How often do you give your bones a second thought? In fact, you never see them at all, unless you've been in an accident or had a rather grim fall.

They are simply a part of your body, such as your pancreas or your bladder, and you just expect them to work, without being given too much attention or nurturing of any description. It is only when they break that this changes – we X-ray them, put them in plaster, nurture them, keep weight off them with crutches.

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But bones are important, as they give shape to your body. Without them, you would have looked like an immovable blob, certainly not out of place in a sci-fi movie. Scary thought, isn't it?

Circuses in previous decades often displayed someone they called "A boneless wonder", but this was not someone without bones, just someone who could manipulate their body in such a way as if they were boneless.

And then of course, there is the story of Adam and Eve. According to the Old Testament she was created from one of his ribs.

But all these things aside – how much do you really know about your own bones? Take a look at the following fascinating facts:

• Newborn babies have 300 bones and adults 206. The other 94 bones have not disappeared – they have fused with other bones.
• Twenty-five percent of your bones are made up of water.
• Bones are a protective enclosure for your heart, lungs, brain and other organs and also provide placed to attach to for ligaments, muscles, tendons etc.
• If you remove the minerals from a bone by soaking it overnight in a 6% solution of hydrochloric acid, it will become so soft you could tie it in a knot.
• Bones are a storehouse for calcium and inside the bones, blood cells are manufactured.
• One person in 20 has an extra rib – and the extra rib is three times as common in men as in women.
• Bones lose strength and mass as well as their ability to manufacture blood cells if you lead a very sedentary life. Exercise increases the blood cell manufacturing ability and the bone mass.
• Over 100 bones, almost half the bones in your body, are in your hands and your feet.
• Your bones are at their thickest at the points of greatest stress and can withstand stresses of about 10 900kg per 6cm square.
• No bone in your body is more than 1 millimetre away from a capillary or tiny blood vessel.
• Your femur is the largest bone in your body and your ear contains the smallest bones in your body.
• Bones act as levers in the body, greatly expanding the capacities of our muscles.
• Where skull bones have joined, there are seams or sutures. These seams start sealing up when we are about 22 and this process continues until we are in our eighties. By taking a look at how far this process has progressed, scientists can determine the age at death of even ancient skeletons.

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