(Part of discussion from Science Of Motion private IHTC group)

This is the picture of the ribs and muscles that I was talking about. We put it in black and white so you can eat your breakfast quietly. The specimen lays on its right side on the table. The vertebral column is on the right side of the picture. The head is toward the top of the frame. What you can see is the inside of the ribs. This is the left wall composed by the ribs and muscles. The wall has been pulled back by the student. On the left side is the part of the ribs attached to the sternum. On the right side, the ribs have been cut at about 10 inches from the vertebrae, You have on the right side a clear view of the thickness of the abdominal wall. It is in fact incredibly thin. Before becoming a specimen, this horse was standing still, the thin layer of muscles than you can see between the ribs was involved in stabilizing the internal organs, breathing and bending. You have in front of your eyes the reality. It is difficult, looking at the thin wall formed by the muscles and the ribs to give any credit to the stretching theories. There is nothing there and considering that the outside of the bend compensate for the bending, the work of the muscles situated on the outside are more likely to quickly contract eccentrically. Later in the necropsy room, we manipulated the vertebral column and you will see how lateral bending of the neck induces inverted rotation of the thoracic vertebrae. JLC   

Science Of Motion

Jean Luc Cornille

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