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Full-Text Articles in Kinesiology
Tunnel-Tube And Fourier Methods For Measuring Three-Dimensional Medium Reaction Force In Burrowing Animals, Alexis Moore Crisp, Clinton J. Barnes, David V. Lee
Tunnel-Tube And Fourier Methods For Measuring Three-Dimensional Medium Reaction Force In Burrowing Animals, Alexis Moore Crisp, Clinton J. Barnes, David V. Lee
Life Sciences Faculty Research
Subterranean digging behaviors provide opportunities for protection, access to prey, and predator avoidance for a diverse array of vertebrates, yet studies of the biomechanics of burrowing have been limited by the technical challenges of measuring kinetics and kinematics of animals moving within a medium. We describe a new system for measuring 3D reaction forces during burrowing, called a ‘tunnel-tube’, which is composed of two, separately instrumented plastic tubes: an ‘entry tube’ with no medium, in series with a ‘digging tube’ filled with medium. Mean reaction forces are measured for a digging bout and Fourier analysis is used to quantify the …