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Architecture and consequent physiological properties of the semitendinosus muscle in domestic goats
Author(s) -
Gans Carl,
Loeb Gerald E.,
de Vree Frits
Publication year - 1989
Publication title -
journal of morphology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.652
H-Index - 74
eISSN - 1097-4687
pISSN - 0362-2525
DOI - 10.1002/jmor.1051990305
Subject(s) - compartment (ship) , biology , anatomy , semitendinosus muscle , muscle fibre , skeletal muscle , oceanography , geology
Morphological and physiological analyses confirm that the semitendinosus muscle of goats contains two separate compartments in series, each with distinct innervation. These compartments of the muscle are in turn composed of short fibers (approximately four fibers in series in the proximal compartment and seven to eight fibers in the distal compartment) which overlap each other for more than 30% of their length, with much of the overlapping portions consisting of slender tails that terminate at one‐tenth of the midfiber diameter. Groups of fibers are associated into relatively narrow bands that run end‐to‐end in each compartment. The data suggest that the maximum length of muscle fibers may be limited; even the fibers of parallelfibered muscles may not scale with the dimension of the animal.