Thanks Kris!

And just for fun, think about how you can stand up like an emu.

Grateful to London Interdisciplinary Biosciences Consortium Doctoral Training Programme for supporting this work with a research grant!

Special thanks to Masaya Iijima, Delyle T. Polet, Stacy Ashlyn, and Mauro B.C. Lacerda for their support throughout my first PhD year! Also, many thanks to @pashavanb.bsky.social, Jim R. Usherwood, and Monica A. Daley for their insights into bird biomechanics in this project.

This study marks the first chapter of my PhD at Royal Veterinary College and University College London. Huge thanks to my co-authors Jeffery W. Rankin, Luís P. Lamas, @mmoazen.bsky.social, and @johnrhutchinson.bsky.social! I couldn’t have done it without them. 🎊

It also has practical applications in fields like robotics 🤖 and animal welfare 🐓
See below a video of Troody created by Peter Dilworth from MIT.

Understanding how emus and other species stand up will provide important implications for how non-locomotor behaviours shape musculoskeletal form and function and drive evolutionary adaptions.

See the cool video of our simulations!

SECONDARY FINDING: We further compared dynamic (with compliant tendons) vs static simulations (with rigid tendons), and found that tendons play a major role in reducing excessive muscle fibre length changes and forces.

MAIN FINDING: Much as for our prior study with greyhounds (and others' work with people), emus use large muscle fibre length changes, activations and forces; and more so when they go from sitting to walking vs. sitting to standing.

Measuring muscle activations and forces directly is tough, so we combined experiments with computer simulations of musculoskeletal biomechanics to estimate how emus use their muscles to stand up. 👩‍💻🍗

In our study, we focused on emus 🦵, and we collected data from force platforms that the emus used to stand up and motion capture cameras.
See below a video of our experiment.

Unlike humans, animals do not normally have a seat, and they start off from very crouched position, and thus many animals probably have large joint moments which give them a weaker strength-to-weight ratio. They also have diverse sizes, morphology, ecology and so on…

Terrestrial vertebrates—including humans—often sit to rest and stand to move around. While we've studied how humans stand up extensively, surprisingly little research exists on how other animals transition from sitting to standing.