the contraction of the heart and peristalsis which pushes food through the digestive system. Voluntary contraction of the skeletal muscles is used to move the body and can be finely controlled. Examples are movements of the eye, or gross movements like the quadriceps muscle of the thigh. There are two broad types of voluntary muscle fibers: slow twitch and fast twitch. Slow twitch fibers contract for long periods of time but with little force while fast twitch fibers contract quickly and powerfully but fatigue very rapidly.

Muscles are predominately powered by the oxidation of fats and carbohydrates, but anaerobic chemical reactions are also used, particularly by fast twitch fibers. These chemical reactions produce adenosine triphosphate (ATP) molecules which are used to power the movement of the myosin heads.

This text uses material from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA