More muscle than Arnie . . .
QUESTION Do caterpillars have more muscle groups than any other creature?
The caterpillar is the muscle king of the insect — and probably the animal — world.
Some large caterpillar species have 4,000 muscles. each abdominal segment has been shown to contain 70 muscles. To put that into perspective, humans have just 629 muscles, though they are far more specialised.
The caterpillar’s large number of muscles is related to the way it moves.
Vertebrates have skeletons — hard structures against which muscles can contract.
Soft-bodied animals, such as octopuses and earthworms, use hydrostatic pressure to move about: they harden their bodies by pressurising their internal fluids, which functions as a ‘skeleton’.
Caterpillars can’t do this. Like any other insect, they have six true legs on their thorax, right behind their head. In most cases, however, these don’t aid in locomotion. Instead caterpillars use abdominal appendages called prolegs.
These can’t propel the creature forward, but are used as anchors to bind the caterpillar to a rigid substrate such as a twig. This acts as an external skeleton around which the caterpillar can exert its many muscles to crawl or inch along.
Mammals have far fewer muscles than insects. even the largest, the African bush elephant, has only 394.
The 18th- century French anatomist George Cuvier made the wild claim that the elephant’s trunk contains 40,000 muscles, but these could better be described as fascicles, which are bundles of muscle fibre.
Modern anatomists recognise seven major muscle groups in the elephant trunk, each containing 50,000 to 100,000 fascicles. The trunk incorporates the nose and upper lip, with two nostrils running through its full length.
It is an incredibly sophisticated organ that is able to perform the most precise tasks, such as picking up a needle from the ground or untying a knot, but it can also lift more than 43st.
Ruth Finch, Oxford.
QUESTION Did Michelangelo have a sideline selling fake cupids?
MICHEL ANGELO did sculpt and sell a fake cupid at least once.
Great works such as the statue of David and the frescoes in the Sistine Chapel attest Michelangelo’s artistic genius. however, despite working under the tutelage of the most respected sculptors of the time and having the patronage of Lorenzo de Medici, the young Michelangelo was strapped for cash.
Instead of commissioning new work, Renaissance patrons were more interested in acquiring the classical sculptures that were being unearthed at the time. Consequently, there was a lively black market in fakes.
In 1495, Michelangelo sculpted Sleeping Cupid to demonstrate he was able to improve on classical sculpture, but also to make some money.
The statue was made to look aged using similar methods employed by a modern forger: it was buried in acidic soil, probably in a vineyard, to give the marble a patina of age.
It was passed off as a genuine antiquity and sold to Roman Cardinal Raffaelle Riario of San Giorgio for 200 ducats, a good sum at the time.
Just who committed the crime is uncertain. Michelangelo’s biographer Ascanio Condivi claimed the sale was the idea of Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco, a minor member of the Medici family. Giorgio Vasari, the great art historian of the era, blamed Lorenzo’s dealer, Baldassarre del Milanese. however, it seems probable that the artist, desperate for money, cooked up the idea.
When the cardinal learned of the forgery, he demanded his money back from the dealer. however, he was so impressed by Michelangelo’s talent that he didn’t press charges and even allowed him to keep his percentage of the sale, a paltry 30 ducats.
It turned out to be Michelangelo’s big break. The cardinal invited him to Rome, where his career blossomed.
The Sleeping Cupid is believed to have changed hands several times until it was destroyed in the 1698 fire at Whitehall Palace in London.
Jonathan Munro, Gullane, East Lothian.
QUESTION Pompey the Great carried a globe to signify the Earth. Is this the earliest such depiction of the world?
PoMPey the Great was a Roman military and political leader who died in 48 BC. he was not the first to see the earth as a globe. From the 6th century BC, the Ancient Greeks believed in a spherical earth.
Aristotle said our planet must be round since its shadow, cast upon the Moon during a lunar eclipse, is circular, but he did not know how big the earth was.
In 240 BC, eratosthenes of Cyrene calculated the earth’s circumference. he noted that at midday on the summer solstice, the sun shone vertically down a well at Syene, now Aswan, in southern egypt, illuminating the bottom.
At the same time, an obelisk at Alexandria in northern egypt cast a shadow at an angle of 7 degrees to the vertical.
Knowing the distance between Alexandria and Syene, he was able to calculate the earth’s circumference as 46,225 km, which is only 15 per cent out. not bad for 240 BC.
David Sharp, Hoddesdon, Herts. The Bible book of Isaiah, written between 778 and 732 BC — many hundreds of years before the time of Pompey the Great — states in chapter 40 verse 22: ‘There is one who dwells above the circle of the earth.’
Beverley Friend, Wisbech, Cambs.
IS THERE a question to which you have always wanted to know the answer? Or do you know the answer to a question raised here? Send your questions and answers to: Charles Legge, Answers To Correspondents, Daily Mail, 2 Derry Street, London, W8 5TT. You can also email them to charles.legge@dailymail.co.uk. A selection will be published, but we are not able to enter into individual correspondence.