History Main / BizarreAlienLocomotion

* Night stalkers from ''Literature/AfterManAZoologyOfTheFuture'' walk bipedally on their forelimbs, while fighting with the long claws on hindlimbs that reach forward. Justified in that they evolved from bats that became flightless due to isolation on an island chain, so their forelimbs were the only ones strong enough to walk on.

* A mob of [[MixAndMatchCritter kangadillos]] chase the Crood family around this way in the opening sequence of ''WesternAnimation/TheCroodsANewAge''.

Subtrope of BizarreAlienBiology. Supertrope of HeliCritter. Sister trope to BizarreAlienLimbs, when that trope is about legs. Usually applies to a LivingGasbag. Compare RollingAttack.

* Creator/MCEscher's lithographs "Curl-Up" and "House of Stairs" feature creatures called [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curl-up "curl-ups,"]] which resemble metallic caterpillars with plated bodies and can either curl up and roll, or walk around their weird environment on six humanoid legs.

* The Flummels from ''WesternAnimation/Extinct2021'' are furry creatures shaped like doughnuts and can move by rolling.
* A mob of [[MixAndMatchCritter kangadillos]] chase the Crood family around this way in the opening sequence of ''WesternAnimation/TheCroodsANewAge''.

* ''Film/{{Riddick}}''. The scorpion creatures have perfectly good legs, but in a scene where a horde attack Riddick and Boss John, one of them is seen rolling into the action like the mythical [[{{Ouroboros}} hoop snake]] before unraveling to attack.

* In ''[[Literature/HisDarkMaterials The Amber Spyglass]]'', the Mulefa clutch giant seed pods in specialized gripping appendages and roll around like living motorcycles. It's mentioned that when they walk, they do so in a rather clumsy and ungainly fashion, due to the placement of their legs (one in front, two in the middle, one in back, like a diamond shape).

* In Creator/DavidBrin's ''Literature/{{Uplift}}'' series g'Keks have bone wheels driven by natural magnets. As they reside on a low technology LostColony with almost no infrastructure, the g'Kek suffer from premature axle and wheel damage due to there being no real roads to speak of.
* The ''Literature/{{Lensman}}'' series book ''Galactic Patrol''. The inhabitants of Aldebaran I are the Wheelmen, who are literally wheel-shaped aliens, like a living example of MonowheelMayhem. As you might expect, they move by rolling around like wheels. They also encounter a non-sentient wheel-shaped alien in one of the earlier novels which apparently doesn't have the ability to turn unless it's physically moved; it just keeps rolling in a continuous circle around the entire planet.

* One of the smaller lifeforms from ''Literature/{{Fragment}}'' are wheel-shaped creatures with many forked appendages that protrude from a slot in the edge of the wheel. They roll on their edges, extending their forks to adjust speed or direction.

* An aquatic example: the Drambon Rollers ([[Literature/SectorGeneral classification CLHG]]) are a toroidal species that literally cannot stop moving or they die, as their circulatory system is powered by the rolling motion.
* In ''[[Literature/TheLongEarth The Long Cosmos]]'', Joshua disturbs a nest of starfish-like burrowing creatures while hiking [[spoiler: on an alien planet halfway to the galactic core]]. The smaller ones cluster on the back of the large one, which folds its arms around them protectively and then rolls away. (It's unclear if this is their normal mode of locomotion, or one specifically used when an adult's appendages are otherwise engaged in shielding its young.)
* The Flumpers from Creator/BillPeet's ''Literature/NoSuchThings'' are snakes that coil up into a tire shape and roll.

* ''Series/{{Lexx}}'': Cluster lizards have long flat segmented bodies and roll into hoops that can roll rapidly. They're also predators, so you don't want to get in their way. When Zev/Xev accidentally acquires Cluster lizard DNA she also acquires the ability to curl up and roll fast, though it's not demonstrated until season 3.
* Centigurps on ''Series/OddSquad'' sometimes roll along the floor, at least when the Tribble-like oddities aren't bouncing around like ping-pong balls.

* The mythical "hoop snake" of folklore moves by holding its tail in its mouth and rolling like a wheel.
** As can the {{tsuchinoko}} of Japanese tales.

