Award details

Elephant speed and gait: the locomotor biomechanics of the largest living land animal

Reference	BB/C516844/1
Principal Investigator / Supervisor	Professor John Hutchinson
Co-Investigators / Co-Supervisors
Institution	Royal Veterinary College
Department	Comparative Biomedical Sciences CBS
Funding type	Research
Value (£)	236,966
Status	Completed
Type	Research Grant
Start date	01/08/2005
End date	31/12/2008
Duration	41 months

Abstract

Elephants are the largest land animals today, reaching masses up to 8000 kg, comparable to the largest bipedal dinosaurs. At slow speeds, they have the most economical walk to any land animal, and have unusually columnar limbs similar to those of humans. Unusually, although their hind limbs become slightly more flexed at faster speeds, elephants maintain the same walking pattern of footfalls at all speeds, even up to 7 meters per second (15 miles per hour). Their immense size offers an opportunity to study how the limits of locomotor performance (speed and gait) are influenced by mechanics of supporting and moving such a large mass. Elephants hence are a model system for revealing basic principles governing the locomotion of other very large animals. Can elephants actually run? How fast? Why not any faster? I propose to solve these questions by quantifying the biomechanics of elephant speed and gait to test three related hypotheses: 1. For the first time force platform and kinematic analysis of elephant locomotor dynamics will be used to determine if the mechanics of the centre of mass of fast-moving elephants fits the kinetic definition of running (kinetic and potential energies in-phase, resulting in pogo stick-like limbs that operate as spring-loaded inverted pendula). 2. These experimental data will be used in a 3D musculoskeletal computer simulation to test if elephant maximum locomotor speeds are limited by the ground reaction forces that their limb muscles (or tendons) can sustain. 3. A detailed finite element model of elephant limb bone stresses will be constructed to see if any limb bones would break if elephants moved much faster then they do (this includes using faster gaits such as a gallop). This research will conclusively solve the mystery of whether elephants run in a biomechanical sense, and will reveal whether commonly-cited factors (muscle, tendon and bone strength) that may limit locomotor performance are indeed the principal constraints on elephants speed and gait. Additionally, the two models developed will characterise detailed structure-function relationships in elephant limbs that will reveal how limb design in the largest of land animals is specialised for supporting weight, providing a valuable resource for future work on elephant structure and motion, including clinical applications. This research will identify which musculoskeletal factors may limit locomotor performance in other animals, especially large tetrapods.

Summary

unavailable

Committee	Closed Committee - Animal Sciences (AS)
Research Topics	X – not assigned to a current Research Topic
Research Priority	X – Research Priority information not available
Research Initiative	X - not in an Initiative
Funding Scheme	X – not Funded via a specific Funding Scheme

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