Descriptive and quantitative analyses of electromyograms (EMG) from the jaw adductors during feeding in mammals have demonstrated both similarities and differences among species in chewing motor patterns. These observations have led to a number of…
Animals must overcome the physical properties protecting foods to obtain nutrition. While animals can experience selection for traits that facilitate resource exploitation, specific feeding behaviors may entail multiple, different mechanical…
Hardness and rubberiness are distinct textural properties that are associated with extended oral processing times and therefore of interest to designing food structure for specific textural properties. Model food gels were developed with (1)…
Unlike other mammals, odontocetes and mysticetes have highly derived craniofacial bones. A growth process referred to as "telescoping" is partly responsible for this morphology. Here, we explore how changes in facial morphology during fetal growth…
Free-ranging primates are confronted with the challenge of maintaining an optimal range of body temperatures within a thermally dynamic environment that changes daily, seasonally, and annually. While many laboratory studies have been conducted on…
Common marmosets (Callithrix jacchus) and cotton-top tamarins (Saguinus oedipus) (Callitrichidae, Primates) share a broadly similar diet of fruits, insects, and tree exudates. Common marmosets, however, differ from tamarins by actively gouging trees…
Recent morphometric analyses have led to dissimilar conclusions about whether the jaws of tree-gouging primates are designed to resist the purportedly large forces generated during this biting behavior. We further address this question by comparing…
Dental microwear analysis has been employed in studies of a wide range of modern and fossil animals, yielding many insights into the biology/ecology of those taxa. Paleoanthropological studies have produced both expected and unexpected results (e.g.,…
Purpose: To evaluate differences in masticatory muscle function during chewing of model foods designed to differ in fracture strength between dentate subjects (n = 5, ages 59 to 68 years) versus patients treated with a maxillary conventional complete…
Replacement of ingredients or reformulating existing products can significantly change textural characteristics. Our aim was to investigate the effects of sensory input from different textures on adaptation of the chewing pattern. Jaw muscle activity…
We investigated mechanical dietary properties of sympatric bamboo lemurs, Hapalemur g. griseus, H. aureus, and H. (Prolemur) simus, in Ranomafana National Park, Madagascar. Each lemur species relies on bamboo, though previous behavioral observations…
Food oral processing includes all muscle activities, jaw movements, and tongue movements that contribute to preparing food for swallowing. Simultaneously, during the transformation of food structure to a bolus, a cognitive representation of food…
Jaw-muscle electromyographic (EMG) patterns indicate that compared with thick-tailed galagos and ring-tailed lemurs, anthropoids recruit more relative EMG from their balancing-side deep masseter, and that this muscle peaks late in the power stroke.…
Background/aims Continuous measurements of biomechanical properties of skin provide potentially valuable information to dermatologists for both clinical diagnosis and quantitative assessment of therapy. This paper presents an experimental study on in…
Oral processing is essential in breaking down the physicochemical structure of the food and thus important to the sensory perception of food in the mouth. To have an understanding of protein-based, soft-solid texture perception, a multidisciplinary…
Tufted capuchins (sensu lato) are renowned for their dietary flexibility and capacity to exploit hard and tough objects. Cebus apella differs from other capuchins in displaying a suite of craniodental features that have been functionally and…
The goal of this study is to clarify the functional and biomechanical relationship between jaw morphology and in vivo masticatory loading in selenodont artiodactyls. We compare in vivo strains from the mandibular corpus of goats and alpacas to…