* ''Toys/{{Bionicle}}'', before it became its own theme, offered some weird machine-animal mixes under the ''LEGO Technic'' logo: the Tarakava and Tarakava Nui lizards, Muaka tiger, Kane-Ra bull, Kuma Nui rat, Manas and Mana-Ko crabs are all creatures that had ''tank threads'' for back legs. What's more peculiar is that in the story, everyone regarded these as having honest-to-goodness legs.

* ''Franchise/TheLegendOfZelda'': The Gorons primarily move by rolling. While they can walk, their stubby legs and extremely top heavy stature make them so slow they can be outrun by a small human child. However, in ball form they can roll fast enough to match a half-grown young horse.

* ''VideoGame/MarbleKnights'': The characters all have no legs, instead possessing a magical rolling orb as a lower body.

* ''Franchise/SonicTheHedgehog'': Sonic and many of his friends have the ability to curl up into a ball and roll along the ground at high speed. Sometimes they can even "rev up" in place to dash forward with a tremendous burst of speed. Tails the fox instead flies around by [[HeliCritter rotating his twin tails like helicopter blades]].

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* ''WesternAnimation/StarWarsTheCloneWars'': The Lurmen, seen in [[Recap/StarWarsTheCloneWarsS1E13JediCrash "Jeid Crash"]] and [[Recap/StarWarsTheCloneWarsS1E14DefendersOfPeace "Defenders of Peace"]], curl into balls and roll along like wheels rather than run when they want to go fast.
* ''WesternAnimation/ThreeTwoOnePenguins'': The Wait-Your-Turners (aliens that look like old fashioned electrolux vacuum cleaners) move around via rolling around on their four wheels.

* ''WesternAnimation/BatmanTheAnimatedSeries'': Clayface turns into a giant rolling ball in an attempt to crush Batman during his OriginStory, and repeatedly during his BossBattle from ''VideoGame/BatmanArkhamCity''.
* ''WesternAnimation/LiloAndStitch'': While Stitch has legs, and normally walks, runs, or climbs, he can also curl himself into a ball and roll around with surprising speed. His "cousin" Richter ([[Characters/LiloAndStitchExperiments Experiment 513]]) can also do so as seen in ''WesternAnimation/LiloAndStitchTheSeries''.
* ''WesternAnimation/{{Futurama}}'': One oddball alien, briefly seen at a health club, has a round green body with stubby legs all around its circumference. It runs on the gym's treadmill by rolling steadily forward.

* The Dufflepuds in ''Literature/TheVoyageOfTheDawnTreader'' are one-legged creatures inspired by the Skiapods from Myth/ClassicalMythology.
* In Creator/WayneBarlowe's ''Literature/{{Expedition}}'', several species hop around on one leg.

* In Creator/AlanDeanFoster's ''[[Literature/HumanxCommonwealth Quofum]]'', one unnamed race depicted in carvings throughout a ruined city looked like clusters of soft spheres, and ''bounced'' along the ground.
* Hoppers in the Literature/LandOfOz are one-legged people who hop around.
* ''Literature/FengshenYanyi'', Longxuhu is a chimeric monster who moves around hopping on a single, powerful tiger's leg. Much later, [[ClimaxBoss Tongtian Jiaozhu]] shows up riding the Kuiniu, a beast depicted as a giant, monstrous bull with scales with a single clawed leg as his only limb.

* Artwork depicting the pre-Fall Garden of Eden sometimes includes images of a snake balancing or hopping on the tip of its tail, on the grounds that it shouldn't crawl on its belly until after it tempts Eve.

* So is Munch, the [[LastOfHisKind last surviving]] Gabbit in ''[[VideoGame/{{Oddworld}} Munch's Oddysee]]''.
* The Franchise/{{Pokemon}} Spoink is a pig-like creature with no hind legs. It moves by bouncing on its large spring tail. Said bouncing also causes it's heart to pump, so it will die if it stops moving.

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* Tigger from the ''Literature/WinnieThePooh'' stories is depicted bouncing around on his spring-like tail in cartoon adaptations. This probably comes from the original stories, in which Milne's son misunderstood tigers "pouncing" on their prey as "bouncing".
* Lowly Worm, from ''[[Creator/RichardScarry Busytown]]'', stands upright on one shoe. In animated adaptations, his boneless body contorts in several ways to move about, depending on circumstances and the artists' preferences: sending ripples down his length, coiling up to bounce like a spring, or folding bow- or zigzag-fashion and then extending to launch himself into the air.

