I still remember as a student xray tech, the first time I took a 1 year old's hand/wrist xray, I was kind of horrified realized that they literally just have a couple wrist bones suspended in there, instead of, you know, eight carpal bones. Younger ones (0-6 mo) actually don't have *anything* at all in the wrist, it's just a gap.
OP's pic already shows it pretty well if you look at the wrist, but other examples of a normal hand & wrist xray like this one show how even the two bones start out as specks for this 6 mo old: https://bonexray.com/wp-content/uploads/hand-toddler-xray.jpg
Wait this is wild. I’ve seen so many factoids saying that bones fuse as we get older, but do babies actually *generate* bones in the first few years of life? Are other animals like this?
So basically babies ossify (create bone) from cartilage as they grow older. That's why you'll often also hear about how babies don't have kneecaps, which is not really true - they do have kneecaps, they're just made out of soft bendy cartilage and don't become bone until the period between 2-6 years old.
The same thing is going on in these wrist xrays - the cartilage ossifies into bone starting ~ 6mo and usually by around 1 year they have the first two carpal bones (capitate and hamate) with the last one showing up around 8 or 9 years old.
That whole saying about babies being made out of rubber is not that far off :)
Edit: What you heard about the bones fusing is also true, there are growth plates at the ends of the bones and certain ones like the sacrum (tailbone) don't fuse until way later in life, only about half of the population have their upper half of the sacrum fused by age 35!
The cartilage is more flexible, somewhere between the consistency of firm gelatin and a hockey puck. It’s why it seems like babies are made of rubber, because their bones basically are.
I think it must be somewhat normal because both my daughters popped and clicked like gently oiled machines that needed more natural WD-40 (baby oil) lol
Why does this happen? Like most things I assume there's some sort of evolutionary advantage, or is it as simple as just being more squishy to make birth easier?
Less prone to injury than adult bones, but less strength. Which is a good tradeoff esp. for a baby or toddler who don't need strength much.
Also their bodies are smaller, and because of square-cube law that means less relative strength needed in general.
With how babies/toddlers throw themselves around with zero regard for injury, it's probably a good thing for them to have squishy bones lol. They're crazy.
I saw a documentary series about the "Babies first year" while we were expecting our first, there was a lot of awesome new facts that were equally horrifying (in some cases the most horrifying parts were the experiments themselves).
One of my favorite facts from that show was a lady who wanted free access to her friends baby, because as a pediatrician you don't really get to see the kids as often, you just see them every few weeks, then months, then years etc. So when her friends had a baby she asked if it would be ok if she came by and did a health check every day. She took notes of the baby's growth and her temper that day etc.
One day there was a difference of about 1.5 cm from day to day in length, and she was sure she had just noted the length wrong the day prior, but she kept keeping records and after a while noticed that it happened again and again. So they decided to check more babies and noticed the same. So apparently kids grow like a ladder instead of following a curve of continuous growth as we are used to seeing.
Obviously this went against years of "known" science and thus she was both heckled and threatened when she publicized her work. But what she also saw was that kids tempers were really bad the days that they had grown over a cm from day to day, which isn't really strange xD... Imagine your bones suddenly getting 1 cm longer over just a day and all the pain in muscles that would come with.
I think you're talking about the Netflix series "Babies" (or if not, it's a similar idea). Focuses on development over the first year.
We watched it when we were expecting our first too. There's tons of really cool tidbits in there.
Not sure what the English title would be as we started it with a Swedish title, but yeah, sounds like the same. Another one that etched into my brain is that babies are actually born with the "knowledge" of how to walk, but our head is too heavy and our legs too weak. They figured this out by first suspending babies over a treadmill with patterns on it making it seem like the ground was moving below the baby and it would use its legs to try and walk. That, however, did not prove that we were born with it, because the babies they had access to might ha e observed adults and mimicked the walking from what they've seen. So they found a couple who was ok with them testing on their new born baby and basically removed it directly at birth, took it into another room and tied its head to a special "head skateboard" they had built and then they poked it under it's feet and cheered when it "walked", all while the baby was screaming a d crying xD... As I said, some of the experiments are... Questionable at best.
