Extremely high paw accelerations during paw shake in the cat: A mechanism revealed by computer simulations

Paw shake response is a reflex aimed at removing an irritating stimulus from the paw by imparting to it high periodic accelerations (\underline {$>$}10 g). These values seem too high to be produced by distal muscles exclusively. According to Prilutsky et al. (2005), resultant hip moments during paw shake are much greater than distal joint moments, whereas distal joint velocities and accelerations exceed those of the proximal joints. The goal of this study was to examine how proximal hip muscles could contribute to high paw accelerations. Using software AnimatLab, we developed a 2D model of the cat hindlimb consisting of 5 rigid segments with 4 hinge joints and 11 muscles spanning all joints. The muscles were assumed passive except for those crossing the hip. When in simulations the hip muscles were reciprocally activated to periodically flex and extend the hip joint with a typical paw shake frequency of 10 Hz, the hindlimb segments demonstrated motion resembling experimental observations: linear and angular velocities and accelerations of the distal segments exceeded several fold the values of the proximal segments. Simulated paw shake revealed features of a whip-like motion.