* ''Franchise/LiloAndStitch'' franchise:

* In the ''WesternAnimation/SouthPark'' episode "Medicinal Fried Chicken", Randy Marsh intentionally gives himself testicular cancer to get a prescription for medical marijuana, and his balls swell up to the point where he can only move around by bouncing on them.

* Snow dragons of Frigia in the old ''ComicStrip/FlashGordon'' comics would snowboard rapidly down slopes by standing on their own broad, flat tails.

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* At one point in Creator/JohnCarpenter's ''Film/TheThing1982'', a piece of the alien uses an elongated tongue to drag itself along the floor.
* The aliens in ''Film/EdgeOfTomorrow'' move in a manner that involves whirling their body in a corkscrew-like motion while whipping limbs in every direction.
* The six-headed shark from a late entry in the ''[[Film/FiveHeadedSharkAttack #-Headed Shark Attack]]'' B-movies used the four heads sprouting from its sides like crude limbs, planting each head's pointed rostrum in the sand in turn, to drag its bulk along the beach.

* More from Creator/AlanDeanFoster's ''Literature/HumanxCommonwealth'' Verse:

* Having no legs, the titular mermaid from ''The Singing Mermaid'' escapes from the circus after the acrobat teaches her how to handstand. She then walks back to the ocean on her hands.
* Night stalkers from the [[{{Mockumentary}} future-evolution book]] ''Literature/AfterManAZoologyOfTheFuture'' walk bipedally on their forelimbs, while fighting with the long claws on hindlimbs that reach forward. Justified in that they evolved from bats that became flightless due to isolation on an island chain, so their forelimbs were the only ones strong enough to walk on.
* The Rhinogrades from the {{mockumentary}} [[Literature/TheSnoutersFormAndLifeOfTheRhinogrades ''The Snouters: Form and Life of the Rhinogrades'']] are a group of fictitious mammals, some of which walk on their multiple nasal trunks.
* Creator/WayneBarlowe's ''Literature/{{Expedition}}'' features numerous bizarre examples of locomotion.
** The Flipstick is a 60-meter long pole-like creature that moves by flipping itself on both ends.
** The Gyrosprinter is a two-legged animal with one leg in the front and the other in the back (not unlike the Dominic example above). It supposedly evolved from a four-legged ancestor, such that both of its front legs and back legs fused together. It solves the balance issues by developing two balancing organs (similar to the inner ear) on the sides of its body.
** Another creature starts out with four legs when young, but the hind legs atrophy as it matures and its hind ''skid'' develops.
* ''Literature/TheFutureIsWild'' has the Megasquid, a terrestrial squid that moves around on eight modified pillar-like tentacles (Which have no bones like an elephant's trunk). It moves with a gait not used by any living animal today: moving its first and fourth legs on one side in unison with the second and third legs on the other side.
* In Creator/RobertAHeinlein's ''Literature/TheStarBeast'', the eponymous Lummox is an eight legged space dinosaur. It normally moved in a 1,4,5,8,2,3,6,7 gait, good for anything from a slow crawl to as fast as a trotting horse. However, if in a hurry, s/he could move in a double-ended gallop moving legs 1 & 2 & 5 & 6 together, alternated with 3 & 4 & 7 & 8.
* The gukuy and owoc from Literature/MotherOfDemons have two parallel 'rails' which operate much like a snail's foot. They're faster than you might expect, though humans are faster and can get through rougher terrain.
* The Skeezaboos from Creator/BillPeet's ''Literature/NoSuchThings'' have horns so long that they can and do use them as skis.

* As do the three-legged Jan in ''Literature/AlienInASmallTown,'' though the Jan are also subterranean burrowers.

* On an extraterrestrial life-themed episode of ''Into The Universe With Creator/StephenHawking'', one of the hypothetical creatures shown is an herbivore with two clawed legs and a huge suction-cup mouth. Using the latter as a temporary anchor, it could walk up and down vertical cliff faces.

