Quadruped

A quadruped is any animal having exactly four walking legs. This includes many mammals such as cattle or cats, and most reptiles like lizards. Birds are not quadrupeds.

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While the argument may be made that "every limb, including an arm or wing, is just a modified leg", such a sense of "quadruped" is better described as a tetrapod, evoking the taxonomic unit tetrapoda the vertabrates with quadruped ancestors, including mammals, some reptiles, amphibians, and birds. The distinction is particularly important in the context of bipeds having two legs, adapted in gross anatomy and neurology a bipedal gait, and of quadrupeds having, in their arm- and wing-homologous forelimbs, markedly different characteristics that a leg must have, whether adapted to a role in a bipedal or quadrupedal gait.

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Animal: :For the Muppet Show character, see Animal (Muppet). For the professional wrestler, see Joseph Laurinaitis....

Leg: Leg has multiple meanings:...

Cattle: Cattle (called simply cows in vernacular usage) are domesticated ungulates, a member of the subfamily Bovinae of the family Bovidae. They are raised as livestock for meat (called beef and veal), dairy products (milk), leather and as draught animals (pulling carts, plows and the like). In some count...