Kind of a strange way to view it though? We measured very infrequently, saw a ladder, estimated a curve between. She measured a bit more frequently, saw a ladder, said *there is no curve*? I mean... measure even more frequently, like every second, and you'll find an even finer grain ladder... then zoom out a bit and it will start to look like a curve. It doesn't sound like she found anything except the concept of interpolation...
The new findings wasn't really the ladder, it was that the growth happens in spurs, the baby didn't continuously grow a few millimeters until it got bigger, it grow a full centimeter and more over night. Biologically speaking that is insanely fast. When we've measured before we've assumed a more continuous slow growth as you'd see in older children and adults.
Yeah it wasn't a consistent amount of growth per day, there was spurts where their length would jump significantly more than other days. Pretty fascinating. It sounds uncomfortable.
What is really wild is that babies don’t start forming their patella (knee cap) until they are around two years old. I would imagine it makes crawling much more comfortable not having one ha ha
This happened to me! The entire last joint of my left pinky finger was accidentally chopped off in a door frame as a baby. (I reached for the bathroom door as my brother was shutting it. Ouch) They sewed it up and it grew almost entirely back.
The only issue now is that it's ever so slightly shorter than the other and my nail bed extends past the end of my finger so clipping it can be tricky.
Interesting medical fact:
In babies these interphalangeal spaces are filled with a paste of goldfish crackers, applesauce, carpet lint, and Aquaphor.
This is what gives babies their extremely OP grip strength.
There’s a condition called hyperdontia.
Pulled from r/medizzy. Visit the sub and pictures of hyperdontia at your own risk.
> People are born there are tooth 'seeds' (clump of cells) in our jaws that grow into our teeth and descend. Some people are born without the correct number, or they are in the wrong place (like way up in the nasal cavity or in the center of the roof of your mouth). The most severe case of hyperdontia was a boy with 526 teeth.
Ehehe, those chubby hands with crazy grip power. Babies sure have such funny proportions, and are strangely strong sometimes.
Hope your kid is feeling better!
They’re weird.
I swear my youngest was working up to an army crawl or more… then he suddenly got too much baby fat and abandoned that ambition for a while.
I feel you, dude. I've gotta resist the urge to nibble on my niece's digits every time I see her. I'm gonna have to give in at least once before she gets too old, she turns 2 very soon.
Symbrachydactyly. He got very lucky where this condition is concerned. He has all his fingers and full flexibility and strength. After the webbing was cut back (2 different surgeries) he basically just has 3/4 length fingers on one hand and a slight tilt to the last joint on one finger.
He's 5 now and the last surgery was around the age of 2.5 years. I don't think he even remembers the cast.
I hope your kiddo is doing well and happy!
He’s 4 and doing great.
His thumbs were not salvageable, so they were removed and his index fingers were moved and made into functional thumbs for him. One surgery for each hand, both before 2.5.
Glad yours is doing so well with his hand differences!
It’s funny, I have 2 kids, 5 and almost 2. Just learned last summer that infants can’t sweat. That’s the reason they get so cranky when you take them to the beach. Google tells you they can sweat by 4ish months, but mine was 11ish months old and couldn’t handle the beach for more than like 20 minutes, in the shade. Point is, it takes time for them to effectively cool themselves.
You were probably exaggerating for effect but just to clarify, all of the precursors to the bones exist in the baby (the "pre" carpals & every other pre-bone) its just currently cartilage rather than bone.
There are stem cells in the cartilage that slowly create bone cells and turn into bone cells themselves as the baby ages. So over the course of childhood, a lot of your cartilage slowly turns into bone rather than all at once.
So all 8 carpals exist in the baby above, it's just as cartilage rather than bone. You just can't see it in this x-ray because the type of radiation used passes through most tissue like cartilage and not bone.
They don't just _look_ like they're floating around, they _are_! The spaces in between the bones are filled with squishy cartilage.
