  We show that the following elementary geometric properties of the motion of a
discrete (i.e. piecewise linear) curve select the integrable dynamics of the
Ablowitz-Ladik hierarchy of evolution equations: i) the set of points
describing the discrete curve lie on the sphere S^3, ii) the distance between
any two subsequant points does not vary in time, iii) the dynamics does not
depend explicitly on the radius of the sphere. These results generalize to a
discrete context our previous work on continuous curves.
