Figure 8. Swimming test of pouch young tammars at pouch exit.

P190–200 pouch young were placed in a swimming tank (see Methods) and their swimming recorded (see Supplementary video S3 and Supplementary video S4). Control animals used alternating hind-limbs kicks with full retraction and posterior extension of the hind legs in kicking movements. Transected animals (SCI@P13) were also able to swim, but their tails were less flexible and their hind-limbs extended more vertically relative to the body during the kicking stroke (n=3). To highlight these differences in body position while swimming, still images were captured from the videos where there was full extension of each hind-limb. The angle made between the body axis and the extended hind-limb axis was measured by drawing a line between the tip of the nose and the ventral base of the tail (body axis, red line) and between the ventral base of the tail and the tip of the toes on the extended hind limb (hind-limb axis, blue line). In control animals, this angle was close to a horizontal line, but in spinally injured animals the angle was more acute.