One prevalent four-legged animal animation technique is to draw a characteristically digitigrade (or even characteristically unguligrade) animals with a plantigrade stance. Roughly speaking, plantigrade means walking on the soles of your feet like humans, digitigrade means walking on your toes like most quadrupeds (even elephants) so that the heel isn't on the ground, and unguligrade means walking on your nails (or hooves as they are called) like cows or horses so the heel is higher off the ground than in a digitigrade stance. For seemingly plantigrade birds, see Flat-Footed Birdie.