Learning to walk

Did we learn to walk in the trees?

Dan Jones, a science writer who blogs at The Proper Study of Mankind, looks at recent research into the origins of bipedalism.

Along with a big brain, walking upright on two feet has often been taken to be a defining feature of the human line. In this week’s New Scientist I have a feature article on some recent ideas about why, and where, bipedality first arose. The ‘where’ question relates not to which part of the globe walking on two feet got going, but whether it was on the ground or in the trees.

What? Walking in the trees? It might sound counter-intuitive, but some researchers have recently been arguing for just this possibility, based on observations of the locomotor behaviour of orangutans. In the wild, orangutans not only move through the branches suspended by their hands, but occasionally ‘walk’ along branches while stabilising themselves by holding onto braches overhead. This ‘hand-assisted bipedalism’, the suggestion goes, could have been the precursor to bipedality in the human line.

Unfortunately, the New Scientist article Dan refers to is only available to subscribers. But the post contains a couple of interesting links, along with a video of some funky gibbons. Check it out.