据美国《科学》杂志在线新闻报道，对300多幅来自自然历史博物馆和教科书中的狗、马和羚羊的图片，以及动物玩具的姿态进行的分析表明，在艺术家所描绘的四足动物中，有50%的步态实际上都是站不稳的。

传统的“四肢落地模式”认为动物在运动时左后肢先落地，随后是左前肢，再后是右后肢，最后是右前肢。然而如果动物真的这样奔跑，它们很有可能会失去重心，并最终跌倒。研究人员在1月27日出版的《现代生物学》（Current Biology）杂志上报告了这一发现。

推荐原始出处：

Current Biology，doi:10.1016/j.cub.2008.12.011，Gábor Horváth，Gy?rgy Kriska

Erroneous quadruped walking depictions in natural history museums

Gábor Horváth1,,,Adelinda Csapó1,Annamária Nyeste1,Balázs Gerics2,Gábor Csorba3andGy?rgy Kriska4

1 E?tv?s University, Physical Institute, Department of Biological Physics, H-1117 Budapest, Pázmány sétány 1, Hungary
2 Szent István University, Faculty of Veterinary Science, Department of Anatomy and Histology, H-1078 Budapest, István u. 2, Hungary
3 Hungarian Natural History Museum, Department of Zoology,H-1083 Budapest, Ludovika tér 2, Hungary
4 E?tv?s University, Biological Institute, Group for Methodology in Biology Teaching, H-1117 Budapest, Pázmány sétány 1, Hungary

Summary

Since the work of the photographer Eadweard Muybridge in the 1880s [1,2], experts know well how quadruped animals walk. All walking tetrapods advance their legs in the same sequence, and only the timing of supporting feet may differ [3,4,5,6]. Given the long time since Muybridge's work, one would assume that this knowledge should be reflected in the depictions of walking quadrupeds made by work of painters, taxidermists, anatomists and toy designers. The postures of legs of walking horses, however, are frequently erroneously illustrated in the fine arts [7]. To see if this also applies to museums, veterinary books and toy shops, we collected hundreds of walking depictions and tested whether or not they correctly display limb positions. We found that almost half of the depictions are wrong. This high error rate in walking illustrations in natural history museums and veterinary anatomy books is particularly unexpected in a time where high-speed cameras and the internet offer ideal possibilities to obtain reliable quantitative information about tetrapod walking.