Meeting Abstract
Desert kangaroo rats (D. deserti) use erratic leaps to evade predation by snakes. During these vertical jumps, these animals rotate their relatively long tail, as well as their body, through the air. Previous behavioral research on tail use in these rodents suggested that the tail is mainly used for balance. Video recordings show large tail swings in combination with a change in body orientation. Given these observations, we hypothesized that these kangaroo rats use their tail to change body orientation in the aerial phase of the escape response in addition to use it for balance. To test this hypothesis, we collected video data from kangaroo rats in the field, while they performed the leaps as a response to a self-built, artificial predator attack simulator. For analysis we quantified rotation in the yaw plane for both the body and the tail from take-off to landing. In the yaw plane, the tail performs one full rotation in approximately 0.14 – 0.2 seconds while the body turns 35 – 55 degrees during the aerial phase (when legs are retracted). This suggests that kangaroo rats use their tail actively to change orientation while airborne and that they likely need to reach certain jump height to have sufficient time to perform enough tail rotations to actively change orientation before touching the ground. Future analysis will include body and tail angle change in the roll and pitch plane, as well as analysis of the head rotation with respect to the body.
