polypods

• “Aristotle's approach to the subject is to ask "why some animals are footless, others bipeds, others quadrupeds, others polypods, and why all have an even number of feet, if they have feet at all; why in fine the points on which progression depends are even in number.”

  Archive 2009-03-01

• “And this was the reason why they were created quadrupeds and polypods:”

  Timaeus

• “But crabs are in nature the oddest of all polypods; they do not progress forwards except in the sense explained above, they are the only animals which have more than one pair of leading limbs.”

  On the Gait of Animals

• “However, the flexion of the limbs of all polypods is oblique, like that of the quadrupeds which live in holes-for example lizards and crocodiles and most of the oviparous quadrupeds.”

  On the Gait of Animals

• “Now there is in place a superior, an intermediate, and an inferior; in respect to place bipeds have their superior part corresponding to the part of the universe; quadrupeds, polypods, and footless animals to the intermediate part, and plants to the inferior.”

  On the Gait of Animals

• “We have already stated the fact that non-sanguineous animals with limbs are polypods and none of them quadrupeds.”

  On the Gait of Animals

• “Even crabs move in this way, and they are polypods.”

  On the Gait of Animals

• “But some bloodless animals and polypods can live a long time, if divided, in each of the severed parts, and can move in the same way as before they were dismembered.”

  On the Gait of Animals

• “Quadrupeds, polypods, and footless animals again have their superior part corresponding to the intermediate, because they are not erect.”

  On the Gait of Animals

• “The first is what are the fewest points of motion necessary to animal progression, the second why sanguineous animals have four points and not more, but bloodless animals more than four, and generally why some animals are footless, others bipeds, others quadrupeds, others polypods, and why all have an even number of feet, if they have feet at all; why in fine the points on which progression depends are even in number.”

  On the Gait of Animals

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