Principles of Animal Locomotion

Description

Provides an overview of how animals run, walk, jump, crawl, swim, soar, hover, and fly. This book introduces energetics and optimality as basic principles. It tackles each of the major modes by which animals move on land, in water, and through air. It explains the mechanisms involved and the physical and biological forces shaping those mechanisms.

R. McNeill Alexander is Emeritus Professor of Zoology at the University of Leeds and a Fellow of the Royal Society. He is the author of more than a dozen books, including "Optima for Animals" (Princeton), as well as the award-winning CD-ROM "How Animals Move".

"A valuable reference book written by a leader in the field."--Stephen Gatesy, Nature "A remarkable volume that simply must be read by anyone contemplating any kind of work on, or in imitation of, muscle-driven motion. This is no ordinary summing up but rather a synthesis, an explication of principles--the title needs no disclaimer... [O]ne should read it in short bouts separated by intervals of contemplation."--Steven Vogel, American Scientist "This is an important work that will be appreciated by anyone interested in animal biomechanics... Alexander is gifted in his ability to choose or create models that are sufficiently simple as to be understandable and tractable, but not so simple that they stray far from biological reality."--Robert Josephson, The Quarterly Review of Biology "The book will be a godsend for any lecturer looking for a course book about animal locomotion, and many a naturalist will find that it sheds a flood of light on the reasons behind the endlessly surprising things that animals do... [A] 'must have' for anyone who thinks in terms of physics about the way animals work."--C. J. Pennycuick, Trends in Ecology and Evolution