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’. [edit] Whales do not have leg bones. Anyway, the song was right. (Shark skeletons are mostly cartilage. iStockphoto. This is a problem for evolutionary accounts of function. But a popular image of a surfacing beluga has for years created the curious illusion of a whale with legs and knees. 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. Few animal traits are trotted out as illustrations of evolution as often as the whale’s supposed vestigial hip bones. 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 image, which excites the web from time to time, has recently turned up again. On these accounts, the function of the whale's hip bones is something like connecting up with the whale's leg bones. 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. That's because evolutionary accounts of function are historical. 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. They do have certain bones in the hinder part of their bodies, but they do not use them for walking or locomotion. Also, there's a theory about whales being evolved from wolf-like creatures. Beluga Whale 'Knees' Are Going Viral but, Of Course, Whales Don't Have Legs. Why do whales have leg bones? Snakes and whales do not have hind limbs. By Tim Marcin On 6/7/18 at 1:47 PM EDT. Maybe the person that was thinking cartilage was thinking about sharks.) Whale skeletons have a long vertebrae (back-bone) like all vertebrate animals, including fish. 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 though they live in the water. Hats off to your work in showing the flaws of evolution! Scientists have proven that these animals walked the earth as land mammals about 175 million years ago. But unlike fish, they have large ribs around their lungs, and the bones inside their flippers have five fingers exactly as do human hands. If they didn't they would've been ginormous jellyfish. Within a few million years, those leg bones were pretty much gone, too. Whales have real bones. 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. Beluga whales aren't hiding legs under their thick, rubbery skin. 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? Scientists believe these are vestigial remnants of what were once hind legs. Whales also contain several small bones floating down toward their tails. Real bones made with real calcium. The whales with big hip bones also tended to have big testicles and big penises. But lacking legs, whales have no use for hip bones, rendering these structures without function in the present. 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