Question

Differentiate between tendon and ligament.

Answer 1

Hint: Connective tissue is the most abundant and widely distributed tissue in the body of animals. It consists of living cells embedded in an abundant nonliving intercellular matrix which connects different tissues or organs and provides support to various structures of the animal body.

Complete answer:
Tendon and ligaments are examples of dense connective tissue. Dense regular connective tissue: In the dense regular connective tissue, the collagen fibres are present in rows between many parallel bundles of fibres. Examples are tendons and ligaments.

A.Tendons are cord-like, strong, inelastic structures that join skeletal muscle to bone. They are composed of parallel bundles of collagen fibres.
B.Ligaments: Ligaments are structures which connect bone to bone. They are made up of bundles of elastic fibres and few collagen fibres.

Now let us make some point of difference between them:

Tendon	Ligament.
These are inelastic in nature	These are elastic in nature
They help to connect muscle to bone	They help to connect bone to bone
They are made up of white collagen fibres	They are made up of bundles of elastic fibres and few collagen fibres
These when get twist do not cause any sprain	Sprain is caused due to excessive pulling of ligaments.
Tendons have heavy blood supply	Ligaments have poor blood supply
They are white in colour	They are yellow in colour.
These are present only one number per muscle.	These are present in many numbers.

Note: Ligaments adapt to training by increasing the cross-sectional area of fibres whereas immobilized ligament can weaken up. Thus, normal daily activity is important for maintaining about 80-90% of the mechanical properties of a ligament.