Crane-like Structure in Long Neck Designs

In order to make sense of the seemingly gravity-defying long neck designs of many herbivorous animals, we need to understand the adaptation of those spinous processes at the adjacent area between their neck and their ribcage: these bony projections are extremely elongated in hoofed animals in a way that if you look back at that respective area in humans, our spinous processes look like wimps – oh you gotta see this image of an Indian gaur skeleton in this post and take notes at its impressive thoracic spinous processes to get the whole picture 😉:

Gaur skeleton image by Ryan Somma at Wikimedia.

This knowledge will be easier to retain once you realize that these structures essentially serve as the uplift of a crane in (mankind’s) construction, while the nuchal ligament is responsible to bind all the processes together (as well as the occipital protuberance) in a sturdy yet flexible manner!