... arboreal walking and vertical climbing, and this makes them an ideal taxa in which to compare these locomotor forms. Additionally, primates exhibit unusual limb mechanics compared with most other quadrupeds, with weight distribution biased towards the hindlimbs, a pattern that is argued to have evolved...

... Zebra finch Taeniopygia guttata Diamond dove Geopelia cuneata Locomotion Hindlimb Forelimb Particle image velocimetry PIV Landing allows the transition from the air to the ground or other substrate. This phase is fundamental to flight, but is often overlooked in studies compared...

...Pauline Provini; Bret W. Tobalske; Kristen E. Crandell; Anick Abourachid SUMMARY Take-off mechanics are fundamental to the ecology and evolution of flying animals. Recent research has revealed that initial take-off velocity in birds is driven mostly by hindlimb forces. However, the contribution...

... locomotion, and that the vampire bats can walk because they possess more robust hindlimb skeletons. We tested a prediction of the hindlimb-strength hypothesis: that during locomotion, the forces produced by the hindlimbs of vampire bats should be larger than those produced by the legs of poorly crawling bats...

.... Thus, we quantified the three-dimensional hindlimb kinematics of a specialized arboreal lizard, Chamaeleo calyptratus , moving horizontally, and up and down a 30° incline on a narrow (2.4 cm) perch and a flat surface. We compared the flat-surface data of C. calyptratus with those of an anatomically...

...Timothy E. Higham; Bruce C. Jayne SUMMARY Arboreal animals often move on surfaces with variable and steep inclines,but the changes in hindlimb muscle activity in response to incline are poorly understood. Thus, we studied the hindlimb muscle activity in the arboreal specialist, Chamaeleo...

... differed for different species. Whereas acceleration capacity increases with hindlimb length for A. carolinensis , no relationship was detected for the other two species. Interspecifically, the inclusion of two large species in our analysis appears to drive the absence of a correlation between acceleration...

... of a realistic model of the frog Rana pipiens . We measured the anatomical properties of 13 proximal muscles in the frog hindlimb and incorporated these measurements into a set of musculotendon actuators. We examined whether the interaction between this musculotendon subsystem and a previously developed skeleton...

...Bruce C. Jayne; Duncan J. Irschick ABSTRACT Lizards commonly move on steep inclines in nature, but no previous studies have investigated whether the kinematics of the limbs of lizards differ on inclined surfaces compared with level surfaces. Therefore, we examined how the kinematics of the hindlimb...