part of the animal, and organ meats, such
innards as the liver, kidneys, intestine, and so
on.
The Essence of the Animal: Mobility from Muscle
What is it that makes a creature an animal?
The word comes from an Indo-European root
meaning “to breathe,” to move air in and out
of the body. The definitive characteristic of
animals is the power to move the body and
nearby parts of the world. Most of our meats
are muscles, the propulsive machinery that
moves an animal across a meadow, or through
the sky or sea.
The job of any muscle is to shorten itself,
or contract, when it receives the appropriate
signal from the nervous system. A muscle is
made up of long, thin cells, the muscle fibers,
each of which is filled with two kinds of
specialized, contractile protein filaments
intertwined with each other. This packing of