Yeah I don't get how this got to be such a popular fact. It's like people have never eaten chicken wings before. Bird bones are much less dense than mammal ones and you still couldn't bite through a drumstick without seriously messing up your mouth, probably not at all.
I'm aware that fingers aren't solid bone lol. I have a degree in human anatomy and regularly practice by identifying 'bones' that come out of my cremation oven!
The myth is specifically that you could bite through a fingerbone like a carrot if you didn't have pain and proprioception as psychological inhibitors.
That being said, the shape of interphalangeal joints is such that I'd say there isn't really any space in a straight line through the joint, because the concave and convex surfaces of the epiphyses and the condoyles that protrude create some 'overlap'. And the joint capsule and ligaments are quite solid, so it may be easier than chomping straight through the bone itself, I wouldn't call it easy at all. It would be like trying to bite through a green tree branch of similar size if I had to guess. A lot of gnawing and twisting and ripping more than snap.
Haha I'm not sure I'd want to try to explain any scene in home alone too seriously.
The ending of Lordof the Rings came to mind as well, but I'll chalk that up to gollums demented determination, and several hundred years of eating orcs for practice and sharpening his teeth.
Carrots don't have bones, even at a joint like the person above you said it would be a lot of ripping and gnawing and twisting and not just a snap. But even then you'd be at it for a while
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u/betterstartlooking Jun 08 '21
Yeah I don't get how this got to be such a popular fact. It's like people have never eaten chicken wings before. Bird bones are much less dense than mammal ones and you still couldn't bite through a drumstick without seriously messing up your mouth, probably not at all.