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First published online January 31, 2007
Journal of Experimental Biology 210, 642-654 (2007)
Published by The Company of Biologists 2007
doi: 10.1242/jeb.02703

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Interspecific scaling of the morphology and posture of the limbs during the locomotion of cats (Felidae)

Lisa M. Day and Bruce C. Jayne^*

Department of Biological Sciences, University of Cincinnati, PO Box 210006, Cincinnati, OH 45221-0006, USA

View larger version (5K): [in this window] [in a new window]   Fig. 1. Hypothetical example of how different limb postures among phylogenetically diverse clades (different symbols) could cause a correlation with increased size even when such a correlation is absent within each of the phylogenetically narrow clades. The broken line indicates an overall trend of increased erectness with increased size, and each short solid line indicates the trend within each phylogenetically narrow clade.

View larger version (36K): [in this window] [in a new window]   Fig. 2. A right lateral view of a cheetah showing joint locations and conventions for measuring angles of the joints (A) and the long bones relative to vertical (B). The image is near midstance of the right forelimb and late stance of the right hindlimb. From proximal to distal, joint angles were labeled as follows: elbow, wrist, metacarpal–phalange (MCP) for the forelimb and knee, ankle, and metatarsal–phalange (MTP) for the hindlimb. From proximal to distal, the names of the angles relative to vertical (B) are humerus, radius and metacarpals for the forelimb, and femur, tibia and metatarsals for the hindlimb. The angles relative to vertical (B) were positive when the distal portion of a limb segment was anterior to its proximal portion and negative when the distal portion of a limb segment was posterior to its proximal portion.

View larger version (12K): [in this window] [in a new window]   Fig. 3. Scaling relationships of log10-transformed mean values of each species for anatomical lengths of the forelimb (A), hindlimb (B) and intergirdle distance (C) versus mass, and forelimb length (D) and hindlimb (E) length versus intergirdle distance. See Table 4 for the scaling equations.

View larger version (7K): [in this window] [in a new window]   Fig. 4. Principal component (PC) scores from analyses of anatomy versus the cube root of mass. Each point represents an individual. Many of the felid species are anatomically distinct, mainly as a result of overall size.

View larger version (43K): [in this window] [in a new window]   Fig. 5. Joint angles (A–D) and angles relative to a vertical (E–J) versus time for one stride of a single individual for the domestic cat, ocelot, cheetah and tiger. Filled symbols indicate stance phase, while open symbols indicate swing phase during the stride cycle, where 0% indicates footfall. The ranges of all y-axes are 180°.

View larger version (9K): [in this window] [in a new window]   Fig. 6. Relative (% total limb length) height of the shoulder (A) and relative hip height (B) versus time for one stride of a single individual for the domestic cat, ocelot, cheetah and tiger. Filled symbols indicate stance, and open symbols indicate swing phase of the stride cycle where t=0% and 100% indicates footfall. The data are for the same strides as shown in Fig. 5.

View larger version (13K): [in this window] [in a new window]   Fig. 7. Mean values of joint angles and limb segment orientation. The relative length (% total limb length) of each segment within a limb is also a mean value for each of the study species of the fore and hindlimbs at footfall (A,C) and midstance (B,D) for all species. From proximal to distal, the end points of the line segments represent shoulder, elbow, wrist, distal end of the metacarpals and tips of the toes of the forelimb at footfall (A) and midstance (B). From proximal to distal, the end points of the line segments represent hip, knee, ankle, distal end of the metatarsals and tips of the toes of the hindlimb at footfall (C) and midstance (D). The reference scale on the left indicates the potential height of a limb if all limb segments were vertical and all joint angles were 180°.

View larger version (10K): [in this window] [in a new window]   Fig. 8. Principal component (PC) scores from analyses of limb posture at both footfall (A) and midstance (B). Each point represents a single stride. The limb postures of different species have a large overlap in multivariate space.

View larger version (8K): [in this window] [in a new window]   Fig. 9. A simplified phylogeny of Felidae modified from Mattern and McLennan (Mattern and McLennan, 2000) showing trends in the evolution of size. Numbers indicate cat clades: 1, caracal and leopard cat; 2, domestic; 3, lynx and puma; 4, ocelot; 5, Panthera. Wedges indicated multiple species at that branch. Red, blue and black indicate large (>40 kg) medium (11–40 kg) and small (1–10 kg) species, respectively. Only the nine species of this study are labeled. + indicates additional increases in body size.