** The 3rd party D&D supplement ''Into the Black'' describes a number of exotic cavern-dwelling critters, one of which -- the ice rat -- traverses glacial cavern floors by rolling around in snow until its thick fur is sheathed in ice, with gaps for its head, paws, and rudder-shaped tail. Encased by this form-fitted one-rat toboggan, it slides along incredibly fast, controlling its speed and direction with tail and dragging claws.
** The whitespawn iceskidder, one of many strange dragonspawn introduced to ''Dungeons and Dragons'' via the intervention of Tiamat, speed across ice with the elongated skating-claws on their hind feet and twin stabilizing blades alongside the base of the tail.

* The giant bat-monster from survival/horror game ''The Hunted'' walks on the knuckles of its folded wings, legs dangling beneath its body, much like the Night Stalkers from the ''Literature/AfterManAZoologyOfTheFuture'' example above.

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* It's never really specified what form of locomotion Carbosilicate Amorphs of ''Webcomic/SchlockMercenary'' use, but one comment often aimed at one member of the species, Sergeant Schlock is "you're faster than you look".

* As a fictional human example, ''WesternAnimation/SouthPark'' introduced a form of locomotion that involves sitting on your naked butt with your legs in the air while dragging yourself along with your hands. It's called "Taylor Swifting" for some reason, and it becomes a youth fad akin to [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planking_(fad) planking]].

* ''Franchise/{{Superman}}'' storyline ''ComicBook/TheUntoldStoryOfArgoCity'' has Zygors, an alien species who travel through the void of space by organic jet propulsion thanks to their tentacles.

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* ''Film/Tremors3BackToPerfection'': The [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin Assblasters]] take off and fly by organic jet propulsion.

* Creator/AlanDeanFoster likes this trope. His two novels set on [[Literature/HumanxCommonwealth Midworld]] include many alien animals that drift in the air with helium bladders, while in ''Quofum'' there's mention of spiral-winged critters that corkscrew through the air. Squirks -- tiny swamp reptiles from the ''Literature/{{Spellsinger}}'' series -- use four rotating props to [[{{Helicritter}} hover like helicopters]].

* ''Literature/{{Cluster}}'': One race uses jet propulsion.
* ''Literature/{{Discworld}}'': In ''Literature/GuardsGuards'', Errol the swamp dragon manages to reverse the direction his flame comes out from, turning his guts into a chemical rocket and flying by jet propulsion. The lunar dragons from ''Literature/TheLastHero'' use it as their normal mode of propulsion.

%%* ''Picture Atlas of Our Universe'' has one species from Jupiter called the Jellyblimps.

* ''TabletopGame/RocketAge'': The skies of Jupiter are already home to floating gas bags, but a better example is probably the Eagle Snake. Eagle Snakes are metre long, lamprey mouthed creatures that use three gas bags on their ventral side to control their elevation and propel themselves, while using the ridge of thin flesh to squirm through the air.

* ''VideoGame/Pikmin'':
** The Snitchbugs used to have normal wings, but lost them during their evolution. As a result, they have adapted to flying by rapidly beating their branching antennae.
** ''VideoGame/Pikmin2'': The Careening Dirigibug from flies via inflatable sacs that resemble party balloons.
* ''VideoGame/MonsterHunterGenerations Ultimate'': While Valstrax is a faily standard quadruped on the ground, its method of flight is bizarre: it draws in air through an orifice on its chest, compresses it with [[AppliedPhlebotinum Dragon energy]], then ejects the mixture from its wings as it ignites to propel itself. That's right -- it's a living jet engine. The wings themselves also have bizarre flexibility for biological limbs, being able to stretch a surprising distance to stab at prey, or completely flip with the vents pointing forwards so Valstrax can use blasts of Dragon energy [[WeaponizedExhaust as an attack]].

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* ''Blog/HamstersParadise'': The wingles are a member of the lizard-like rattiles that have managed to evolve flight. However, unlike the other flying vertebrates of Earth or HP-02017, they don't use their forelimbs. Instead, they've developed four highly modified scales (which is actually modified hair) with special muscles and flap them rapidly to fly, making their method of flight much closer to that of insects.

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* ''WesternAnimation/BattleForTerra'': The aliens can fly and use their tails in a fashion similar to how fish use their tails to swim underwater.

