Observations on an Unusual "Arrhythmic" Gait in Sengis
Unusual arrhythmia has been previously reported in the locomotion of a soft-furred sengi, Macroscelides proboscideus (Schmidt and Fischer 2007a; Schmidt and Fischer 2007b). Additional observations by GBR on the footfall patterns of other soft-furred sengi species reveal an occasional “skip” in the footfall pattern, when one of the limbs is kept suspended during the gait cycle when it would otherwise be expected to make contact with the ground, based on the preceding strides. This begs some fundamental questions: Under what conditions does skipping occur? Do all sengis skip? And why skip at all?
In our preliminary exploration of these questions, we analyzed film footage of four sengi species from both Macroscelidinae and Rhynchocyoninae subfamilies: Petrodromus tetradactylus (Macroscelidinae; footage from GBR), Elephantulus rufescens (Macroscelidinae; footage from NHK television series “Darwin’s Amazing Animals: Quick and Tidy! – Sengi, Africa”), Rhynchocyon petersi (Rhynchocyoninae; footage from Zoo Antwerpen by YouTube user Gilles Delhaye), and Rhynchocyon chrysopygus (Rhynchocyoninae; footage from GBR). We analyzed video sequences of uninterrupted locomotion and constructed gait diagrams to illustrate the pattern of footfalls during each frame of the video (Figure 1).
@incollection{Miyamae,
address = {Gland, Switzerland},
author = {Miyamae, Juri A. and Moore, Talia Y. and Rathbun, Galen B.},
booktitle = {Afrotheria Conservation},
editor = {Stuart, Chris and Mathilde},
organization = {IUCN/SSC Afrotheria Specialist Group},
year = {2018},
pages = {44--47},
number = {14},
title = {{Observations on an Unusual ``Arrhythmic'' Gait in Sengis}}
}