The Collaborative International Dictionary
Plantigrade \Plan"ti*grade\, a. [L. planta sole of the foot + gradi to walk: cf. F. plantigrade.] (Zo["o]l.)
Walking on the sole of the foot; pertaining to the plantigrades.
Having the foot so formed that the heel touches the ground when the leg is upright.
Plantigrade \Plan"ti*grade\, n. (Zo["o]l.) A plantigrade animal, or one that walks or steps on the sole of the foot, as man, and the bears.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
Wiktionary
a. (context of an animal English) walking with the entire sole of the foot on the ground. n. A plantigrade animal
WordNet
adj. (of mammals) walking on the whole sole of the foot [ant: digitigrade]
Wikipedia
right|151px|thumb|Human skeleton, showing plantigrade habit In terrestrial animals, plantigrade locomotion means walking with the toes and metatarsals flat on the ground. It is one of three forms of locomotion adopted by terrestrial mammals. The other options are digitigrade, walking on the toes with the heel and wrist permanently raised, and unguligrade, walking on the nail or nails of the toes (the hoof) with the heel/wrist and the digits permanently raised. The leg of a plantigrade mammal includes the bones of the upper leg ( femur/ humerus) and lower leg ( tibia and fibula/ radius and ulna). The leg of a digitigrade mammal also includes the metatarsals/ metacarpals, the bones that in a human compose the arch of the foot and the palm of the hand. The leg of an unguligrade mammal also includes the phalanges, the finger and toe bones.
Among extinct animals, most early mammals such as pantodonts were plantigrade. A plantigrade foot is the primitive condition for mammals; digitigrade and unguligrade locomotion evolved later. Among archosaurs, the pterosaurs were partially plantigrade, walking on the whole of the hind foot and the fingers of the hand-wing.
Plantigrade mammal species include (but are not limited to):
- primates (including humans)
-
Carnivora:
- Procyonidae: raccoons
- Musteloidea: wolverines, skunks
- bears
- red pandas
- rodents: mice, rats
- lagomorphs: rabbits
- hedgehogs
- hyraxes
- Marsupialia: opossums, kangaroos
The primary advantages of a plantigrade foot are stability and weight-bearing ability; plantigrade feet have the largest surface area. The primary disadvantage of a plantigrade foot is speed. With more bones and joints in the foot, the leg is both shorter and heavier at the far end, which makes it difficult to move rapidly.
Plantigrade foot occurs normally in humans in static postures of standing and sitting. It should also occur normally in gait (walking). Hypertonicity, spasticity, clonus, limited range of motion, abnormal flexion neural pattern, and a plantarflexor (calf) muscle contracture may contribute to an individual only standing and/or walking on his or her toes. This would be evident by the observable heel rise.
Category:Terrestrial locomotion
Usage examples of "plantigrade".
Jerdon remarks, it may be considered as a sort of link between the plantigrade and digitigrade carnivora.
His step was plantigrade, which made his walk slow and peculiar, adding to the staid appearance of his figure.
The stout body, absence of a tail, the plantigrade hind feet, and stout claws, all seem to proclaim it a bear of one of the two species above mentioned.
They could be human feet, plantigrade and narrow, with five toes and a similar architecture of bones, the long arches growing taller when the nervous toes curled up.
The plantigrade Cercoleptes has a long tail, and is entirely arboreal.
Ignoring the quadrupedal Teest, which ambled in an awkward plantigrade gait across his path, he headed for the enemy ship, now bathed in lights.
Two Trismans with long poles stood by alertly as something came charging from the dark tunnel under the grandstand, plantigrade on four awkward limbs.
They were plantigrade bipeds, rather like men although the body was thicker and the average only came to his shoulder.
There was a plantigrade walk to the way he put his body on the ground.
I was with the Philadelphia Institute expedition in the Bad Lands under Professor Cope, hunting mastodon bones, and I overheard him say, his own self, that any plantigrade circumflex vertebrate bacterium that hadn't wings and was uncertain was a reptile.
People out therethe slobs in front of the goggle boxesshow them a few old bones and tell them they are two distal phalanges and a metacarpal from a plantigrade simian four and a half million years old, and they'll switch channels.