* In ''Literature/TheFutureIsWild'', the ocean phantom is a colonial jellyfish-relative that drifts on the surface, using tall flaps of tissue to catch the wind and sail from place to place.
* In ''[[Literature/TheDresdenFiles Small Favor]]'', Dierdre forms her animated blade-hair into a shark-like tail for swimming with when she dives into Lake Michigan.
* In Creator/TerryPratchett's ''Literature/{{Nation}}'', a footnote describes how the sailfin crocodile (''Crocodylus porosus maritimus'') travels immense distances at the surface of the [[AlternateHistory Great Southern Pelagic Ocean]] using the movable skin-and-cartilage sail on its back to catch the wind.
* Some of the fish from Creator/DrSeuss' book ''Literature/McElligotsPool''. There are fish with built-in sails or propellers. One fish can ski down underwater slopes. There are even fish who jump off steep waterfalls and parachute down to the river below.

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* ''Series/StarTrekVoyager''. The space creatures in "Elogium" propel themselves via flagellation, essentially whipping their tails back and forth [[SpaceFriction as a means of moving forward]].
* One hypothetical alien creature from ''Through The Wormhole With Morgan Freeman'' had a tubular body and vane-shaped fins that propelled it through water by rotating like a drill.

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* ''Blog/HamstersParadise'': The cricetaceans are a family of marine rodents that resemble Earth's whales and dolphins and as such, appear to propel themselves forward with a fluked tail. However, they evolved from the seal-like bayvers which lacked a tail and swam using their flippers, which means that the cricetaceans' fluke is actually a pair of highly modified immoblie hind legs and they swim by ungulating their elongated spines.

* The ocean sunfish, or mola mola, loses its true tail early in development, and grows a unique pseudo-tail - the clavus - from its dorsal and anal fins for an alternate rudder.

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* Creator/HPLovecraft's Elder Things from ''Literature/AtTheMountainsOfMadness'' could somehow travel through ''outer space'' using their fan-shaped wings. The original text depicts them [[ScienceMarchesOn flying through the aether]], but {{Fanon}} insists that their wings are biological solar sails.
* In ''[[Literature/TheDresdenFiles Ghost Story]]'', wraiths that aren't under the direct control of a more powerful entity are described as drifting ethereally through Chicago's ghost-realm, just barely out of contact with the ground, occasionally touching down with their toes to push themselves along. When commanded, they fly freely, suggesting that it's simply their lack of individual willpower that hinders their independent motion.
* In the ''Literature/{{Animorphs}}'' prequel ''The Andalite Chronicles,'' [[BigBad Visser Thirty-five]] (later Three) has a pair of weird pets that move on wheels--until their upper bodies detach so that they can attack on wings.
* In ''[[Literature/HumanxCommonwealth Quofum]]'', a small burrowing creature has a fleshy slot on its back, in which it grips and rotates a hard conical crystal, drilling its way through the soil.
* In "Literature/TheHoundsOfTindalos" by Creator/FrankBelknapLong, the titular Hounds of Tindalos are strange, angular creatures who existed long before single-celled organisms first evolved. They are normally invisible as they inhabit the "angles of time" as opposed to the "curves of time" that humans and other life-forms do. Thus, they can freely travel through time as well as materialize through any corner of a wall or object if it's sharp enough (120 degrees or less). Thus, the only way to avoid getting hunted and eaten by one is to stay in a room with no angles... forever.

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* ''Series/StarTrekVoyager''. In "Basics" a cave-lizard has four limbs spaced around its circumference, so it can pull itself along the cave roof as well as the ground.
* The Horta in ''Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries'' are silicon-based organism and they move around actually melting the stone with the acid of their bodies. Spock describes it as "moving through rocks as we move through air".

* ''VideoGame/{{Oddworld}}'': Fleeches in ''Oddworld: Abe's Exoddus'' are worm-like creatures who move like regular real life worms, but they can use their MultipurposeTongue as a grappling hook to navigate their environment.

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* The 1957 animated Disney documentary ''Mars And Beyond'' includes some depictions of hypothetical Martian wildlife, including several mineral-consuming creatures built like legless armadillos. They use broad banks of oral appendages resembling earth-moving machinery to carve trenches in rocky surfaces, eating the rock they displace, as they slide along the ever-growing trenches on their flat bellies.

