When it comes to showing how four-legged animals like dogs and horses walk, even natural history experts and taxidermists get it wrong about half the time, according to researchers.

The study, to be published in Tuesday's edition of Current Biology, analyzed more than 300 walking depictions from exhibits in museums, toy models, anatomy textbooks and taxidermist models, and found that almost 47 per cent of them were incorrect.

"This was quite unexpected, because the experts of animal locomotion have known well the characteristics of quadruped walking ever since the famous and pioneering work of Eadweard Muybridge, published in the 1880s," lead researcher Gabor Horvath of Eotvos University in Budapest, Hungary, said in a statement.

Horvath and his team concluded that, based on the high rate of inaccuracies, many of the errors occurred because they were copied from other incorrect models. If quadrupeds were positioned the way many of the incorrect models were, they would fall over, the study authors say.

Quadrupeds almost always walk by stepping with their left hind leg, then stepping with their left foreleg. The right hind leg then follows, with the right foreleg completing the sequence.

This way, the animal always has three points of contact with the ground, maximizing stability, Hovarth said. Quadrupeds generally all walk this way, generally differing only in the timing of their footfall, Horvath said in a release.

Horvath says while inaccuracies are excusable among toy makers, taxidermists and anatomists must meet more stringent requirements.

One exception to the rule, Horvath says, are blockbuster films like Jurassic Park and Lord of the Rings, whose makers employ experts in locomotion to create facsimiles of quadrupeds.