{"id":2174,"date":"2014-07-01T18:10:00","date_gmt":"2014-07-01T23:10:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/?p=2174"},"modified":"2014-07-05T16:57:44","modified_gmt":"2014-07-05T21:57:44","slug":"the-kangaroo-a-five-legged-animal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/the-kangaroo-a-five-legged-animal\/","title":{"rendered":"The kangaroo: A five-legged animal<img src=\"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/canada_flag_icon_small.gif\">"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_2146\" style=\"width: 460px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/Kangaroo-Skeleton-With-Photo-500ppi-credit-Heather-More.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-2146\" class=\"size-full wp-image-2146\" src=\"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/Kangaroo-Skeleton-With-Photo-500ppi-credit-Heather-More.jpg\" alt=\"When walking slowly, the kangaroo uses its tail to lift and accelerate the body. New force measurements show that in proportion to the animal\u2019s mass, it does as much work as a human leg. (Photo credit: Heather More)\" width=\"450\" height=\"145\" srcset=\"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/Kangaroo-Skeleton-With-Photo-500ppi-credit-Heather-More.jpg 450w, http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/Kangaroo-Skeleton-With-Photo-500ppi-credit-Heather-More-300x96.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 450px) 100vw, 450px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-2146\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">When walking slowly, the kangaroo uses its tail to lift and accelerate the body. New force measurements show that in proportion to the animal\u2019s mass, it does as much work as a human leg. (Photo credit: Heather More)<\/p><\/div>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">New research shows that when they\u2019re not hopping, kangaroos use their tails as a fifth leg to help propel them forward. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Researchers trained five red kangaroos to walk over a force-measuring platform and discovered that rather than simply acting as a prop \u2014 as a pair of crutches would \u2014 the tail <\/span><span style=\"color: #222222;\">acts like a motor to lift and accelerate the body<\/span><span style=\"color: #000000;\">. In fact, in proportion to the animal\u2019s mass, it does as much mechanical work as a human leg would, confirming that when walking slowly, the kangaroo can be considered a five-legged animal.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/rsbl.royalsocietypublishing.org\/lookup\/doi\/10.1098\/rsbl.2014.0381\" target=\"_blank\">Original research paper<\/a><\/span>\u00a0published in the journal\u00a0<em>Biology Letters\u00a0<\/em>on\u00a0<strong>July 1, 2014<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><strong>Names and affiliations of selected\u00a0authors<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<h4>Max Donelan, Simon Fraser University,\u00a0British Columbia<br \/>\nShawn O\u2019Connor, Simon Fraser University, British Columbia<\/h4>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp; New research shows that when they\u2019re not hopping, kangaroos use their tails as a fifth leg to help propel them forward. Researchers trained five red kangaroos to walk over a force-measuring platform and discovered that rather than simply acting as a prop \u2014 as a pair of crutches would \u2014 the tail acts like [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":2146,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[174,113,917,909],"class_list":["post-2174","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-paper-of-interest","tag-animals","tag-biology","tag-evolution","tag-genetics"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/Kangaroo-Skeleton-With-Photo-500ppi-credit-Heather-More.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4DqbN-z4","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2174","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2174"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2174\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2188,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2174\/revisions\/2188"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2146"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2174"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2174"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2174"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}