Elephants are hard to miss, whether you’re strolling through the zoo, cruising through the African savanna or touring the jungles of Southeast Asia. They’re the largest of the living land animals, and like many other land animals they’ve got four legs to move them around.
But just because elephants have four legs — like zebras, lions or wildebeests — doesn’t mean they use them in the same way as other four-legged animals, or quadrupeds. In a recent study, a team of scientists found a clever way to understand the elephants’ walk. The scientists found that the giant animals used their legs in a surprising way, a way unlike that used by most other quadrupeds.
Most quadrupeds push with their back legs and use their front legs as brakes. (One of the easiest animals to imagine moving in this way is a bunny.) Elephants, however, use all four legs to both move forward and slow down. John Hutchinson, a scientist at the Royal Veterinary College in London, sees a similarity between elephants and all-terrain vehicles, in which every wheel contributes equally.
“They really do seem to act like four-wheel-drive vehicles, cruising along,” he told Science News. Hutchinson, along with other scientists, worked with elephant experts at the in Lampang, Thailand, to learn how the creatures use their legs.
Watching an elephant walk may seem like an easy afternoon, but finding a way to understand the science is anything but simple. It’s such a difficult study that until now, no one had ever looked closely. After all, if you watch an elephant, it’s tough to tell how much its legs are bending.