Locomotion in terrestrial mammals: the influence of body mass, limb length and bone proportions on speed

By Per Christiansen †. 2002

132 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Traditionally a few limb proportions or total limb lengths have been regarded as indicative of peak running velocity. This is due to physical principles (inferred in- and outvelocities around the joints, stride lengths) and also the observation that fast-moving animals tend to share a number of purported key features which are either absent or not developed to near the same extent in slower moving forms. Previous studies have shown hind limb length and metatarsus/femur ratio to be correlated significantly, albeit modestly with running speed. These studies have nearly all been bivariate analyses. Based on the physical principles, there is reason to suppose that more variables than just m/f ratio could be important as adaptations for fast locomotion, and also that bivariate analyses are too simple. In this study a sample of 76 running mammals was used, with running speeds taken from literature. A number of osteological parameters were discovered to covary significantly with peak running speed, albeit only modestly. Using the information from phylogeny reduced all correlations, often significantly so. Multivariate analyses resulted in markedly higher correlation coefficients. Animals probably do not optimize their anatomy for the purpose of running very fast, which occurs only on rare occasions, but for reducing costs of locomotion. © 2002 The Linnean Society of London, Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society, 2002, 136, 685–714.

Subfields: Ecology, Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics, Paleontology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/d666f87881816c8e81a27677dbaad31fdd0edfab

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Citations in the corpus

Mass Prediction in Theropod Dinosaurs (2004, methodology): “This can be evaluated by computing the eigen and tolerance values and the condition indices (see Christiansen, 2002), but these were not used, since variable intercorrelation is probably unavoidable in biological samples (Christiansen, 2002).”
Shaking a leg and hot to trot: the effects of body size and temperature on running speed in ants (2008, methodology): “Here a thorough discussion of all of the relevant biomechanical theory is not attempted, although the model of dynamic similarity has received recent support ( Alexander & Jayes, 1983; Christiansen, 2002; Alexander, 2005 ).”