ArticleJournal of the Royal Society, Interface2014
Common mechanics of mode switching in locomotion of limbless and legged animals.
Article in Journal of the Royal Society, Interface, 2014. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 16 papers.
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Who cites it
16 citing papers in PubMed, 55 citations in OpenAlex.
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- Earliest evidence of behavioural handedness in the Ediacaran motile bilaterian Spriggina floundersi.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- A mechanical model for a system of coupled elastic filaments for terrestrial robot locomotion.Mathematics and mechanics of solids : MMS · 2026Article
- Beyond locomotion: How specialized motor patterns enable a vertebrate to struggle free from capture.iScience · 2025Article
- Bioinspired Mechanisms and Actuation of Soft Robotic Crawlers.Advanced science (Weinheim, Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany) · 2025Review
- Dynamics of centipede locomotion revealed by large-scale traction force microscopy.Journal of the Royal Society, Interface · 2024Article
- Active and passive mechanics for rugose terrain traversal in centipedes.The Journal of experimental biology · 2023Article
- Leg-body coordination strategies for obstacle avoidance and narrow space navigation of multi-segmented, legged robots.Frontiers in neurorobotics · 2023Article
- Maneuvering on non-Newtonian fluidic terrain: a survey of animal and bio-inspired robot locomotion techniques on soft yielding grounds.Frontiers in robotics and AI · 2023Review
- Weierstrassian Lévy walks are a by-product of crawling.The European physical journal. E, Soft matter · 2021Article
- Generation of Direct-, Retrograde-, and Source-Wave Gaits in Multi-Legged Locomotion in a Decentralized Manner via Embodied Sensorimotor Interaction.Frontiers in neural circuits · 2021Article
- Do bumblebees have signatures? Demonstrating the existence of a speed-curvature power law in Bombus terrestris locomotion patterns.PloS one · 2020Article
- A System-of-Systems Bio-Inspired Design Process: Conceptual Design and Physical Prototype of a Reconfigurable Robot Capable of Multi-Modal Locomotion.Frontiers in neurorobotics · 2019Article
- Article
- Serpentine locomotion through elastic energy release.Journal of the Royal Society, Interface · 2017Article
- Decentralized control scheme for myriapod robot inspired by adaptive and resilient centipede locomotion.PloS one · 2017Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
6 authors at 5 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Crawling using muscular waves is observed in many species, including planaria, leeches, nemertea, aplysia, snails, chitons, earthworms and maggots. Contraction or extension waves propagate along the antero-posterior axis of the body as the crawler pushes the ground substratum backward. However, the observation that locomotory waves can be directed forward or backward has attracted much attention over the past hundred years. Legged organisms such as centipedes and millipedes exhibit parallel phenomena; leg tips form density waves that propagate backward or forward. Mechanical considerations reveal that leg-density waves play a similar role to locomotory waves in limbless species, and that locomotory waves are used by a mechanism common to both legged and limbless species to achieve crawling. Here, we report that both mode switching of the wave direction and friction control were achieved when backward motion was induced in the laboratory. We show that the many variations of switching in different animals can essentially be classified in two types according to mechanical considerations. We propose that during their evolution, limbless crawlers first moved in a manner similar to walking before legs were obtained. Therefore, legged crawlers might have learned the mechanical mode of movement involved in walking long before obtaining legs.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.