Much of the study is an application of Newton's third law of motion: if at rest, to move forwards an animal must push something backwards. Terrestrial animals must push the solid ground, swimming and flying animals must push against a fluid (either air or water). The topic splits into five disjoint categories:
The distinction between the second and third topics is that in the second, the animal does not need to expend energy to defeat gravity; in or on the water, buoyancy counteracts the animal's weight.
Movement on appendages is the most common form of terrestrial locomotion, it is the basic form of locomotion of two major groups with many terrestrial members, the vertebrates and the arthropods.
Some animals such as horses are unguligrade, walking on the tips of their toes, this even further increases their stride length and thus their speed.
Some limbless animals, such as a leeches, have suction cups on either end of their body, which allows them to move by anchoring the rear end and then moving forward the front end, which is then anchored and then the back end is pulled in, and so on.
The structures of animals and some of their patterns of movement (the ones that are inherited) have evolved.
The fitness of an animal's complement of genes (its genotype) is the probability of the same group of genes being transmitted to subsequent generations.
If we were to try to express the relationship between the locomotion of animals and their fitness in mathematical terms, we would have to conclude that fitness is a function of speed, acceleration, maneuverability, endurance, energy economy, and a great many other properties.
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