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Digitigrade LocomotionDigitigrade locomotion is the sort of walking cats, dogs, and most other mammals engage in, excepting humans, bears, and a few others. While humans usually walk with the soles of their feet on the ground (plantigrade locomotion), digitigrade animals walk on the tips of their toes, or, in more precise terms, their distal phalanges and middle phalanges. Digitigrade locomotion is responsible for the distictive hook shape of dog legs, for there are anatomical differences between a plantigrade and digitigrade limb. Digitigrade animals have relatively long carpals and tarsals, and the bones which would correspond to the human ankle are thus set much higher in the limb than in a human. This effectively lengthens the foot, so much so that a digitigrade animal's "hands" and "feet" are often thought to correspond only to what would be the bones of the human toe or finger Because so little surface area needs to get off the ground, and also because of the added length of the foot, digitigrade locomotion tends to be swift. Some furries claim that walking on tip-toe, the human version of digitigrade locomotion, feels more natural to them than resting their whole foot on the ground.
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