Related papers: Size and shape of terrestrial animals
Robots still struggle to dynamically traverse complex 3-D terrain with many large obstacles, an ability required for many critical applications. Body-obstacle interaction is often inevitable and induces perturbation and uncertainty in…
Periodicity in population dynamics is a fundamental issue. In addition to current species-specific analyses, allometry facilitates understanding of limit cycles amongst different species. So far, body-size regressions have been derived for…
The evolution and distribution of species body sizes for terrestrial mammals is well-explained by a macroevolutionary tradeoff between short-term selective advantages and long-term extinction risks from increased species body size,…
According to the recently discovered 'Law of Urination', mammals, ranging in size from mice to elephants, take, on the average, 21s to urinate. We attempt to gain insights into the physical processes responsible for this uniformity using…
Self-propelling organisms locomote via generation of patterns of self-deformation. Despite the diversity of body plans, internal actuation schemes and environments in limbless vertebrates and invertebrates, such organisms often use similar…
Inhomogeneities in deposition may lead to formation of rough surfaces, whose height fluctuations can be probed directly by scanning microscopy, or indirectly by scattering. Analytical or numerical treatments of simple growth models suggest…
Random walks on multidimensional nonlinear landscapes are of interest in many areas of science and engineering. In particular, properties of adaptive trajectories on fitness landscapes determine population fates and thus play a central role…
Snakes can move through almost any terrain. Similarly, snake robots hold the promise as a versatile platform to traverse complex environments like earthquake rubble. Unlike snake locomotion on flat surfaces which is inherently stable, when…
During fast locomotion - gallop, half bound - of quadruped mammals, the ground contact of the limbs in each pair do not alternate symmetrically. Animals using such asymmetrical gait thus choose whether the left or the right limb will…
Scale-invariant spatial or temporal patterns and L\'evy flight motion have been observed in a large variety of biological systems. It has been argued that animals in general might perform L\'evy flight motion with power law distribution of…
We report the scaling behavior of the Earth and Venus over a wider range of length scales than reported by previous researchers. All landscapes (not only mountains) together follow a consistent scaling behavior, demonstrating a crossover…
One of the classical questions in evolutionary biology is how evolutionary processes are coupled at the gene and species level. With this motivation, we compare the topological properties (mainly the depth scaling, as a characterization of…
Many animals, modern aircraft, and underwater vehicles use streamlined body shapes that reduce fluid dynamic drag to achieve fast and effective locomotion in air and water. Similarly, numerous small terrestrial animals move through…
Metabolism of living organisms is a foundation of life. The metabolic rate (energy production per unit time) increases slower than organisms' mass. When this phenomenon is considered across different species, it is called interspecific…
Although typically possessing four limbs and short bodies, lizards have evolved a diversity of body plans, from short-bodied and fully-limbed to elongate and nearly limbless. Such diversity in body morphology is hypothesized as adaptations…
BACKGROUND: An important question is whether evolution favors properties such as mutational robustness or evolvability that do not directly benefit any individual, but can influence the course of future evolution. Functionally similar…
A notable feature of the elephant trunk is the pronounced wrinkling that enables its great flexibility. Here, we devise a general mathematical model that accounts for the characteristic skin wrinkles formed during morphogenesis in the…
A major challenge to understanding locomotion in complex 3-D terrain with large obstacles is to create tools for controlled, systematic lab experiments. Existing terrain arenas only allow observations at small spatiotemporal scales (~10…
The enormous size and complexity of genotypic sequence space frequently requires consideration of coarse-grained sequences in empirical models. We develop scaling relations to quantify the effect of this coarse-graining on properties of…
Natural selection has produced an extraordinary diversity of life histories spanning many orders of magnitude in body size, vital rates, and biological times. In general, big and cold organisms grow and reproduce slowly and live long lives;…