Performance of guinea fowl Numida meleagris during jumping requires storage and release of elastic energy

The ability of birds to perform effective jumps may play an important role in predator avoidance and flight initiation. Jumping can provide the vertical acceleration necessary for a rapid takeoff, which may be particularly important for ground-dwelling birds such as phasianids. We hypothesized that by making use of elastic energy storage and release, the leg muscles could provide the large power outputs needed for achieving high velocities after takeoff. We investigated the performance of the leg muscles of the guinea fowl Numida meleagris during jumping using kinematic and force-plate analyses. Comparison of the methods indicated that in this species the wings did not supply energy to power takeoff and thus all the work and power came from the leg muscles. Guinea fowl produced a peak vertical force of 5.3 times body weight. Despite having lower muscle-mass-specific power output in comparison to more specialized jumpers, guinea fowl demonstrated surprisingly good performance by producing muscle-mass-specific work outputs of 45 J kg(-1), a value approximately two thirds of the maximal expected value for skeletal muscle. The muscle-mass-specific peak power output during jumping was nearly 800 W kg(-1) which is more than twice the peak isotonic power estimated for guinea fowl leg muscles. To account for high power outputs, we concluded that energy has to be stored early in the jumps and released later during peak power production, presumably using mechanisms similar to those found in more specialized jumpers.