Animals that can hop

Question

Wiki User · Answer

You're looking for an animal that can hop, skip, and jump? I assume you mean "besides human beings"? :-)

My vote is for the Horse.

We all know horses can jump. That leaves "skipping" and "hopping".

"Skipping" requires taking two steps in a row with the same foot, before shifting to the other foot, therefore, it's pretty much an activity of two-legged animals, only. Four-legged animals have too many extra feet to "skip"... They are moving on to foot #2, then #3, then #4, not repeating foot #1 twice in a row.

That said, a horse doing a "flying change of lead" will "skip" with his front feet.

Explanation:

A cantering/loping/galloping/running horse, can be on the "left lead" or the "right lead", meaning that either his left front leg hits last (left lead), or his right front leg hits last (right lead).

A running horse's foot-fall pattern for running on the "left lead" is:

1) right hind leg, 2) left hind leg 3) right front leg 4) left front leg.

A running horse's foot-fall pattern for running on the "right lead" is:

1) left hind leg 2) right hind leg 3) left front leg 4) right front leg.

Once his final front leg has hit, then the horse has all four feet in the air for a moment, gathering under him, while all that power sends him surging forward through the air (!), as he moves all of his legs forward to start the pattern again.

A horse is on "the correct lead", if he is running in a circle, and the front leg closer to the inside of the circle is hitting last.

If you think about this, it makes sense - imagine if the horse were running in a *very* small circle, say only 10 feet in diameter... the horse's body will be tilted towards the inside of the circle, just the way you would tilt your body if you were trying to run in a circle only 2 feet across. If the "outside" front leg ("wrong lead") was the leg landing last for the next major push, the horse would be so off-balance, he'd fall over - his outside front leg would be pushing him inward, and because he was leaning inward, that leg wouldn't be directly under him, but would be diagonally off to the outside of his center of balance - then while all his feet gathered under him, he'd be falling forward and sideways inward towards the center of the circle, down to the ground. A horse on the correct lead, would have the three previous legs driving him forward hard, but land on the front leg on the side closer to the inside of the circle, which would be much more directly under his center of balance, and that would counter all the rest of the leaning and the power, and keep him from falling over.

What if a horse is doing something like running in a "figure 8" pattern, say, running the bottom circle of the "8" in one direction, and then, when he gets to the middle, continuing diagonally upwards to run around the top circle of the "8" in the opposite direction? If he is going to do this and be balanced, he has to run one circle on one lead, and somehow switch in the middle of the "8" in order to run the other circle on the other lead.

A "simple change of lead" is when the horse is running on one lead, and needs to reorder his foot fall pattern, to run on the other lead, so he slows down and trots a few steps until he can get himself sorted out, and then starts running again.

A "flying change of lead" is when the horse is running, and manages to change foot fall patterns while still running, without slowing down.

A horse doing a "flying change of lead" *does* "skip", and take *two steps in a row* with the *same* front leg, in order to adjust himself to the *opposite* foot fall pattern.

After those two steps in a row with the same front leg, all of his feet are collected up under him again, and during that "float time" when he is travelling through the air with no feet on the ground, is when he is able to decide to start out next with the *other* hind leg first, instead of the one he *was* using.

For example, a horse starting out on the *left* lead, and doing a flying change-of-lead, to then start running/cantering/galloping/loping on the *right* lead, would move his feet like this:

Starting on the "left lead":

1) right hind leg, 2) left hind leg 3) right front leg 4) left front leg.

"Flying change of lead":

5) a *second* step, on the same left front leg (there's your "skipping step"!)

Continuing on the "right lead":

6) left hind leg 7) right hind leg 8) left front leg 9) right front leg.

Check out YouTube.com with a search for "flying change" and you'll be able to see what this looks like.

And if you look at *just* what his hind feet are doing, and don't count the front legs, they're "skipping" too.... in the above pattern, looking at just the hind legs, you can see it's: right, left....left *again*, right .... but the front feet are hitting in between all of that, so I don't know if you want to count that part as skipping. The front legs *do* skip though.

Okay, so the horse can jump, and the horse can skip. What about that hop?

Horses can hop, too.

They do it on their own, naturally, when rearing up and fighting each other, but they've been trained to do it for hundreds, possibly thousands, of years - originally as a war maneuver, and later as a trick or a demonstration of training and strength.

The most famous demonstrations of these moves today, are "The Dancing Stallions of Lipizza", or the Lipizzan stallions and riders from the famous "Spanish Riding School" of Vienna, Austria. Due to the strength and number of years of training it takes to achieve these moves, they are considered by many to be the pinnacle of dressage moves.

(Side note: Watch out, there are several scam companies touring the U.S., using VERY deceptive advertising to imply that they are THE trained riders and horses from the Austrian school, when instead, all they have done is bought *that breed of horse*, and have done their own training, with whatever riders they hired. The difference in quality is dramatic, and a very expensive mistake, to go see the frauds. Just because it's a show with Lipizzan stallions, doesn't mean it is "THE" Lipizzan stallions!)

Among the fancy moves these horses are taught, are the following:

The "Levade" is when the horse rears up on his hind legs and basically poses that way. A horse doing that in battle, protected his rider from being attacked by foot soldiers (although it was probably the horse who got a spear or sword in the belly, instead).

The "Courbette" is your "hop". From the "Levade" position, the horse then *hops forward*. This takes tremendous strength. And as a war move, is certainly a fine way to clear a path through enemy foot soldiers, while, again, protecting the rider.

And while we're discussing such moves, we might as well mention the most difficult of them all, the "Capriole", which is where the horse leaps up in the air, and, while up in the air, kicks straight out with both his hind feet and his front feet simultaneously (!!!)... now imagine what *that* would do to a bunch of surrounding enemy foot soldiers!

So, there you have it... My reasons for voting for the horse, they can hop,skip, and jump.

Trivia addition - by the way, elephants have been trained to skip, but they are the only mammal that *can't* jump.

Wiki User · Answer

Original answer was: "bunny can hop and skip and jump"

... I dunno about the rabbits being able to *skip*... My answer is below.