Biomechanical insights into the role of foot pads during locomotion in camelid species

Christofer J Clemente; Taylor J M Dick; Christopher L Glen; Olga Panagiotopoulou

doi:10.1038/s41598-020-60795-9

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Biomechanical insights into the role of foot pads during locomotion in camelid species

Journal article

Open access

Peer reviewed

Biomechanical insights into the role of foot pads during locomotion in camelid species

Christofer J Clemente, Taylor J M Dick, Christopher L Glen and Olga Panagiotopoulou

Scientific Reports, Vol.10, 3856

2020

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-60795-9

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Abstract

From the camel's toes to the horse's hooves, the diversity in foot morphology among mammals is striking. One distinguishing feature is the presence of fat pads, which may play a role in reducing foot pressures, or may be related to habitat specialization. The camelid family provides a useful paradigm to explore this as within this phylogenetically constrained group we see prominent (camels) and greatly reduced (alpacas) fat pads. We found similar scaling of vertical ground reaction force with body mass, but camels had larger foot contact areas, which increased with velocity, unlike alpacas, meaning camels had relatively lower foot pressures. Further, variation between specific regions under the foot was greater in alpacas than camels. Together, these results provide strong evidence for the role of fat pads in reducing relative peak locomotor foot pressures, suggesting that the fat pad role in habitat specialization remains difficult to disentangle.

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Title: Biomechanical insights into the role of foot pads during locomotion in camelid species
Authors: Christofer J Clemente (Author) - University of the Sunshine Coast - School of Science and Engineering
Taylor J M Dick (Author) - University of Queensland
Christopher L Glen (Author) - University of Queensland
Olga Panagiotopoulou (Author) - University of Queensland
Publication details: Scientific Reports, Vol.10, 3856; 12
Publisher: Nature Publishing Group
Date published: 2020
DOI: 10.1038/s41598-020-60795-9
ISSN: 2045-2322
Copyright note: Copyright © The Author(s) 2020. Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
Organisation Unit: School of Science and Engineering - Legacy; University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland; School of Science, Technology and Engineering
Language: English
Record Identifier: 99450975702621
Output Type: Journal article

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