Final answer:
Human bodies contain three types of muscle tissue: skeletal, cardiac, and smooth. These differ in striation, control, and location, but they all share properties like excitability, contractility, and extensibility.
Step-by-step explanation:
There are three types of muscle tissues in the human body: skeletal muscle, cardiac muscle, and smooth muscle. These muscle types vary by their location, control mechanism, appearance under a microscope, and physiological roles. Skeletal muscles, attached to bones, have a striated appearance and are under voluntary control, responsible for body movements. Cardiac muscle is found only in the heart; it is also striated, but works involuntarily, pumping blood throughout the body. Smooth muscle is non-striated, found in internal organs like the stomach and intestines, and operates unconsciously to facilitate bodily functions such as digestion.
All muscle tissues exhibit contractility, which is the ability to shorten forcefully, and extensibility, the capacity to be stretched. They begin to contract when actin is pulled by myosin, both of which are proteins directly involved in muscle contraction. Despite their differences, all muscle types show excitability, meaning they respond to stimuli like nerve impulses by changing their electrical state.