Galloping is a skill that all creatures have inherited from fish, which emerged 472 million years ago.
Until today, it was considered that galloping, like other forms of locomotion like jumping, arose only after mammals first appeared on Earth some 210 million years ago.
The gallop is a vital mode of moving for all quadrupeds, from horses to lions to giraffes, and is an important component of their repertory of movements while on the move. When the going gets rough and predators are on the prowl, the gallop is an effective strategy to travel large distances or put up a fight.

But when did it first appear? When did animals get the capacity to gallop, and how did they do it? Galloping, along with other forms of movement such as jumping, is thought to have evolved shortly after mammals first arrived on Earth, around 210 million years ago. However, as Eric McElroy and Michael Granatosky describe in their recent paper in the Journal of Experimental Biology,

', however, the reality is quite different, and the gallop could have evolved much earlier, 475 million years ago. That is, it occurred more than 250 million years before previously imagined. As a result, it isn't exclusive to mammals.

asymmetric walking gaits

The gallop, according to the researchers, is merely one sort of movement among a group of motions known as 'asymmetric gaits,' in which the rhythm of the footsteps is distributed unequally. Jumping (like rabbits), amphibians' 'crutches' (when they drag themselves out of the water with their fins), and fish's 'bateas' (when they push themselves down the sea and river bottoms with their pelvic fins) are all examples of these maneuvers.

McElroy and Grantosky emphasize in their paper that, in addition to mammals, there are a variety of other species that can gallop, such as crocodiles, or jump, such as some turtles. Something that made them ponder if animals could have evolved the ability to freely coordinate their limbs far earlier than previously believed. And what scientists discovered was that animals 'learned' to march in asymmetrical formations around 472 million years ago, long before life migrated from the waters to the land.

A personalized family tree
The researchers based their findings on a survey of the scientific literature and the creation of a custom family tree that included mammals, marsupials, monotremes, reptiles, frogs, toads, and fish that are now known to be capable of doing anything. A sort of gait that is asymmetric. "We collected data on 308 species in total," McElroy explains.

Species that solely employed regular walking, jogging, and running times received a score of '0,' while those that exhibited symptoms of additional asymmetric movement received a score of '1.' After that, McElroy and Grantosky ran a series of simulations to see if asymmetrical gaits appeared earlier or later in the evolutionary tree.

"It took us months to address all the challenges with the study," the researcher says, "but we determined that the initial progenitors of almost all current creatures, including fish, were most likely able to move with some kind of asymmetric gait prototype around 472 million years ago." It's unclear if these prehistoric animals used 'crutches' or leaped across the bottom, but they were clearly capable of asymmetrically coordinating their limbs to propel themselves.

Furthermore, it was surprising to see that certain present creatures, such as lizards, salamanders, toads, and even elephants, have lost their capacity to jump and gallop, while having ancestors who could.

As a result, mammals are not the only ones who can jump and gallop. Almost all creatures extant today have asymmetrical movement in their progenitors, however some have lost it at some point in their evolutionary line. They may have lost the nerve to coordinate these moves, or they may have grown too huge or slow to do so. In any event, we all acquired the capacity to coordinate asymmetrical movements from an ancient fish that used its fins to push itself across the sea floor long before any other species stepped foot, or fin, on land.