What If a Humanoid Scifi Race Had Elephant Feet?

[Spacescifi]

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwiLtN2-2quLAxUhJkQIHSVAOIkQFnoECC8QAQ&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.reddit.com%2Fr%2Fpics%2Fcomments%2F9wpp3g%2Felephant_foot_compared_with_human_foot%2F&usg=AOvVaw2Jzb8E20xOkMHA7LalakiT&opi=89978449

 

Amazingly, the bones look much like our own, just the outside is different.

If a humanoid has elephant feet could they do all the same movements we do? Keep in mind they would be walking on their toes all the time as their feet bones would be tilted so only the toe bones were hitting the ground and the rest is just sole padding.

Thoughts?

Edited Wednesday at 04:35 AM by Spacescifi

[Caerfinon]

Sounds like "Footfall" by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle (1985) 

[RCgothic]

The elephant foot is optimised for transmitting a heavy load into the ground.

The human foot is optimised for efficient walking and running motions. 

A humanoid sci-fi race with elephant feet would be a lot slower and more awkward than we are, but probably a lot heavier and stronger.

[farmerben]

There is a theory that before we had shoes humans walked and ran primarily on the balls of their feet.  I've tried that and can definitely get used to it.

In "Origin of the Species" I found Darwin's illustrations of bones to be among his strongest arguments.  Even the bat wing and the whale flipper are obviously related.

[Spacescifi]

1 hour ago, RCgothic said:

The elephant foot is optimised for transmitting a heavy load into the ground.

The human foot is optimised for efficient walking and running motions. 

A humanoid sci-fi race with elephant feet would be a lot slower and more awkward than we are, but probably a lot heavier and stronger.

Elephants on average run faster than we do though lol. You would not want to get chased by an elephant, since at my best I was doing 12 mph and elephants can reach 15 mph I read.

Running on the toes helps in that regard since for an elephant they can easily go into sprint mode, much how human runners bolt off on their toes at the start of a race.

1 hour ago, RCgothic said:

The elephant foot is optimised for transmitting a heavy load into the ground.

The human foot is optimised for efficient walking and running motions. 

A humanoid sci-fi race with elephant feet would be a lot slower and more awkward than we are, but probably a lot heavier and stronger.

I guess push ups on the ground would be impossible or so awkward they would nit bother, since unlike us their feet would not bend like ours... or would it. Do elephant feet bend?

Oops! They can!

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/08/080822083211.htm

Edited Wednesday at 12:44 PM by Spacescifi

[GluttonyReaper]

2 hours ago, Spacescifi said:

Elephants on average run faster than we do though lol. You would not want to get chased by an elephant, since at my best I was doing 12 mph and elephants can reach 15 mph I read.

Sure, but is that to do with how their feet are designed or to do with how big and muscular they are (as well as having an extra pair of legs)? I'm not sure transplanting the same design onto a humanoid body would make them run faster.

11 hours ago, Spacescifi said:

If a humanoid has elephant feet could they do all the same movements we do? Keep in mind they would be walking on their toes all the time as their feet bones would be tilted so only the toe bones were hitting the ground and the rest is just sole padding.

I don't see why not. Like you've shown, the elephant foot is basically the same as ours, just with more padding to accommodate their greater weight. The human heel bone is surprisingly high up, the rest is just fat. 

[RCgothic]

It's been said humans have the single most efficient locomotion in the animal kingdom.

If elephants are faster overall, it's not by much, only over short distances, and because they have very much longer legs. Humans have much much greater endurance.

The average human can sprint about 17-19mph and can keep that up for 200+m. An elephant can generally sprint about 21mph, but will be done after 50m. This means that whilst the average elephant can catch a human, the human only needs a headstart of about 10m and the elephant won't catch them.

At a slower pace, an average elephant can manage above a walk for about a mile tops before the metabolic and respiratory strain become too much. The average human can run for over three miles with basically no training if sufficiently motivated.

Basically, all the advantage an elephant has comes from being big.

The springy feet of humans recover energy exceedingly efficiently when walking or running whilst being very lightweight for that task.

Our upright posture also decouples our respiration from our gait, so we can maintain effectively any speed we choose, whereas quadrupedal animals tend to have one speed that most efficiently couples their respiration and gait (which neatly meant human hunters could run down prey by choosing a pursuit speed that's awkward for the prey to maintain - we can keep up a constant 8mph a lot longer than e.g. a gazelle, and even if they pick their ideal speed we can still keep up our pursuit longer than they can maintain 60mph plus intermittent rest.)

An upright elephant-footed humanoid, whilst sharing our decoupled gait, simply wouldn't move as efficiently as us. The additional padding is extra weight on what on a car would be termed "unsprung mass". The general effect of a high unsprung mass is to reduce performance (though there are benefits in reducing high frequency vibration, which again suits heavy duty applications).

Just compare running in steel-capped wellies to running slips.

Padding and thick skin gets in the way of the operation of the springy tendons which recover energy, act as an additional weight that has to be forced to move by the muscles, and generally have the effect of dissipating energy instead of recovering it.

I'd expect an elephant-footed humanoid race to be much larger, heavier and stronger than us, but slower (at least over all but the shortest distances), less agile, and with reduced endurance.

Perhaps a consequence of that physique might be that they never needed to develop domestication of beasts of burden (being able to carry heavy loads themselves), and were too heavy to ride other creatures.

 

Edited Friday at 03:31 PM by RCgothic

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

 

[Jacke]

19 hours ago, Spacescifi said:

Amazingly, the bones look much like our own, just the outside is different.

If a humanoid has elephant feet could they do all the same movements we do? Keep in mind they would be walking on their toes all the time as their feet bones would be tilted so only the toe bones were hitting the ground and the rest is just sole padding.

Thoughts?

The bones look the same because around 80 to 100 million years ago or so, people and elephants have a common ancestor.

But elephants evolved that sort of foot because they are so large.  It goes with their limbs and their body, evolved to bear their weight on Earth.

Mice don't have feet like that and neither do we.

Part of the explanation is here.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Square–cube_law

Edited Thursday at 12:14 AM by Jacke