Regarding lizards, all the ones I’ve owned and loved (with the partial exception of the frilled lizard), moved in a distinct diagonal limbs gait, differing only by varied speeds. I refer to it as ‘the skitter’.
Seems to more of less support that.
Frilled lizards do actually move in the same way, but when startled the fundamentally ‘pop a wheelie’ and run briefly on their hind legs only. Which was frankly adorable.
Totally fun video for those who want to see it
Note that Pepe Le Pew uses that gait.
Only when contemplating / pursuing the ladies. When not so … aroused … he moves a bit more normally for a quadruped.
At least that’s what I think I recall from oh too long ago.
Hmmm. Not disputing you, but I have a hard time imagining a Guinea pig getting two feet off the ground much less 4. They seem almost walrus-level ponderous to me. Like miniature elephants barely able to move their bulk around their enclosure.
I did not ever own any as a kid, but neighbors / pals had them. Always seemed like useless boring nearly inert pets to me.
Oh yeah. There are youtube videos. They have to be pretty young and excited.
That is pretty darn cute. Thank you.
But I’m over 60 and I can popcorn better than most of those critters. Sheesh; all body & no legs.
How guinea pigs survived in the wild ill never know. Meatballs with little legs who have a freeze in place survival tactic.
They don’t - they’re another domesticated meat animal.
Here’s the primary wild ancestor. Better pictures. They’re still chubby little guys, but not much more so than other chubby wild rodents like marmots.
Dogs will often pronk also usually when running through snow or very shallow water and they’re having a good time
There’s the bipedal running on water.
And this:
There’s certainly one-off lizards that have some unusual locomotion but that sort of goes back to the OP asking about if all quadrupeds have the same four basic gaits. They seems to mainly have one gait at various speeds and a few have an additional fairly unique and specialized way of moving for short distances.
As an aside, jump height mostly doesn’t scale with size at all, in either direction. As long as you’ve got the same proportion of your body mass devoted to jumping muscles, and those jumping muscles are all about equally efficient, you’ll end up with about the same height and distance of jumps. A flea jumping a meter up might seem impressive, that being a thousand times or more the flea’s height, but it’s actually about on a par with a human jumping a meter up.
I asked a related question some years back:
It’s hard for me to imagine that a sloth has more than one gait.
Is “stationary” a gait?
Cheetahs and greyhounds use a double suspension gallop at their fastest. All four feet are off the ground at the same time twice per “cycle”— once at full extension, and again when all legs are drawn closest to the body. Some racehorses have used this gait, too, most notably Secretariat.
It’s quite something to see a retired racing greyhound running around using this gait just for the fun of it.
Not quite a “gait” but sloths are quite good swimmers.
Here is a short video showing a saluki’s double spring gait, both filmed and animated.
Saluki are the base-breed for all of the lean-bodied sight hounds such as greyhounds, afghans, and borzoi. The video talks about their speed but to be honest, greyhounds are faster – for the first 600 yards. After that, being sprinters, they’re spent while a saluki in top condition is good for five miles or more.
Very cool video. And yup, greyhounds are definitely sprinters — most winning race times are around 30 seconds.