How many Ribs Man has?

A caution for those of you who dislike thinking about theological issues or who are bothered by the concept that biological science and theology might not disagree: you might not want to bother reading the rest of this Web page.

Over the last few years, I have received several e-mail message asking if the number of ribs is different in men and women. To correctly respond to these inquiries, I have researched this issue by looking up this information in several Anatomy and Physiology textbooks. All agree that, based on medical research (somebody actually dissected cadavers and counted ribs, somebody actually looked at x-rays and counted ribs), men and women have the same number of ribs as each other. For example, one book says:

Twelve pairs of flexible, archlike ribs form the lateral portions of the thoracic cage. They increase in length from the first to the seventh and then decrease again from the eighth to the twelfth.
(Weinreb, E. L. 1984. Anatomy and Physiology. Addison Wesley Publ. Co., Inc. Menlo Park, CA. p. 345.)

For more information refer to this site: http://biology.clc.uc.edu/courses/bio105/ribs.htm