Blaberus Giganteus - Locomotion

Locomotion

Cockroaches always have three legs in synchronous contact with the ground during movement. The three legs are classified as the leading leg, middle leg, and trailing leg and the leading and trailing leg from one side with the middle leg of the other side will form a tripod. The leading leg will pull the body, while the trailing leg pushes the middle leg forward. The middle leg is important because it will act as a pivot and creates the characteristic zigzag locomotion. The process will be repeated with the next tripod and to move forward the tripods alternate. The ability of cockroaches to have ground reaction force distributed equally to these three legs is explained by joint torque minimization. Joint torque minimization has been shown to help limit mechanical, energy, and metabolism demands, and can also decrease the axial load on a single leg. Cockroaches can easily walk up a 45˚ slope on a smooth surface with little to no difficulty. However, aged cockroaches or cockroaches with damaged tarsi can overcome such slopes only with difficulty.