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Posture does not matter! Paw usage and grasping paw preference in a small-bodied rooting quadrupedal mammal.
Joly, Marine; Scheumann, Marina; Zimmermann, Elke.
Afiliação
  • Joly M; Institute of Zoology, University of Veterinary Medicine Hannover, Hannover, Germany. marine.joly@tiho-hannover.de
PLoS One ; 7(5): e38228, 2012.
Article em En | MEDLINE | ID: mdl-22666494
BACKGROUND: Recent results in birds, marsupials, rodents and nonhuman primates suggest that phylogeny and ecological factors such as body size, diet and postural habit of a species influence limb usage and the direction and strength of limb laterality. To examine to which extent these findings can be generalised to small-bodied rooting quadrupedal mammals, we studied trees shrews (Tupaia belangeri). METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: We established a behavioural test battery for examining paw usage comparable to small-bodied primates and tested 36 Tupaia belangeri. We studied paw usage in a natural foraging situation (simple food grasping task) and measured the influence of varying postural demands (triped, biped, cling, sit) on paw preferences by applying a forced-food grasping task similar to other small-bodied primates. Our findings suggest that rooting tree shrews prefer mouth over paw usage to catch food in a natural foraging situation. Moreover, we demonstrated that despite differences in postural demand, tree shrews show a strong and consistent individual paw preference for grasping across different tasks, but no paw preference at a population level. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: Tree shrews showed less paw usage than small-bodied quadrupedal and arboreal primates, but the same paw preference. Our results confirm that individual paw preferences remain constant irrespective of postural demand in some small-bodied quadrupedal non primate and primate mammals which do not require fine motoric control for manipulating food items. Our findings suggest that the lack of paw/hand preference for grasping food at a population level is a universal pattern among those species and that the influence of postural demand on manual lateralisation in quadrupeds may have evolved in large-bodied species specialised in fine manipulations of food items.
Assuntos

Texto completo: 1 Coleções: 01-internacional Base de dados: MEDLINE Assunto principal: Postura / Tupaia / Força da Mão / Tamanho Corporal / Extremidades Aspecto: Patient_preference Limite: Animals Idioma: En Revista: PLoS One Ano de publicação: 2012 Tipo de documento: Article

Texto completo: 1 Coleções: 01-internacional Base de dados: MEDLINE Assunto principal: Postura / Tupaia / Força da Mão / Tamanho Corporal / Extremidades Aspecto: Patient_preference Limite: Animals Idioma: En Revista: PLoS One Ano de publicação: 2012 Tipo de documento: Article