> What's the scientific word for your kneecap?And the answer: patella. In short, your patella is your kneecap. It's a small bone located in front ofyour knee joint, where the thighbone and shinbone meet. Your patella protectsyour knee, and connects the muscles in the front of your thigh to your shin.Photo credit: OrthoInfo[https://orthoinfo.aaos.org/en/diseases--conditions/patellar-kneecap-fractures/]This small but fascinating bone is essential to everyday function. While someanimals are born without it (sorry, ostriches), it helps humans protect thevital muscles and ligaments that meet in your knee. The patella also increasesthe leverage of the knee's straightening muscles, so not as much force is neededto straighten the knee.While the patella is a reasonably small bone in your body, it is the largestsesamoid bone we have, which means it is embedded within a tendon. In thepatella, the quadriceps and patellar tendons meet. There, the rounded triangularbone protects the knee joint and acts like a pulley, allowing the tendon totransmit more force with smoother motion. As such, the patella is able to bearquite a lot of weight — up to 8 times as much, in fact! When climbing stairs,the patella bears up to 3 times your body weight, and when doing a deep squat itcan take as much as 8 times your weight. Pretty impressive for such a smallbone!Interestingly, though, patellas don't start out quite as strong. They actuallybegin as cartilage in babies, unconnected from the rest of the skeleton. Thepatella slowly begins to turn into bone between the ages of 2-6 years old. Learn more about the patella here[https://www.kenhub.com/en/library/anatomy/patella].