The Energetic Cost of Climbing in Primates

Hanna, Jandy B.; Schmitt, Daniel; Griffin, Timothy M.

doi:10.1126/science.1155504

Cited by 112 publications

(83 citation statements)

References 7 publications

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“…Hanna et al (31) have found that climbing efficiency is invariant across a wide range of body sizes and morphologies in primates, and therefore these joint movements of extreme dorsiflexion and inversion are likely critical adaptations for safe climbing rather than for energetically efficient climbing. Pontzer and Wrangham (32) have also suggested that climbing adaptations in chimpanzees are related to safety rather than energetic costs.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Functional morphology of the ankle and the likelihood of climbing in early hominins

DeSilva

2009

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

161

241

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Whether early hominins were adept tree climbers is unclear. Although some researchers have argued that bipedality maladapts the hominin skeleton for climbing, others have argued that early hominin fossils display an amalgamation of features consistent with both locomotor strategies. Although chimpanzees have featured prominently in these arguments, there are no published data on the kinematics of climbing in wild chimpanzees. Without these biomechanical data describing how chimpanzees actually climb trees, identifying correlates of climbing in modern ape skeletons is difficult, thereby limiting accurate interpretations of the hominin fossil record. Here, the first kinematic data on vertical climbing in wild chimpanzees are presented. These data are used to identify skeletal correlates of climbing in the ankle joint of the African apes to more accurately interpret hominin distal tibiae and tali. This study finds that chimpanzees engage in an extraordinary range of foot dorsiflexion and inversion during vertical climbing bouts. Two skeletal correlates of modern ape-like vertical climbing are identified in the ankle joint and related to positions of dorsiflexion and foot inversion. A study of the 14 distal tibiae and 15 tali identified and published as hominins from 4.12 to 1.53 million years ago finds that the ankles of early hominins were poorly adapted for modern ape-like vertical climbing bouts. This study concludes that if hominins included tree climbing as part of their locomotor repertoire, then they were performing this activity in a manner decidedly unlike modern chimpanzees.chimpanzee ͉ tibia ͉ talus

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Functional morphology of the ankle and the likelihood of climbing in early hominins

DeSilva

2009

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

161

241

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“…Therefore, it seems justified to assume that an increased percentage of adipose depots, without a parallel increase in the size of the musculoskeletal system, significantly decreases maximum running speeds also in animals. Recently, Hanna and colleagues 67 have shown that vertical climbing efficiency increases only very slightly with body mass in primates (exponent of 0.11, not significantly different from zero), i.e. the cost of travel during climbing is almost directly proportional to body mass.…”

Section: Costs Of Transporting Adipose Depotsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Energetics and the evolution of human brain size

Navarrete

Schaik

Isler

2011

Nature

413

394

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The human brain stands out among mammals by being unusually large. The expensive-tissue hypothesis explains its evolution by proposing a trade-off between the size of the brain and that of the digestive tract, which is smaller than expected for a primate of our body size. Although this hypothesis is widely accepted, empirical support so far has been equivocal. Here we test it in a sample of 100 mammalian species, including 23 primates, by analysing brain size and organ mass data. We found that, controlling for fat-free body mass, brain size is not negatively correlated with the mass of the digestive tract or any other expensive organ, thus refuting the expensive-tissue hypothesis. Nonetheless, consistent with the existence of energy trade-offs with brain size, we find that the size of brains and adipose depots are negatively correlated in mammals, indicating that encephalization and fat storage are compensatory strategies to buffer against starvation. However, these two strategies can be combined if fat storage does not unduly hamper locomotor efficiency. We propose that human encephalization was made possible by a combination of stabilization of energy inputs and a redirection of energy from locomotion, growth and reproduction. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nature10629Posted at the Zurich Open Repository and Archive, University of Zurich ZORA URL: https://doi.org/10.5167/uzh-57326 Accepted Version Originally published at: Navarrete, A; van Schaik, C P; Isler, K (2011). Energetics and the evolution of human brain size. Nature, 480 (7375) across a broad array of taxa was urgently needed, but has so far not been conducted due to lack of 37 morphological data, nor has there been an examination of the broader trade-offs amongst other 38 expensive organs predicted by an extension of this hypothesis 7 . 39Here, we examine the presence of correlated evolution of organ sizes in a new dataset of the 40 mass of various visceral organs (heart, lungs, stomach, intestines, kidneys, spleen and liver) and 41 associated brain size for 100 mammal species, including 23 primate species (see Suppl. Data). 42Dissections followed a strict protocol and were all conducted by one of the authors (A.N.). We 45In this analysis, it is crucial to control for body size. The usual measure taken for this, body 46 mass, is highly affected by variation in the size of adipose depots, which may confound or even 47 reverse the direction of correlations among organs (Suppl. Fig. 2, Suppl. Table 4b). Here, we 48 therefore used fat-free body mass as the best proxy for body size. All analyses took phylogenetic 49 relatedness into account (Suppl. Fig. 3). The sample size of 100 species yields a power of 0.8 for 50 these analyses, which was determined a priori using a published dataset of 39 mammal species (see 51 Methods). 52Contrary to the predictions of the Expensive Tissue Hypothesis, we found no negative 53 correlations between the relative size of the brain and the digestive tract, other expensive organs or 54 their combined sum among mamm...

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“…Taylor et al, 1972;Wunder and Morrison, 1974) and there has been no predictable relationship between cost, incline angle and body size (Full and Tullis, 1990). However, in primates, the sister group to colugos, the cost of climbing is independent of body mass (Hanna et al, 2008). Further work into the metabolic cost of climbing across diverse taxa is required to fully understand this relationship.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Gliding saves time but not energy in Malayan colugos

Byrnes

Libby

Lim

et al. 2011

Journal of Experimental Biology

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SUMMARY Gliding is thought to be an economical form of locomotion. However, few data on the climbing and gliding of free-ranging gliding mammals are available. This study employed an animal-borne three-dimensional acceleration data-logging system to collect continuous data on the climbing and gliding of free-ranging Malayan colugos, Galeopterus variegatus. We combined these movement data with empirical estimates of the metabolic costs to move horizontally or vertically to test this long-standing hypothesis by determining whether the metabolic cost to climb to sufficient height to glide a given distance was less than the cost to move an equivalent distance horizontally through the canopy. On average, colugos climb a short distance to initiate glides. However, due to the high energetic cost of climbing, gliding is more energetically costly to move a given horizontal distance than would be predicted for an animal travelling the same distance through the canopy. Furthermore, because colugos spend a small fraction of their time engaged in locomotor activity, the high costs have little effect on their overall energy budget. As a result, the energetic economy hypothesis for the origins of gliding is not supported. It is likely that other ecologically relevant factors have played a greater role in the origins of gliding in colugos and other mammals.

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The Energetic Cost of Climbing in Primates

Cited by 112 publications

References 7 publications

Functional morphology of the ankle and the likelihood of climbing in early hominins

Functional morphology of the ankle and the likelihood of climbing in early hominins

Energetics and the evolution of human brain size

Gliding saves time but not energy in Malayan colugos

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