Tails

Tails

Are there bones in tails?

You think I'm joking, but I'm totally serious. It took me forever to figure out FOR SURE (at least, for sure enough for me) if dogs had bones in their tails. Google really failed me yesterday. How?

1. I Googled "dog bones." That was obviously a bad search. Next.

2. I Googled "dog x-ray." Apparently a lot of people like to have their computer wallpapers set as the x-ray of a dog. Weird? Just me? Definitely not. Computer wallpaper sites are not definitive sources, though, so my question still stands.

3. "Dog skeletal system." Much more helpful, but then I started questioning whether the tail bones in the pictures were really cartilage, because 1. people sometimes draw skeletons with attached cartilage and it looks like bone even if it's not, 2. x-rays can show cartilage, and 3. dog tails just don't feel bony.

4. "Broken dog tail." Because in my mind, right, if your dog can have a broken tail, that means that there are bones in there to break! Genius! Except that the only hits I got were hits from Yahoo answers asking "My dog is wagging weird and its tail is bent and it's sad. Is its tail broken?" and that is obviously not a good source to be looking at.

5. Wikipedia. ALL THEY TELL ME IS THAT THERE ARE DIFFERENT KINDS OF TAILS. Straight tails, bushy tails, droopy tails. I got more information about bones in HUMAN tails on Wikipedia than information about dog tails. PLUS Wikipedia brings up how to dock a dog's tail, which makes me even more confused because how do you dock a tail if there are bones in it?

So what did I learn? I learned that pig tails have bones.

(via Nose to Tail at Home)

So, I mean, if even tiny curly PIG tails have bones, that means dogs HAVE to have bones in their tails. Right?

Good enough for me. I'm going to bed.