General Chat

Seeing an elephant run may be as rare as seeing one fly. It turns out that instead of running in the conventional sense, they adopt a unique gait at speed, with the fore limbs trotting and the hind limbs walking.

Norman Heglund of the Catholic University of Louvain (UCL) in Belgium and colleagues built an 8-metre-long platform to record the downward forces created when an elephant pounded over it. This allowed them to calculate the changes in an elephant's centre of mass (COM). In all, 34 elephants at the Thai Elephant Conservation Center in Lampang were walked slowly or "run" at speeds of up to 5 metres per second over the platform.

When most animals walk, their COM sways from side to side. This switches to bouncing like a pogo stick when they run, a motion that wastes energy. But the team found that an elephant travelling at speed keeps its COM at a constant height from the ground, even though its front legs bounce up and down in a trotting motion. The result is a pogo element to an elephant's motion, but no vertical shift in its COM.

John Hutchinson of the Royal Veterinary College in Hatfield, Hertfordshire, UK, who also studies elephant gait, says that by some definitions it doesn't qualify as running, as all feet must be off the ground at the same time – something that does not happen with elephants. But the motion does satisfy a more modern definition which requires the animal to bounce.
The Journal of Experimental Biology,

don't know what to say!!!!

That's what I do!! LOL

well all I know is if they trot, run or pogo towards you better get out of the way fast!!

That was very intresing ,

lol
of course they do, have you never watched one run

they charge i think is the term, lol

Whatever they do, run or power-walk, they can do it a damn sight faster than we can.

Come on now, is this a stir up??? Surely you have sat enthralled at the Saturday arvo matinee Tarzan movie and watched the herd of stampeding elephants thundering across the African plain with Tarzan and his monkey right in their path.

So they power walk do they? Yeah right!

I have actually seen elephants run, in Sri Lanka didnt stand too close to see how many legs stayed on the ground at anyone time though!!

They where heading to a river and one of the elephants was blind so he hooked his trunk round the tail of elephant in front and was led to the water, amazing sight.

Well,fancy that,I never realised that!! You learn something new every day!

Thanks for pointing that out,Len.