The undulating tripod gait
- valentinadisanto
- Jun 3
- 1 min read
New paper out today in Nature Communications! We introduce the undulating tripod gait, the same walking strategy used by a surprisingly diverse group of fishes, including lungfish, bichirs, catfish, snakeheads, and sculpin. We tracked the animals, built a model and a robot, and found that three body segments, two fins, and friction are all it takes. No specialized anatomy required.
This work was led by Michael Ishida and carried out in collaboration with the labs of Fumiya Iida at the University of Cambridge and the University of Tokyo, and Neil Shubin at the University of Chicago. Grateful to the Human Frontier Science Program for making it possible.
Read the paper here: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-026-73111-2
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