Mechanical Engineering Commons^™

Horses Damp The Spring In Their Step, Alan M. Wilson, M. Polly Mcguigan, Anne Su, Antonie J. Van Den Bogert

Mechanical Engineering Faculty Publications

The muscular work of galloping in horses is halved by storing and returning elastic strain energy in spring-like muscle–tendon units^{1, 2}.These make the legs act like a child's pogo stick that is tuned to stretch and recoil at 2.5 strides per second. This mechanism is optimized by unique musculoskeletal adaptations: the digital flexor muscles have extremely short fibres and significant passive properties, whereas the tendons are very long and span several joints^{3, 4}. Length change occurs by a stretching of the spring-like digital flexor tendons rather than through energetically expensive length changes in the muscle^{5 …}