Jumping is an important locomotor behaviour used by many animals. The power required to perform a jump is supplied by skeletal muscle. The mechanical properties of skeletal muscle, including the power it can produce, are determined by its composition, which in turn reflects trade-offs between the differing tasks performed by the muscle. Recent studies suggest that muscles used for jumping are r...

This research replicates and extends an occupational therapy research project reported by Kircher in 1984. Thirty women aged 18 to 31 years jumped with a rope on one day and jumped in place on another day in a counterbalanced design. Each subject stopped jumping when she reached what she perceived as the very hard level on the Borg Scale of Perceived Exertion (Borg, 1970). Differences from Kirc...

For many years, the breeding value estimation for Swedish riding horses has been based on results from Riding Horse Quality Tests (RHQTs) of 4-year-olds only. Traits tested are conformation, gaits and jumping ability. An integrated index including competition results is under development to both get as reliable proofs as possible and increases the credibility of the indexes among breeders, trai...

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.anbehav.2017.03.020 0003-3472/© 2017 The Association for the Study of A Predator mimicry occurs when prey resemble their predator to gain protection. We explored the relative importance of the morphological and locomotor signals that spider-mimicking moths use to deceive their jumping spider predators. Two hypotheses explain why animals use multicomponent signals for...

The buoyant forces of water during aquatic exercise may provide a form of 'natural' breast support and help to minimise breast motion and alleviate exercise induced breast pain. Six larger-breasted females performed standing vertical land and water-based jumps, whilst wearing three breast support conditions. Underwater video cameras recorded the motion of the trunk and right breast. Trunk and r...

The present study analyses the anatomy, mechanics and functional morphology of the jumping apparatus, the performance and the kinematics of the natural jump of flea beetles (Coleoptera: Chrysomelidae: Galerucinae: Alticini). The kinematic parameters of the initial phase of the jump were calculated for five species from five genera (average values from minimum to maximum): acceleration 0.91-2.25...

Several arboreal mammals have the ability to rapidly and repeatedly jump vertical distances of 2m, starting from rest. We characterize this performance by ametric we call vertical jumping agility. Through basic kinetic relations, we show that this agility metric is fundamentally constrained by available actuator power. Although rapid high jumping is an important performance characteristic, the ...

Macromolecular binding forces between single protein-ligand pairs have been directly measured with the Atomic Force Microscope (AFM) in several recent experiments. In a typical measurement, the AFM probe, or cantilever, is attached to the ligand and exerts a disruptive force on the bond between the macromolecular pair while the receptor is held fixed; the probe is then moved away from the subst...

In many insects renowned for their jumping ability, elastic storage is used so that high forces can be developed prior to jumping. We have combined physiological, behavioural and genetic approaches to test whether elastic energy storage makes a major contribution to jumping in Drosophila. We describe a sensitive strain gauge setup, which measures the forces produced by tethered flies through th...