Standing upright - Part I

Bipedalism in Humans is by no means a well evolved task. We still have issues of lower back pain, knee joint stresses, ankle injuries and hip fractures. Many of these aliments are conditions of aging but it shows during our life time where we are taking the stresses and risks of standing upright.

When we discovered the skeletal remains of Australopithecus afarensis commonly known as ‘Lucy’, we had proof that bipedal hominids were around 3.5million years ago. When we look at her pelvis we can see more in common with our species than that of our distant relations like chimpanzees who are better adapted to climbing and quadruped walking. Lucy’s anatomy showed us that moving from quadruped to biped relied on a reconfiguration of the bony plains of the pelvis and the function of some locomotor muscles to provide lateral support while walking.

The ilia of most quadrupeds are thin and flat to the back of the torso, a gradual bending of these has formed the bony rounded ridge of the iliac crests, giving an anchor point for muscles bearing lateral support, very important for stabilising the hip of a biped.

This video is taken from the BBC’s ‘Prehistoric Autopsy’ Series. You can clearly see how similar Lucy walks compared to modern humans. In contrast the Chimpanzee on the right does not have the required skeletal and muscular configuration of its hip to allow it to walk effectively on two legs.

Pelvic configuration in humans has slowly adapted to provide quite a host of requirements: the most advantageous configuration of musculature for locomotion, transfer of weight during locomotion and to hold the torso upright during locomotion, along with providing the space to adequately hold the internal viscera, and importantly, the birthing passage for offspring. Because of the above, I feel that the pelvis is one of those areas that is quite pivotal in considering an anthro characters design. Without having to delve too deep into bio-mechanics  it’s good to take a look at some of the requirements needed to make a pelvis fit our characters given needs to see what ‘rules’ we may need to follow when making them more anthropomorphic. 

Elastic running

A good example of elastic strain energy while running in bipeds is from those who run with 'Blades'. Whilst Para-Olympic runners with below knee amputations have lost all of the explosive energy of their plantar flexors (calf muscles), what they now gain is the energy conservation of the ground forces from the design of the blades.

Oscar Pistorius, during the 2012 London Olympics complained that a co-competitor had an advantage over him because he had longer blades which gave him a longer stride.

Walking on 2 legs not 4 - Stride and energy

So what would make X-Men's Beast run faster than a human? Well there are a couple simple things that we can observe from those animals that can easily outrun us. Firstly, as a biped plantigrade our maximum stride length is really rather short, a longer stride covers more ground and generally makes a faster runner. (What could break that rule would be an elephant, a plantigrade, that moves it's legs very fast when it charges). 

Digitigrades like a cheetah and unguligrades such as horses have a stride advantage by having longer limbs distal from what would be the knee joint. Simply a lengthening of the metatarsals.

The length of the femurs represented above are equal in length across the different classes for comparison.

That's an advantageous change in bone configuration but driving the power is a muscular change. Secondly, animals like horses have short fibred muscles on their lower limbs that attach to long tendons for elastic energy storage. This increased spring creates a mechanical advantage in the limb, meaning the muscles become more economical as they do not need to generate as much force per stride.

Check out just how thin the lower leg is on a horse, those long tendons and the canon bone are really the only thing they've got; there's no muscle. Find more plates like this Here.

This video is taken from "Inside Nature's Giants - The Race Horse" - (Channel 4). It's a dramatic example of just how much force is stored in the tendons once they are under stress. Energy that would otherwise be lost is recovered via this elastic strain energy. This would make Beast's flat hand very energy inefficient whilst running, and even the bony arch of the human foot is rather inflexible and still a long way from holding the capacity of elastic strain of even a digitigrade.

So if you were designing a character that's a serious fast runner - biological or mech, you might want to give them a shorter thigh in relation to the lower leg to extend that stride and go easy on the musculature of the lower leg, giant muscles don't always create giant forces, that depends on their position on the limb in terms of leverage! Of course, these are not the only things to consider for a set of biped digitigrade legs...

Walking on 2 legs not 4 - Feet

This scene in X-Men First Class raised a brow when I first saw it. In it, Beast out runs Xavier.

What's been assumed here is that because Beast has hands for feet, he's better and faster at running than a human. Is that a correct assumption? Likely not, as it insinuates that the primate 'foot' is more adapted for running than a human foot.

The diagram above is pretty much representative of the anatomy that's at contest in the film. A chimpanzee's foot is a generalised appendage (gripping, climbing, walking, standing), the human foot has evolved into that of a specialised appendage for bipedal locomotion. We have a bony foot arch that allows for spring and the transmission of huge forces when we walk, making it more energy efficient. It is more adapted to forward propulsion and aids our gait, than that of a flat, figured hand of a chimp. Far from being faster, Beast would most likely injure himself trying to compete against human feet.  

Stature - Ribcage

The ribcage has only one major function and that's to act as a solid cavity in which the diaphragm can pull and push air into the lungs. Between human bipeds and any quadruped mammal the major difference in the ribcages are from the effects of gravity and the relative positioning of the forelimbs.

Both ribcages at the top are viewed from cranial to caudal, you could say a quadruped's deep and a human's wide. The bottom sketches show how the canine ribcage would compare as a biped.

It is unlikely that a canine ribcage could support the rise and fall, expansion and contraction needed if it were biped, it's adapted in the wrong plain. But I like the idea of adding some of these shapes to a biped ribcage. One starting point is the sternum, it builds that frontal plain of the chest - does it need to be vertical, could it be shorter? I number of differences between species exist but large differences are more likely to be due to the size of the organs the animal has.

I took a comparative view of a carnivore and herbivore. 

Take an equine, it's a prey species, its evolved to run, requires large volumes of oxygen to do so, it's ribcage is extensive to maximize its capacity. However, it's a herbivore, and needs a much larger gastro-intestinal (GI) tract for digestion. To aid this the sternum is comparatively shorter to the ribcage than in a canine this flares the ribcage, helping to fit those larger organs in. Our canine doesn't need a large GI tract or even needs to do a lot of running, it's ribcage accommodates for this.

I wanted to look and see how these species variations may shape our biped anthros.

A scribble of ideas, looking how to incorporate some form of shortened sternum or elongated ribcage as per the species.

 

For the moment I rested my focus on what creates the girth or volume of the chest, the relation of the 1st ribs, clavicles and sternum or what looks more like a 'collar and tie'. Drawing the 1st ribs from the spine to the sternum helps give the chest its volume. The length and angle of the sternum helps give our character a puffy chest or more space for a larger abdomen. 

Take a look at how flared they made the ribs on Tavros in the Narnia films. It's a high volume chest, certainly plenty of space for a herbivores GI tract.