If they didn't they would've been ginormous jellyfish. Why do whales have leg bones? But unlike fish, they have large ribs around their lungs, and the bones inside their flippers have five fingers exactly as do human hands. (Shark skeletons are mostly cartilage. Beluga Whale 'Knees' Are Going Viral but, Of Course, Whales Don't Have Legs. That's because evolutionary accounts of function are historical. Few animal traits are trotted out as illustrations of evolution as often as the whale’s supposed vestigial hip bones. Scientists have proven that these animals walked the earth as land mammals about 175 million years ago. But lacking legs, whales have no use for hip bones, rendering these structures without function in the present. [edit] Whales do not have leg bones. Whale bones are on display in many museums and can be found on many beaches where a dead whale washed ashore or maybe where a beached whale died. Do whales have leg ‘genes’ Published: 27 June 2020 (GMT+10) Joshua S. wrote to us asking if it is true that whales have ‘leg genes’. They do have certain bones in the hinder part of their bodies, but they do not use them for walking or locomotion. Whales also contain several small bones floating down toward their tails. By Tim Marcin On 6/7/18 at 1:47 PM EDT. Whale skeletons have a long vertebrae (back-bone) like all vertebrate animals, including fish. But a popular image of a surfacing beluga has for years created the curious illusion of a whale with legs and knees. Maybe the person that was thinking cartilage was thinking about sharks.) Snakes and whales do not have hind limbs. The image, which excites the web from time to time, has recently turned up again. Defenders of evolution ask why else would a whale, which has no hind limbs, have hip bones unless they are all that remains of an ancient, land-walking, whale ancestor? Within a few million years, those leg bones were pretty much gone, too. Their big bodies need some solid base to keep together such big mass, even though they live in the water. On these accounts, the function of the whale's hip bones is something like connecting up with the whale's leg bones. Also, there's a theory about whales being evolved from wolf-like creatures. Beluga whales aren't hiding legs under their thick, rubbery skin. The fact that whales have pelvic and leg bones indicates that: A. they probably evolved from fish B. ancestral whales had legs C. whales should have functional legs D. having a pelvis is advantageous E. whales did not evolve by natural selection The skeleton inside a whale's flipper looks like a version of a human hand; containing a shoulder, upper arm bone, lower arm bones, wrist bones and phalanges, or finger-type bones. iStockphoto. Hats off to your work in showing the flaws of evolution! Real bones made with real calcium. Whales have real bones. Scientists believe these are vestigial remnants of what were once hind legs. Anyway, the song was right. The whales with big hip bones also tended to have big testicles and big penises. I wanted to ask: Is there any truth to the claim that whales possess genes for hind legs but are not expressed or are dormant in whales. When their weight became too heavy for them to run and catch animals for food they gradually started drifting towards the ocean in search of fish for food and as time went on permanently became sea mammals. This is a problem for evolutionary accounts of function. The closest is some small bones that serve as anchorage points for the reproductive organs and on the basis of evolutionary theory these are interpreted as remains of the pelvis and hind limbs. What evolutionists claim is that these bones are vestigial organs that used to be hind limbs and they lost the use of them. Their big bodies need some solid base to keep together such big mass, even they... 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