| brachiate | |
| —adj | |
| 1. | botany having widely divergent paired branches |
| —vb | |
| 2. | (intr) (of some arboreal apes and monkeys) to swing by the arms from one hold to the next |
| [C19: from Latin bracchiātus with armlike branches] | |
| brachi'ation | |
| —n | |
| an arrangement of five objects, as trees, in a square or rectangle, one at each corner and one in the middle. |
| a screen or mat covered with a dark material for shielding a camera lens from excess light or glare. |
| brachiation (brā'kē-ā'shən, brāk'ē-) Pronunciation Key
Movement in which the suspended body swings by the arms from one hold to another, as in gibbons and arboreal primates. Adaptations used in brachiation, such as relatively long arms and a freely rotating shoulder joint, may have contributed to the development of bipedalism in protohumans. |
brachiation
in animal behaviour, specialized form of arboreal locomotion in which movement is accomplished by swinging from one hold to another by the arms. The process is highly developed in the gibbon and siamang, which are anatomically adapted for it in the length of their forelimbs, their long hooklike fingers, and the mobility of their shoulder joints. The South American spider monkey, considered a semibrachiator, uses its prehensile tail as a third arm. Spider monkeys both run along branches and swing from them.
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