Legs



         


In zoological anatomy, a leg is any one of the parts of an animal's body that (in most legged species and at most times) separate the rest of the body from the ground, and are used for locomotion.

Legs are most common in one of the even-numbered quantities of 2 or 4 (in vertebrates), or 6, 8, or 12 (in arthropods); the legs of centipedes and millipedes) are much more numerous (but seldom exactly a hundred or a thousand as their names might suggest).

A two-legged animal is a biped.
A four-legged animal is a quadruped.

The anatomy of the human leg hints at the shared characteristics of tetropod legs (and to some extent wings and arms), and the requirements for leg anatomies in general.



In an extended sense, a leg is any part of an object that supports it off the ground. An example is the legs of a table or a chair.






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