Primate morphophysiology, locomotor analyses and human bipedalism

This volume, which honors Shiro Kondo on the occasion of his retirement, provides a biological-behavioral data base for assessing what makes human bipedalism unique among primates and how it evolved. Japanese researchers have been among the leaders in taking a multifaceted approach to the analysis of human and nonhuman primate locomotion and posture. Primate Morphophysiology, Locomotor Analyses and Human Bipedalism brings together recent work by many of these researchers and also includes work by several of their European and American colleagues. The volume, as a whole, presents a wide range of data and ideas on human and nonhuman primate locomotion. Contributors use a variety of methods to examine morphology, physiology, and the dynamics of movement at many levels of analyses. The book thus lives up to its title. The 15 chapters can be organized as follows: (1) two chapters that analyze human bipedal walking by integrating information on kinematics, muscle activity, foot contact, and, for adults, force-plate data (Suzuki, adults; Okamoto and Goto, children); (2) three chapters that provide complementary comparative data on primates (Okada, kinematics; Ishida, Kumakura, and Kondo, EMG studies; Kimura, dynamics) and a chapter by Yamazaki that uses data on morphology, movement, and forces in living individuals to calculate internal muscle and joint forces and energy expenditure in primate bipedal walking; (3) four chapters that "dissect" the primate body into parts, including two about muscles (Hamada, hip and thigh; Inokuchi, hands and feet) and two about bones (Moriyama, foot; Baba, hindlimb); (4) three chapters that provide integrated examples of positional adaptations in nonhuman primates (Jouffroy and Gfinther, galago; Niemitz, tarsier; Tuttie and Watts, gorilla); and, finally, (5) two chapters based on both theory and studies of nonhuman primates that consider bipedalism and its.origins more directly (Iwamoto, bipedalism and the role of carrying; Prost, morphological-behavioral models in a mathematical context).