Your spine, or backbone, is your body’s central support structure. It connects different parts of your musculoskeletal system. Your spine helps you sit, stand, walk, twist and bend. Back injuries, spinal cord conditions and other problems can damage the spine and cause back pain.

It measures about 12 cm at birth, 18 cm at 5 years of age, and about 27 cm on average at skeletal maturity. In normal children, the longitudinal growth of the thoracic spine is approximately 1.3 cm/year between birth and 5 years, 0.7 cm/year between the ages of 5 and 10, and 1.1 cm/year during puberty.

Here are suggestions culled from How to Grow a Backbone, along with examples that I’ve inserted to help you relate it to the academic environment.

1. Observe and assess your environment.
2. Observe others and yourself.
3. Take notes.
4. Mind map.
5. Become clear on decisions you need to make, and then make them.

A backbone is a symbol of strength in character, an unwillingness to be used or taken for granted, and a firm commitment to uphold one’s decisions and feelings. We’ve all seen and heard of people who have a backbone; they are the strong ones, the ones who get what they want. Do you feel taken advantage of?

having no spine or backbone. having a weak spine; limp. without moral force, resolution, or courage; feeble: a spineless, lily-livered coward.

Answer. COLOSSAL SQUID is the largest invertebrate i.e. animal without backbone.

Some animals without backbones have shells or hard body coverings. This helps them stay safe. Some animals without backbones have no shells. They have soft bodies.

Narwhal tusks

Do other animals have ivory? Only elephant tusks have a cross-hatch pattern when viewed in cross-section, and the term ivory is generally only applied to this material. Rhino horns are made from keratin, the same substance that is found in human hair and fingernails.

The group found that 70 percent of respondents thought that ivory falls harmlessly out of elephants’ mouths, just like a child losing a tooth, Nuwer reported. Unlike an elephant’s tusks, rhino horns do grow back. These horns are made of keratin, the same substance that makes up fingernails and hair.

Q: What makes ivory so precious? It has no intrinsic value, but its cultural uses make ivory highly prized. In Africa, it has been a status symbol for millennia because it comes from elephants, a highly respected animal, and because it is fairly easy to carve into works of art.

Whereas rhino horns are made of keratin, elephants tusks are composed of ivory which is not dissimilar from human teeth.

There is a nerve that runs well down the length of an elephant’s tusk. Cutting the tusk off would be painful, similar to you breaking a tooth. Remember that an elephant tusk is a modified incisor. Cutting beyond the nerve would still leave a third of the tusk in place.

Rhino horn is made up primarily of keratin – a protein found in hair, fingernails, and animal hooves. When carved and polished, horn takes on a translucence and luster that increase as the object ages.

With only 40,000-50,000 left in the wild, the species is classified as endangered. And it is critical to conserve both African and Asian elephants since they play such a vital role in their ecosystems as well as contributing towards tourism and community incomes in many areas.

Tusks. The tusks of an elephant are modified second incisors in the upper jaw. They replace deciduous milk teeth at 6–12 months of age and grow continuously at about 17 cm (7 in) a year.

“When ants are well organised, they can kill an elephant”.