Department of Anatomy, Shouwa University, School of Medicine The biceps lemons muscle and its homologues in primates shows a great variety in those morphology that are considered to correspond to the varieties of their habitual modes of the locomotion. Then, the morphology of the biceps femoris muscles of four species of the primates were investigated. And the function of these muscles during the habitual locomotion was investigated by means of the EMG method. The materials selected here are the Japanese macaque, the spider monkey, the gibbon and the chimpanzee. The Japanese macaque possesses the monoceptual ischiocruralis lateralis muscle, which shows the wide insertion from the femoral segment to the crural segment. This muscle can be devided into two parts: a part which inserts to the femoral segment and a part which inserts to the crural segment. The former part is considered as the monojoint hip extensor and the later part is considered as the two-joint hip extensor and/or knee flexor. Both of the morphological and functional investigation were performed on the both of the parts. The other three species possess both of the long and short heads of the biceps femoris muscle. Both of the morphological and the functional investigation were executed on the both heads of this muscle.
Morphological investigation: The range of the origin and the insertion, which is significant for the consideration of the function of the muscle, was measured and compared inter-specificaly. In the bicipital group, the differences were observed in the degree of the fusion between long and the short head and in the range of the crural insertion. In the gibbon, both heads fused completely. On the other hand, the fusion of the both heads of the chimpanzee and the spider monkey appeared incompletely. Especially, the range of the crural insertion of the short head of the spider monkey was so wide distally that it was as wide as those of the monoceptual muscle of the Japanese macaque.
Functional investigation: Four modes of the locomotion (horizontal quadrupedal walking, quadrupedal walking on the inclined pole, vertical climbing and the bipedal walking) were selected for this study. When the load acting in the motion was small as the case of the horizontal quadrupedal walking, the part inserting to the crural part of the monoceptual muscle functioned only to adjust the disposition of the limb segments. But when the load got greater
as the case of the vertical climbing, the same part of the muscle was also recruited to generate propulsive force. On the other hand, the long heads of the bicipital type acted to generate the propulsive force in each mode of the locomotion. It was shown that the morphological type of the biceps femoris muscles correlates to the species specific modes of the locomotion.
View full abstract