I was talking to a fellow boarder about my short backed Arab/Hano cross mare and my struggles with saddle fitting. She reminded me that Arabs have 2 fewer vertebrae, and that made me wonder about crosses- do they have one less vertebrae, or like so many things, “it depends”.
Does anyone here have any info or thoughts about this?
It depends.
Not all Arabs have fewer lumbar vertebrae, and some other breeds occasionally have variations on the theme.
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Sorry, Ghazzu, the photo is too small to read.
I just checked my facts, tho- my friend was wrong. Arabs may have 1 less lumbar vertebra (5 vs 6) and 16 rather than 18 in the tail. They also have one less pair of ribs!
See if this works–it’s from an old Powerpoint from my Equine A&P teaching days.
Extracted pages from Musculoskeletal_System_II.pdf (24.4 KB)
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Thank you- much better.
That is really interesting- I wonder if other mammalian species have that much variation in # of lumbar vertebrae and ribs? I know that it would be very unusual in humans!
There’s apparently a fair amount of variation in equine lumbar vertebrae. IIRC, Kevin Haussler has published some papers on the subject.
Here’s one: https://europepmc.org/abstract/med/9328659
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Actually, about 10 percent of people have an extra lumbar vertebrae. I learned this recently because I had an x-ray and it was discovered that I have an extra. I wanted to know how weird it was :lol:
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There you go! I was wrong again!
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Just misinformed.
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