Critical Thinking Activities - Chapter 48

Question 1. Most land animals with exoskeletons are smaller than the volume of a mouse, and most vertebrates are larger than a mouse (marine invertebrates can be somewhat bigger). What keeps an insect with an exoskeleton from being as big as a horse?

Question 2. Bone gains its rigidity from brick-hard deposits amidst living cells. Yet we cannot build a large stone skyscraper from a small stone house without breaking the house apart. Yet our bones grow from small hard bones to large hard bones without ever breaking apart into soft vulnerable tissue. How is that accomplished?

Answers are available to instructors in the Instructor's Manual.
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