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plantigrade

   Also found in: Medical, Encyclopedia, Wikipedia 0.02 sec.
plan·ti·grade  (plnt-grd)
adj.
Walking with the entire sole of the foot on the ground, as humans, bears, raccoons, and rabbits do.
n.
A plantigrade animal.

[French : Latin planta, sole of the foot; see plat- in Indo-European roots + Latin -gradus, going (from grad, to walk, go; see ghredh- in Indo-European roots).]

plantigrade [ˈplæntɪˌgreɪd]
adj
(Life Sciences & Allied Applications / Zoology) walking with the entire sole of the foot touching the ground, as, for example, man and bears
n
(Life Sciences & Allied Applications / Zoology) a plantigrade animal
[via French from New Latin plantigradus, from Latin planta sole of the foot + gradus a step]

plantigrade  (plnt-grd)
Walking with the entire sole of the foot on the ground, as humans, bears, raccoons, and rabbits.
ThesaurusLegend:  Synonyms Related Words Antonyms
Noun1.plantigrade - an animal that walks with the entire sole of the foot touching the ground as e.g. bears and human beings
eutherian, eutherian mammal, placental, placental mammal - mammals having a placenta; all mammals except monotremes and marsupials
Adj.1.plantigrade - (of mammals) walking on the whole sole of the foot (as rabbits, raccoons, bears, and humans do)
mammal, mammalian - any warm-blooded vertebrate having the skin more or less covered with hair; young are born alive except for the small subclass of monotremes and nourished with milk
digitigrade - (of mammals) walking on the toes with the posterior part of the foot raised (as cats, dogs, and horses do)


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I was with the Philadelphia Institute expedition in the Bad Lands under Professor Cope, hunting mastodon bones, and I overheard him say, his own self, that any plantigrade circumflex vertebrate bacterium that hadn't wings and was uncertain was a reptile.
I cannot here enter on the copious details which I have collected on this curious subject; but to show how singular the laws are which determine the reproduction of animals under confinement, I may just mention that carnivorous animals, even from the tropics, breed in this country pretty freely under confinement, with the exception of the plantigrades or bear family; whereas, carnivorous birds, with the rarest exceptions, hardly ever lay fertile eggs.
 
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