Abstract
It is a well-known fact in morphology that static forms of living organisms are classified into several fundamental shapes. Some of them can be described by a geometrical function. On the contrary, the posture of a moving animal has scarcely been treated in morphology, with a few exceptions. But it seems that the posture could be represented with an idealized mathematical form if the animal's behavior is conditioned and maintained in uniform and stationary surroundings. The present paper shows one such typical case, discussing the shape of a gliding snake.
In this paper the gliding shape of snakes during locomotion on a flat surface in stationary straightforward movement is treated. The authors conclude that two kinds of geometrical curves, Eq. (7) and (10), represent sufficiently the shape of a gliding snake. Especially the curve derived under the assumption that the muscle will repeat contraction and relaxation cycles harmoniously during serpentine movement, which we named as the “serpenoid curve”, is shown to be remarkably similar to that of a living snake. Thus the authors believe that research on the shape of animals is useful not only to zoology but also to the biomechanics of an artificial animal-like vehicle and its designing.
