If you like to surf the Internet, you may have seen a saying that we Chinese generally have two fewer bones than Europeans and Americans. The human skeleton is not a whole. It is made up of many fragments linked by ligaments and cartilage. Modern anatomy generally believes that the adult skeleton is usually composed of 206 small bones. However, those who hold the above view believe that Chinese people only have 204 bones.

Picture: The human skeleton is divided into these parts, most of which are concentrated in the hands and feet.

This statement has been circulating for a long time. We can find countless related articles and videos on the Internet, but it is difficult to find whether it is supported by scientists or where the information comes from.

Based on the data provided by some articles, I carefully searched for relevant documents, and I actually found it. This statement should come from an article in Acta Anatomy in August 1963 - "Observation on the Number of the Third, Fourth and Fifth Toe Bones of Chinese People".

The author of the article is Wan Yubi of the Third Military Medical University. He used X-rays to examine the left and right feet of 265 people of different ages and genders (31 of them were corpses).

Picture: Screenshot of charts from Wan Yubi’s related articles

The results found that the proportion of Chinese people's little toes with only two bones is quite high, accounting for about 73.34%. The proportion of women's little toes is higher than that of men.

According to the 206 bones of human beings, the total number of bones in the ten toes of two feet is 28 bones, because except for the big toe which only has 2 bones, the other four toes are all considered to have 3 bones.

Wan Yubi’s research pointed out that most Chinese people actually have only two bones in their fifth toe (little toe).The middle phalanx in the middle is missing, and the left and right feet together are the legendary two missing bones.

Picture: Screenshot of Wan Yubi’s related articles

We don’t need to doubt the reliability of the 1963 study here, because the number of bones can be easily observed under X-rays, and there should be no problems with the research data.

It's just that this data doesn't explain anything, it's completely normal.

Wan Yubi's research also observed the number of bones in the third and fourth toes. In fact, many people have only two bones in these two toes, and the probabilities are 3.34% and 13.18% respectively.

After Wan Yubi, another researcher observed the number of third, fourth, and fifth toe bones of Europeans, British, and Japanese, and the number of samples sampled was much larger than that of Wan Yubi.

The results show that not everyone in Europe has three bones in their little toes. About 37% of Europeans have only two bones in their little toes, while the probability for British people is 42.53%, and the Japanese ratio is 73.5% - almost the same as us.

It can be known from these results that although the idea of ​​206 human skeletons is deeply rooted in the hearts of the people, individual and regional differences certainly exist - humans will have various numbers of bones.

You may be curious,Why does this difference occur?

Since these differences exist between different races, discussions on the Internet often use the term "more evolution" to describe these differences, but in fact there is definitely no such thing as "more evolution". At most, each person is more adaptable to their own environment.

As for the reason why East Asians (I only found relevant research on Chinese and Japanese people) generally have one less bone in their little toes, some people think it is the result of natural selection.

With an extra section on the little toe, it becomes more flexible, providing better support and grip.

Because many Europeans live in relatively cold places, their bodies are relatively larger, so more people have an extra phalanx in their little toes.

In addition, some people believe that agriculture has been more developed in East Asia for a long time, so people living here do not need more flexible feet to grip the ground in order to run and hunt better.

However, these are (probably) just claims circulating on the Internet, and I have not found relevant research to prove these views using scientific methods.

In fact, even without any adaptive advantage or natural selection, it is normal for different numbers of toe bones to appear in different areas. There is a special hypothesis to explain this phenomenon——neutral hypothesis.

This hypothesis holds that the same species has evolved different characteristics in different regions, but these characteristics have no obvious benefits or obvious disadvantages to the organism. They are purely differences that occur after reducing genetic exchange between each other.

Regarding the differences between the little toes of East Asians and Europeans, many people also believe that this is caused by neutral genes, which have no advantages or disadvantages.

In fact, there are some "neutral" differences among Homo sapiens in different regions, such as fat distribution. There are some differences in fat distribution between blacks, whites and yellows, but it is difficult to say where these differences are specifically adapted to what.

at last

The human skeleton is actually quite interesting. Its number actually changes over time. Usually, a baby has 270 bones when he is born, and then some bones will fuse as he grows, eventually reducing to 204 or 206. Of course, it may be other numbers.