Lateral Undulation
Scientifically, locomotion can be defined as the ability to move from one place to another by which an organism is able to change the location by walking, crawling, swimming or flying. It is our most important and essential activities which chiefly helps us in nearly all our activities from trying to protect ourselves from the predators to wander around for food and shelter. Thus locomotion is very essential to stay alive in this world.
Lateral undulation is one of the most primitive types of vertebrate locomotion which is chiefly used by the lampreys in the water and the snakes on the land. The snakes mainly use at least five distinctive modes of locomotion namely the lateral undulation, sidewinding, concertina, rectilinear and the slide pushing.
Lateral undulation is one of the most noticeable serpentine locomotion observed in the snakes. The lateral undulation type of locomotion can be in simple words described as a sequence of alternating left right movement of the body in the form of waves which propagates to the posterior along the length of the body.
This movement is achieved by the unilateral posterior propagating activity of the muscles. This means that at any given point, the left and the right side muscles on the animal’s body are active. The active muscle contraction region on the animal’s body moves from its anteriorly situated head to the posteriorly situated tail region. Whenever a bend contacts the surface of any region like the rocks or any other hard surface the animal will exert a force against this surface to move ahead.
In a snake, during the lateral undulation, the dorsal muscles get activated. As the snake moves ahead, the posterior part of its body will follow the path that is defined by the head and the neck of the snake. The sliding friction created during such type of locomotion is the main component in lateral undulation. The general adjustment made during the curvatures made around a point with the surface indicates higher level of sensory and motor control that is unique only in the snakes and also in a few limbless reptilians.
This entry was posted on Thursday, September 4th, 2008 at 12:54 pm and is filed under Locomotion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.