why are so few animals bipedal?
233665
The short answer is that quadrupeds are faster off the line than bipeds. Many predators rely on some sort of ambush, on putting on a burst of speed to quickly overtake a target, and four-legged animals are better at that than bipeds.
1085730
While snakes today do not appear to have any limbs, some species still have remnants of their legged past. Pythons and boas, for example, still have tiny hind leg bones buried in muscles toward their tail-ends.
1323256
For a long time scientists figured that the bones are so small because they are vestigial, a shrunken evolutionary remnant from an ancestor that once walked on land. But now scientists have discovered that the tiny bones may actually play a huge role in whale reproduction.
1268900
Their tails are cut very short but they're not docked.
463271
They are the only animals that do not exhibit obvious symmetry in their body organization. They have aggregations of different cell types but do not have true tissues.
1061244
Because if it had ten legs it would be a decapus not an octopus. Having eight legs appears to be a fairly common number. It is symmetrical (which is usually a favorable trait) and has some amount of redundancy. It also allows for a high level of dexterity and strength.
603000
['Dead-Bug. The dead-bug allows movement of hips and arms without moving the spine. ... ', 'Leg lowers. Be healthy. ... ', 'Bird dog. ... ', 'The Plank.']
1110827
Well it is fairly simple, big fierce animals are rare because humans have killed as many of them as they can. ... Humans have systematically killed every animal that has a predatory idea for humans for thousands of years, this leads to a nice simple conclusion. If it's big and fierce to humans it will die.
975409
They do take more balance and more time to learn the basics of walking, but they are highly impractical because the foot of the stilt is a very small area. Because of this, the stilt walker is required to constantly stay in motion, teetering back from foot to foot.
483130
Often, their feet are shorter and wider, like shovels or spades. But a frog's skeleton isn't so similar to a human's once you get past the extremities. Frogs have skulls but don't have necks, so they can't turn, lift or lower their heads like people can. A frog also doesn't have ribs.
391338
Fish, dogs and humans are examples of vertebrates. ... Vertebrates or Invertebrates Invertebrates do not have a skeleton. Some examples of these are spiders, flies and caterpillars. Vertebrates are often larger and have more complex bodies than invertebrates.
124907
The majority of animals usually move their whole bodies often supported by specialised organs such as fins, wings and legs. These are called locomotory organs moving the animal from place to place. Plant movement is not locomotory and does not generally involve moving the whole body.
1221303
["bicycle: vehicle with 'two' wheels.", "biped: animal that walks on 'two' feet.", "biceps: muscle with 'two' heads that attach to bone.", "binocular: using 'two' eyes to see.", "bilingual: of knowing 'two' languages fluently.", "bicentennial: of a 'two' hundred year anniversary."]
942534
Consequently, the weight of evidence indicates that humans are not unique in possessing the neurological substrates that generate consciousness. Non-human animals, including all mammals and birds, and many other creatures, including octopuses, also possess these neurological substrates.
13553
The number of legs a centipede has depends upon the number of body segments that make up its body, and this number varies by species. Centipedes typically have one pair of legs per segment. A fully equipped adult centipede can have between 15 and 177 pairs of legs.
1215983
They were similar to modern humans in that they were bipedal (that is, they walked on two legs), but, like apes, they had small brains. Their canine teeth were smaller than those found in apes, and their cheek teeth were larger than those of modern humans.
1409807
Invertebrates are animals that neither possess nor develop a vertebral column (commonly known as a backbone or spine), derived from the notochord. This includes all animals apart from the subphylum Vertebrata. ... The majority of animal species are invertebrates; one estimate puts the figure at 97%.