This question was asked by a child, but it’s pretty gross:

“What would I look like if I didn’t have a skeleton?”

Without connections to bones to keep muscles stretched, would they contract making arms and legs twice as short? If suspended in water, would bodily proportions roughly be conserved? Could a person (or some other vertebrate) live without a bony skeleton?

mollwollfumble said:

This question was asked by a child, but it’s pretty gross:

“What would I look like if I didn’t have a skeleton?”

Without connections to bones to keep muscles stretched, would they contract making arms and legs twice as short? If suspended in water, would bodily proportions roughly be conserved? Could a person (or some other vertebrate) live without a bony skeleton?

Hell no. Just from my own experience with dislodged musculature, there is too much tension involved. Proprioception requires a degree of tension on muscle strands to maintain proprioceptive symmetry. The protective reflex of a muscle is to bunch and cramp, which would be their immediate response were the bones removed. Definitely a don’t try this at home experiment.

furious said:

Or like hawking? Or like ballistics gel. At least it would be a chinless wonder.
In one dystopian sci-fi novel a pool of many boneless humans participated in a perpetual orgy.

Hell no. Just from my own experience with dislodged musculature, there is too much tension involved. Proprioception requires a degree of tension on muscle strands to maintain proprioceptive symmetry. The protective reflex of a muscle is to bunch and cramp, which would be their immediate response were the bones removed. Definitely a don’t try this at home experiment.

Bunch and cramp, that’s what I thought. Not pleasant.

mollwollfumble said:

Could a person (or some other vertebrate) live without a bony skeleton?

Well there are animals without bony skeletons, so the answer could be yes.

But if you mean could a vertebrate survive if its skeleton suddenly disappeared, the answer must surely be no.

So not stretchy like Mr Fantastic or Elastigirl.

Some vertebrates cope quite well without bones, the sharks and rays.

The Rev Dodgson said:

mollwollfumble said:

Could a person (or some other vertebrate) live without a bony skeleton?

Well there are animals without bony skeletons, so the answer could be yes.

But if you mean could a vertebrate survive if its skeleton suddenly disappeared, the answer must surely be no.

Wouldn’t we become paralysed as the spine is gone and various organs shut down as no signals travel to and from the brain

Cymek said:

The Rev Dodgson said:

mollwollfumble said:

Could a person (or some other vertebrate) live without a bony skeleton?

Well there are animals without bony skeletons, so the answer could be yes.

But if you mean could a vertebrate survive if its skeleton suddenly disappeared, the answer must surely be no.

Wouldn’t we become paralysed as the spine is gone and various organs shut down as no signals travel to and from the brain

Presumably the nerves would be still there but without the protection and routing provided by bones they’d be all over the place.