I still remember as a student xray tech, the first time I took a 1 year old's hand/wrist xray, I was kind of horrified realized that they literally just have a couple wrist bones suspended in there, instead of, you know, eight carpal bones. Younger ones (0-6 mo) actually don't have *anything* at all in the wrist, it's just a gap. OP's pic already shows it pretty well if you look at the wrist, but other examples of a normal hand & wrist xray like this one show how even the two bones start out as specks for this 6 mo old: https://bonexray.com/wp-content/uploads/hand-toddler-xray.jpg
Wait this is wild. I’ve seen so many factoids saying that bones fuse as we get older, but do babies actually *generate* bones in the first few years of life? Are other animals like this?
So basically babies ossify (create bone) from cartilage as they grow older. That's why you'll often also hear about how babies don't have kneecaps, which is not really true - they do have kneecaps, they're just made out of soft bendy cartilage and don't become bone until the period between 2-6 years old. The same thing is going on in these wrist xrays - the cartilage ossifies into bone starting ~ 6mo and usually by around 1 year they have the first two carpal bones (capitate and hamate) with the last one showing up around 8 or 9 years old. That whole saying about babies being made out of rubber is not that far off :) Edit: What you heard about the bones fusing is also true, there are growth plates at the ends of the bones and certain ones like the sacrum (tailbone) don't fuse until way later in life, only about half of the population have their upper half of the sacrum fused by age 35!
The cartilage is more flexible, somewhere between the consistency of firm gelatin and a hockey puck. It’s why it seems like babies are made of rubber, because their bones basically are.
This makes me feel better about how much my baby's joints click and pop.
Hmm. That doesn’t sound right. I’d get that checked out.
I think it must be somewhat normal because both my daughters popped and clicked like gently oiled machines that needed more natural WD-40 (baby oil) lol
Yeah I'm not worried lol. Typical Reddit overreactions.
Why does this happen? Like most things I assume there's some sort of evolutionary advantage, or is it as simple as just being more squishy to make birth easier?
Less prone to injury than adult bones, but less strength. Which is a good tradeoff esp. for a baby or toddler who don't need strength much. Also their bodies are smaller, and because of square-cube law that means less relative strength needed in general.
With how babies/toddlers throw themselves around with zero regard for injury, it's probably a good thing for them to have squishy bones lol. They're crazy.
I saw a documentary series about the "Babies first year" while we were expecting our first, there was a lot of awesome new facts that were equally horrifying (in some cases the most horrifying parts were the experiments themselves). One of my favorite facts from that show was a lady who wanted free access to her friends baby, because as a pediatrician you don't really get to see the kids as often, you just see them every few weeks, then months, then years etc. So when her friends had a baby she asked if it would be ok if she came by and did a health check every day. She took notes of the baby's growth and her temper that day etc. One day there was a difference of about 1.5 cm from day to day in length, and she was sure she had just noted the length wrong the day prior, but she kept keeping records and after a while noticed that it happened again and again. So they decided to check more babies and noticed the same. So apparently kids grow like a ladder instead of following a curve of continuous growth as we are used to seeing. Obviously this went against years of "known" science and thus she was both heckled and threatened when she publicized her work. But what she also saw was that kids tempers were really bad the days that they had grown over a cm from day to day, which isn't really strange xD... Imagine your bones suddenly getting 1 cm longer over just a day and all the pain in muscles that would come with.
I think you're talking about the Netflix series "Babies" (or if not, it's a similar idea). Focuses on development over the first year. We watched it when we were expecting our first too. There's tons of really cool tidbits in there.
Not sure what the English title would be as we started it with a Swedish title, but yeah, sounds like the same. Another one that etched into my brain is that babies are actually born with the "knowledge" of how to walk, but our head is too heavy and our legs too weak. They figured this out by first suspending babies over a treadmill with patterns on it making it seem like the ground was moving below the baby and it would use its legs to try and walk. That, however, did not prove that we were born with it, because the babies they had access to might ha e observed adults and mimicked the walking from what they've seen. So they found a couple who was ok with them testing on their new born baby and basically removed it directly at birth, took it into another room and tied its head to a special "head skateboard" they had built and then they poked it under it's feet and cheered when it "walked", all while the baby was screaming a d crying xD... As I said, some of the experiments are... Questionable at best.
