Post #13782

“Tentacles” on foals’ hooves: Why is this necessary? So, I don’t understand, where are the hooves? Is this a mutant foal that has developed Lafkrautian tentacles, a beast straight out of a horror movie? But no. No matter how strange (and disgusting) these processes may look, their presence is an absolute norm. So, imagine for a moment that you are a horse embryo, and you, like any normal embryo, plan to be born at the time set by nature. There's just one problem. Since the world is an extremely dangerous place, you need to learn to walk within the first hour after birth, and here you cannot do without hard and durable hooves. But if you start your journey through the birth canal right in keratin slippers, then it will most likely end badly for both you and your mother. Internal organs are extremely delicate and vulnerable, so one awkward move and your life’s journey will be interrupted before it even begins. But you don’t want that, right? And here shoe covers, scientifically called the hoof capsule or eponychium, come to your aid. In essence, these are just leathery growths, a shapeless mass of epithelial cells. It was the last to form, and only in the second half of pregnancy did normal structured epithelium begin to appear inside it. However, the eponychium itself persists until birth. And then it peels off and wears off in the first minutes of walking, thereby exposing the hidden hooves. After all, this is ordinary skin, soft and vulnerable. At the same time, the babies themselves feel only a slight itch. After all, there are practically no blood vessels or nerve endings in the hoof capsule. In this elegant way, nature solved two problems at once: it protected the mother and gave the child the opportunity to quickly get back on his feet. Moreover, this method is far from new; absolutely all ungulates have eponychium, except for whales (yes, whales are cetacean-ungulates!), which don’t need it! Author: Yaroslav Ilyin 🏀 Hit the hoop and get an NFT gift — https://t.me/BasketbolX_bot