Most animals go effortlessly from walking to running, but elephants, because of their enormous size, cannot leap into the air at high speeds. A team of scientists from the Catholic University of Leuven (Belgium) has studied themovements of the pachydermsto find out if they run or walk when moving at high speed. The results reveal that the front legs trot, while the hind legs walk at high speeds.
Determined to solve the mystery about the movement of elephants, Norman Heglund, lead author of the study, suggested measuring the immense forces that the ground exerts on the animals as they move. “The high-speed locomotive movement of an elephant does not quite fit into any of the classic categories, such as” running “or” trot. “The truth is, it depends on which definition of” running “is used,” says Heglund.
For your research, which is now published inJournal of Experimental Biology, Heglund constructed and calibrated an eight-meter-long, elephant-sized force platform from sixteen one-square-meter plates. The equipment was sent, along with high-speed cameras and computers, to theLampang Elephant Conservation Center (Thailand). There the scientists also built a reinforced concrete foundation on which they mounted the platform. Until34 elephants moved over it, from a newborn weighing 870 kilograms to an adult weighing four tons, with maximum speeds of 18 km / h. The results reveal thatwhen elephants move at high speed the front legs trot while the hind legs walk.
“Cheap” steps
Moreover, the study reveals that lelephants’ movements are “extremely cheap” from an energy point of view? The cost of moving elephants is low because the animal’s step frequency is higher than expected and they improve their stability by keeping an average of two legs on the ground even at high speeds, and three when moving more slowly ,? says Heglund . By combining these two resources, the elephant’s center of mass rises and falls less than that of other animals, which reduces the energy cost of moving these gigantic mammals.
