![]() The experiment revealed that 8 per cent of people have some mid-foot flexibility, rather like Chimpanzee feet.īrief Communication: A Mid-Tarsal Break in the Human Foot Another group of researches, Vivek Venkataraman, Thomas Kraft and Nathaniel Dominy, at Dartmouth focused on a tree climbing community in Uganda where the villagers are able to climb trees almost exactly like chimpanzees. Human legs angle in from the hip to the knee allowing our feet to fall directly under the pelvis and our pelvic muscles are much stronger as well, allowing for a stable upright environment.Ĭhimpanzee legs are set wide apart and weak pelvic muscles force their whole body to transfer weight from side to side during each step.Ī recent study by Jeremy DeSilva and Simone Gill at Boston University, asked 400 adults to walk barefoot around the Boston Museum of Science while they filmed their feet. So while chimp feet and bodies can’t do what humans can, I think it shouldn’t be a problem for our feet to work like Chimpanzee feet. We refer to Chimpanzees as knuckle-walkers because they can only walk on two legs for short distances due to differences in the design of our legs and spine.Ĭhimps cannot straighten their legs like humans and they don’t have a lumbar curve which makes weight-bearing and walking much more difficult. If the foot doesn’t actually do this it is a flaw of function rather than design. The human foot is a spring arch that should be able to drop and lift with every step. ![]() The arches of human feet are both rigid and pliable depending on need. The three-arch system of the human foot is not found in Chimpanzee feet. Left to my own devices I can easily get lost in there.Ĭhimpanzee feet are quite different from human feet and there is much to be gleaned from the difference.Ĭonventional wisdom has always claimed that the human mid-foot is rigid, which allows more efficient walking while chimpanzees and other apes have flexible feet better suited to grasping branches as they move through the trees. Chimpanzee feet are amazing to explore if you are interested in how humans walk, and two recent studies have shed interesting new light on our similarities and differences depending on how you interpret them.Īs I mentioned in last Saturday’s post my daughter Ida and I recently spent time in The Hall of Human Origins At The American Museum Of Natural History.
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