Animal Locomotion Quotes

It is no doubt technically possible to study metabolism and respiration of fishes during swimming at a constant rate, and of certain insects and birds during flight, and to obtain information similar to that obtained on man during work on a bicycle ergometer or a treadmill.

A bird is an instrument working according to mathematical law, which instrument it is within the capacity of man to reproduce with all its movements, but not with a corresponding degree of strength, though it is deficient only in the power of maintaining equilibrium. We may therefore say that such an instrument constructed by man is lacking in nothing except the life of the bird, and this life must needs be supplied from that of man.

Other animals ran only when they had a reason, but the horse would run for no reason whatever, as if to run out of his own skin

The leg system of the beach animals works because of a combination of certain lengths of tubes. Because of the proportion of lengths, the animals walk smoothly. You could say that this range of numbers is their genetic code.

Practically all animals which move fast in a homogeneous medium have found means of giving their body a streamlined shape, thereby reducing friction to a minimum.

The bicycle is the perfect transducer to match man's metabolic energy to the impedance of locomotion. Equipped with this tool, man outstrips the efficiency of not only all machines but all other animals as well.

If a bullfrog had wings it wouldn't bump his behind every time he hopped.

I'm in the early stages of a film called 'Freezing Time' about Eadweard Muybridge, the Victorian photographer who was really the forefather of cinema. Digital animators still treat his images like the Bible. He was a very obsessed man.

The soul of animals is characterized by two faculties, (a) the faculty of discrimination which is the work of thought and sense, and (b) the faculty of originating local movement.

A fly was very close to being called a land, because that's what it does half the time.

The car is not a rabbit or a deer that jumps around in sweeping lines, but it is a man-made work of technology in need of an appropriate roadway. Rather, the car resembles a dragon fly or any other jumping animal that moves shorter distances in straight lines and then changes its direction at different points.

The elephant hath joints, but none for courtesy; his legs are legs for necessity, not for flexure.

Wolves never look more funny than when they have lost the scent and scrabble to find it again: they hop in the air; they run in circles, they plow up the ground with their noses . . . .

Dogs have a sense of smell much greater than ours and they're much faster than we are. We have fairly dull senses, fairly slow locomotion. In our Olympic trials, we celebrate speeds that would be an embarrassment to a bird or a dog or another animal.

Fish got to swim, birds got to fly.

Of all the animals which fly in the air, walk on the land, or swim in the sea, from Paris to Peru, from Japan to Rome, the most foolish animal in my opinion is man.

TAIL, n. The part of an animal's spine that has transcended its natural limitations to set up an independent existence in a world of its own.

When the horse and the mare both trot, the colt seldom paces.

To me it's still a greater miracle when a fly flies than when a human being undertakes to do so.

Why do you need to gallop while you fly?" "Why do humans have to sway their arms while they walk? I dunno boss, but it just feels right.

Stotting is jumping upward with all four legs simultaneously. My advice: do not die until you've seen a large black poodle stotting in the snow.

Fly flight is just a great phenomenon to study. It has everything - from the most sophisticated sensory biology; really, really interesting physics; really interesting muscle physiology; really interesting neural computations.

Indeed, the life of cattle, like that of many men, is but a sort of locomotiveness; they move a side at a time, and man, by his machinery, is meeting the horse and the ox half-way.

There have been better attempts at marching, and they have been made by penguins.