NEXT TALK: Next talk 31st of October, 7pm - Sesonal mood disorders
Cittie Of Yorke, 22 High Holborn, WC1V 6BN
The mutually informative study of locomotion in living and extinct animals
Tuesday, 25th of July 2017
Movement is a fundamental property of many animals. The study of the mechanics of locomotion is important for unraveling how animal form, function and behaviour are linked and for applying these principles to clinical problems, robotics and other fields. Living animals offer the benefit of potentially studying their locomotion directly. Extinct animals offer the benefit that they were far more numerous (over millions of years), disparate in form or behaviour and diverse in species or habitats. Together, however, studies of living and extinct animals can formulate far more powerful principles of how locomotion evolves and what principles of movement are truly general (vs. unique to particular evolutionary lineages). John will illustrate how we can study movement in such animals, directly or indirectly, and what we learn from these mutually informative studies of different animal lineages.
Professor John Hutchinson (Royal Veterinary College) is a biologist who studies how major transitions of locomotion have evolved and how important factors such as body size (e.g. giant land animals) relate to the evolution of movement. He also applies his work to problems that moving animals face, such as pathological issues arising in captivity. He is passionate about communicating science to the public, including in challenging (and exciting!) areas such as anatomy and evolution.