** As can the tsuchinoko of Japanese tales.

* RealLife example: Sidewinders are desert snakes that crawl rapidly across the sand by throwing loops of their own bodies ahead of themselves.

* Yet another RealLife example: humans, as far as other mammals are concerned. The majority of mammals are quadrupedal, but bipedalism only evolved a few times in different groups: kangaroos, a few rodent groups (such as gerbils and kangaroo rats), pangolins, bears, and a couple of primate species. Most of these are really only able to hop, or can only walk for a short bit before reverting to all fours again. Only humans can walk on two legs as their main form of locomotion. Doing so with a vertical spine also makes us radically different from Earth's most numerous bipedal walkers, birds.

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* ''WebOriginal/HamstersParadise'': The cricetaceans are a family of marine rodents that resemble Earth's whales and dolphins and as such, appear to propel themselves forward with a fluked tail. However, they evolved from the seal-like bayvers which lacked a tail and swam using their flippers, which means that the cricetaceans' fluke is actually a pair of highly modified immoblie hind legs and they swim by ungulating their elongated spines.

* ''WebOriginal/{{Serina}}'':

* ''WebOriginal/{{Serina}}'': [[https://sites.google.com/site/worldofserina/the-ultimocene-250-million-years/the-cartwheel Cartwheels]] are a species of simiagibs -- tribbets adapted for monkey-like arboreal lifestyles -- that use their clade's distinctive "fractal" limbs and tail, formed by fingers fused into two sub-limbs each before separating again at the tips, to move through the trees by rolling underneath branches. They do this by grasping a branch with their right pair of hands, swinging their tail hands up to grasp it as well, let go of their hands' hold and allow themselves to hang upside down, and swing their left hands up to grasp back at the branch before righting themselves and repeating the cycle. They can move extremely quickly in this manner, grasping and releasing branches several times per second, using gravity to speed up further when fleeing from predators, and on the ground use a variant of their arboreal gait where they essentially roll along like living wheels.

* Spinnerfish in ''VideoGame/{{Subnautica}}: Below Zero'' resemble a ball with a starfish lodged inside it vertically, and move by tumbling over and over in the water.

* Wheelers in the Literature/LandOfOz have wheels instead of hands and feet and locomote by rolling around on them.

* ''Literature/AfterManAZoologyOfTheFuture'': The juvenile parashrew grows a parachute made of hair on the tip of its tail, and uses this to catch the mountain winds, dispersing over distances such a tiny animal couldn't otherwise traverse. The parachute-hairs fall out once it finds a territory of its own.

** The "Spacelings" are friendly, tameable animals which live among the reefs of space, between the stars. They appear to move via a reactionless drive of some sort--figuring out how they fly is one of Steve Ryland's goals in ''The Reefs of Space.''

Thousands of species of RealLife organism move by walking, swimming, or flying with wings. Most SpeculativeFiction species do the same. But whether to showcase the physical demands of a creature's unusual habitat, to prove it can be done, or merely to make them stand out in a crowd, writers sometimes dream up truly weird ways for their creations to get from point A to point B. Wheels are a common example, possibly for the sheer absurdity of the image.

* The snails from ''WesternAnimation/{{Turbo}}'' will "tuck and roll", hiding inside their shells to roll down slopes, if they need to move faster than a crawl and/or shield their soft parts while in motion. [[spoiler:This maneuver is how Turbo wins the Indy 5000 after he's injured and loses his SuperSpeed just shy of the finish line.]]

* Pangolins do this by curling up into a ball.

* There are also spiders in the desert that fold their legs and cartwheel away when threatened.

* Trebhum from ''VideoGame/TheEternalCylinder'' are usually bipedal, but they can curl up into a ball to roll at top speed. There is also an enemy called the Tonglegrop that possesses an acid sac that it can use as a wheel to move faster.

* The characters of ''VideoGame/MarbleKnights'' all have no legs, instead possessing a magical rolling orb as a lower body.
* In ''VideoGame/StarCraftII'', banelings execute this trope with an upgrade (which increases their speed).

* ''VideoGame/Pikmin2'':
** The Careening Dirigibug from flies via inflatable sacs that resemble party balloons.
** The Snitchbugs used to have normal wings, but lost them during their evolution. Instead their antenna now serve as their wings.