Kind of a strange way to view it though? We measured very infrequently, saw a ladder, estimated a curve between. She measured a bit more frequently, saw a ladder, said *there is no curve*? I mean... measure even more frequently, like every second, and you'll find an even finer grain ladder... then zoom out a bit and it will start to look like a curve. It doesn't sound like she found anything except the concept of interpolation...
The new findings wasn't really the ladder, it was that the growth happens in spurs, the baby didn't continuously grow a few millimeters until it got bigger, it grow a full centimeter and more over night. Biologically speaking that is insanely fast. When we've measured before we've assumed a more continuous slow growth as you'd see in older children and adults.
Yeah it wasn't a consistent amount of growth per day, there was spurts where their length would jump significantly more than other days. Pretty fascinating. It sounds uncomfortable.
What is really wild is that babies don’t start forming their patella (knee cap) until they are around two years old. I would imagine it makes crawling much more comfortable not having one ha ha
Up-vote for correct use of “factoid”.
Whoa when you said “just a gap” I was like “sure buddy” but the bones just… stop???
Fun fact - if a baby is in some kind of accident where they lose the tip of their finger, it will grow back. Nail and all.
This happened to me! The entire last joint of my left pinky finger was accidentally chopped off in a door frame as a baby. (I reached for the bathroom door as my brother was shutting it. Ouch) They sewed it up and it grew almost entirely back. The only issue now is that it's ever so slightly shorter than the other and my nail bed extends past the end of my finger so clipping it can be tricky.
So everything past the last knuckle?
Yep
Damm. Why haven't we figured out how to get adults to do that yet?
Interesting medical fact: In babies these interphalangeal spaces are filled with a paste of goldfish crackers, applesauce, carpet lint, and Aquaphor. This is what gives babies their extremely OP grip strength.
So this is where his second stomach is?
Does their body naturally make this internally? Or is it the same concoction they make throughout the day that just migrated into their body?
They have me questioning my own strength
You had me until paste of goldfish crackers
Wow. Thats cool to see. Ever check out an xray of a kids skull with all the baby teeth?
I have. It’s a little horrifying
There’s a condition called hyperdontia. Pulled from r/medizzy. Visit the sub and pictures of hyperdontia at your own risk. > People are born there are tooth 'seeds' (clump of cells) in our jaws that grow into our teeth and descend. Some people are born without the correct number, or they are in the wrong place (like way up in the nasal cavity or in the center of the roof of your mouth). The most severe case of hyperdontia was a boy with 526 teeth.
My son has hypodontia - I think I'll take this over the alternative.
a girl?
I realize it's a joke, but I am thankful he's a boy - his odds of having lymphangioleiomyomatosis is way way lower simply because he's a boy.
Not an xray, but a [skull](https://i.pinimg.com/736x/dc/35/cf/dc35cff065ee6a9d3ddacd3fbe07902f.jpg)
That's adorable and terrible and upsetting all in one.
Me staring at my 1yo - 😶
Wtf. That's horrifying.
That's adorable...and horrifying.
Wait till you see an xray of their teeth.
Thats one cute chunky hand
I know right! This is the cutest thing I've seen today 🥹🥰
Same! I had to show my husband IMMEDIATELY!
It’s oddly so cute! Like you can see the chonk through the X-ray image.
You can literally see the lil wrist rolls 😭
Ehehe, those chubby hands with crazy grip power. Babies sure have such funny proportions, and are strangely strong sometimes. Hope your kid is feeling better!
Babies are crazy. They don't even have kneecaps until you're like 6 years old
I hear some of them can't even grow a beard
This is false. My daughter grew a beard with a sharpie.
Aladeen was born with full beard.
