Relationship between humeral geometry and shoulder muscle power among suspensory, knuckle-walking, and digitigrade/palmigrade quadrupedal primates

Abstract

Shoulder morphology is functionally related to different patterns of locomotion in primates. To investigate this we performed a quantitative analysis of the relationship between cortical bone thickness (Cbt) of the muscle/tendon attachment site on the humerus and physiological cross-sectional area (PCSA) of the shoulder muscle in primates with different locomotory habits. The deltoid, subscapularis, supraspinatus, and infraspinatus were investigated. A chimpanzee, a gibbon, a baboon, two species of macaque, a lutong, a capuchin, and a squirrel monkey were included in the study. The total length of the humerus was measured and the values were converted into three-dimensional reconstructed data on a computer by computed tomography. The Cbt values were obtained from the volumes divided by the areas of the muscle/tendon attachment sites of the humerus by computer analysis. Muscle mass, muscle fascicle length, and muscle pennation angle were measured and PCSA was calculated using these parameters. A relatively high Cbt and small PCSA were characteristic of the gibbon. The gibbon’s high Cbt suggests that passive tension in the muscle/tendon attachment site of suspensory primates (brachiators) may be greater than that of quadrupedal primates, whereas the relatively small PCSA indicates an association with a large amount of internal muscle fascia to endure the passive stress of brachiation. Although chimpanzees undertake some suspensory locomotion, the results for this species resemble those of the digitigrade/palmigrade quadrupedal primates rather than those of the suspensory primate. However, the deltoid and subscapularis in chimpanzee differ from those of the other primates and appear to be affected by the peculiar locomotion of knuckle-walking, i.e. the moment arm of forelimb in chimpanzees is relatively longer than that of digitigrade/palmigrade quadrupedal primates. Hence, a large PCSA in the deltoid and subscapularis may contribute to sustaining the body weight during locomotion. On the other hand, a thin cortical bone relative to a large PCSA was a feature of the cercopithecids, indicating that digitigrade/palmigrade quadrupedal locomotion produces less tension at the muscle/tendon attachment sites compared with that produced by brachiators.