This is amazing! Such a fluid and efficient gait, would expect nothing less for a beast so massive in order to minimize energy use. It's also interesting that the sauropod gait seen in the Jurassic Park franchise is very similar to this, guess art imitates life.
It would be interesting to determine how the rest of the body swayed while walking. Maybe your next project? The long neck is unique, but living animals presumably give good information on full body motion for a given gait.
Yeah, body motions get further away from my specialism (footprints), but part of our study concluded that this particular gait minimizes body sway. Previously Sellers et al had proposed a pacing gait (both left feet move together, then both right feet move together), but that involves shifting the centre of (a very large) mass side-to-side. This gait minimizes that, because the support is diagonal.
@@Butterkekskrumel Yep, that was Sellers et al, not really AI, but machine learning/genetic algorithms: royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rspb.2007.0846 However, a) it's optimization parameters (in that case max speed) strongly affect what gait will 'evolve' and b) most importantly, there's no way to validate what the computer comes up with, without going to the fossil trackways and doing what we did here.
@@michaelbuono4007 From the Sellers et al study? Yes, absolutely. Same thing here with our study - this particular trackway had the sauropod moving with this particular limb phase. But we have trackways where sauropods are moving with slightly different limb phases, and there's no reason this particular animal couldn't change it's gait when it sped up or slowed down. We assume the trackways are of relatively 'comfortable' and 'normal' speeds, so we take it as typical for this type of sauropod.
Yes, this makes more sense than imagining argentinosaurus attempting to lift both limbs on the same side of its body for each stride and risking balance loss.
I wonder- if you asked an equestrian specialist, is there a particular gait that might approximate this? Horse breeds have all sorts of different gaits, whether trained or innate
We actually studied a lot of horse gaits/tracks in the paper. Jens, the lead author has watched a lot of horses. They generally don't use this limb phase though.
Pure emotion watching this. It's incredible how far our human mind can reach. Thank you for this study
Love and look up to your work. ♥️
This is amazing! Such a fluid and efficient gait, would expect nothing less for a beast so massive in order to minimize energy use. It's also interesting that the sauropod gait seen in the Jurassic Park franchise is very similar to this, guess art imitates life.
It would be interesting to determine how the rest of the body swayed while walking. Maybe your next project? The long neck is unique, but living animals presumably give good information on full body motion for a given gait.
Yeah, body motions get further away from my specialism (footprints), but part of our study concluded that this particular gait minimizes body sway. Previously Sellers et al had proposed a pacing gait (both left feet move together, then both right feet move together), but that involves shifting the centre of (a very large) mass side-to-side. This gait minimizes that, because the support is diagonal.
Maybe AI can help with this? I remember that there was an AI that learns how to walk, based on the available muscles in a body.
@@Butterkekskrumel Yep, that was Sellers et al, not really AI, but machine learning/genetic algorithms: royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rspb.2007.0846
However, a) it's optimization parameters (in that case max speed) strongly affect what gait will 'evolve' and b) most importantly, there's no way to validate what the computer comes up with, without going to the fossil trackways and doing what we did here.
@@PeterFalkingham I feel a little bit skeptical about the gaits I’d sauropods since they only conducted 3 and they could have walked with both gaits
@@michaelbuono4007 From the Sellers et al study? Yes, absolutely. Same thing here with our study - this particular trackway had the sauropod moving with this particular limb phase. But we have trackways where sauropods are moving with slightly different limb phases, and there's no reason this particular animal couldn't change it's gait when it sped up or slowed down. We assume the trackways are of relatively 'comfortable' and 'normal' speeds, so we take it as typical for this type of sauropod.
Yes, this makes more sense than imagining argentinosaurus attempting to lift both limbs on the same side of its body for each stride and risking balance loss.
What would happen if you mix a elephant and giraffe walk cycle ?
I wonder- if you asked an equestrian specialist, is there a particular gait that might approximate this? Horse breeds have all sorts of different gaits, whether trained or innate
We actually studied a lot of horse gaits/tracks in the paper. Jens, the lead author has watched a lot of horses. They generally don't use this limb phase though.
So they could lift two legs at a time? Impressive!
so this is new! definitely a little creepy, but it's really cool
Plug walk