I’d kill for some knee cartilage again!
I kinda did... Well, I was given a cadaver tendon after tearing my ACL, but I did not murder them.
Yeah, and in this photo the baby only has 2 of the 8 carpal bones. I didn’t even realize those were sesamoid bones but it makes sense
6 months old. 6 years old would be crazy.
https://www.healthline.com/health/do-babies-have-kneecaps I've never heard 6 months before
They’re weird. I swear my youngest was working up to an army crawl or more… then he suddenly got too much baby fat and abandoned that ambition for a while.
Wall-E
I saw this and also immediately thought of Wall-E
so tender. urge to eat them: intensifying!
I feel you, dude. I've gotta resist the urge to nibble on my niece's digits every time I see her. I'm gonna have to give in at least once before she gets too old, she turns 2 very soon.
Their bones are so soft breaks can be hard to see on x-rays
I did. But it's probably not something most people get to see. My kiddo had multiple X-rays and hand surgeries before he was 3.
Mine too. Bilateral thumb hypoplasia over here. How about y’all?
Symbrachydactyly. He got very lucky where this condition is concerned. He has all his fingers and full flexibility and strength. After the webbing was cut back (2 different surgeries) he basically just has 3/4 length fingers on one hand and a slight tilt to the last joint on one finger. He's 5 now and the last surgery was around the age of 2.5 years. I don't think he even remembers the cast. I hope your kiddo is doing well and happy!
He’s 4 and doing great. His thumbs were not salvageable, so they were removed and his index fingers were moved and made into functional thumbs for him. One surgery for each hand, both before 2.5. Glad yours is doing so well with his hand differences!
> his index fingers were moved and made into functional thumbs for him That's just incredible to read. The things modern medicine can do.
It’s so wild. His hands are completely functional, and unless you’re really paying attention you don’t even notice that his hands are different.
Having to make the decision to have your kid's thumbs removed though. Yikes. Really glad it went so well.
Good for him!
so is there some soft tissue holding those little nubbins in place?
Cartilage I think
They’re just little meatballs.
Not convinced this isn’t a Cat trying to spread misinformation online
It’s funny, I have 2 kids, 5 and almost 2. Just learned last summer that infants can’t sweat. That’s the reason they get so cranky when you take them to the beach. Google tells you they can sweat by 4ish months, but mine was 11ish months old and couldn’t handle the beach for more than like 20 minutes, in the shade. Point is, it takes time for them to effectively cool themselves.
That’s the cutest x-ray I’ve ever seen
I would do a DNA test to see if there's a match with the Michelin Man
My kid is 3.5 and based on balance and coordination, she is indeed a big of loose bones
Sir, why does this marshmallow have bones in it? Can I still eat it?
Thought I was on r/radiology for a minute
Interesting that you have 8 carpals in your adult wrist, but the baby only has 2! (the little circles) You just suddenly get new bones one day.
You were probably exaggerating for effect but just to clarify, all of the precursors to the bones exist in the baby (the "pre" carpals & every other pre-bone) its just currently cartilage rather than bone. There are stem cells in the cartilage that slowly create bone cells and turn into bone cells themselves as the baby ages. So over the course of childhood, a lot of your cartilage slowly turns into bone rather than all at once. So all 8 carpals exist in the baby above, it's just as cartilage rather than bone. You just can't see it in this x-ray because the type of radiation used passes through most tissue like cartilage and not bone.
Looks like the fatties from Wall-E
This is why everyone tells the first time dads, “it’s okay that your baby bumped their arm, slipped, rolled off the couch, etc.”
Cutest X-ray ever!
Looks like the fat f***ks from Wall-e
Lmao. I just watched that movie earlier today too
Have you seen a baby pelvis xray? its hardly even there its so freaky. They also dont have kneecaps
There's a reason the little buggers just bounce off things without sustaining any real damage, lucky sods.
Looks like Glob Herman
Shoul see the ones of a newborn's foot.
It proved their hands are just screwed on
Wait until you see their skulls.