Chimpanzees show surprising flexibility on two feet
Chimpanzees don’t strut. But their surprisingly flexible two-legged stride suggests that, more than 3 million years ago, members of the human evolutionary family walked pretty well, a new study concludes.
Chimps rotate their upper bodies about as much as people do while walking, thus countering the force of their swinging hips, say paleoanthropologist Nathan Thompson of Stony Brook University in New York and his colleagues. So even if Australopithecus afarensis, a hominid best known for Lucy’s partial skeleton, had a somewhat chimplike build, that didn’t prevent these ancient hominids from sauntering efficiently across East African landscapes, the researchers propose October 6 in Nature Communications.
“We know now that the more chimplike aspects of Lucy’s trunk wouldn’t have posed a barrier to upright walking,” Thompson says.
Chimps rotate their upper bodies about as much as people do while walking, thus countering the force of their swinging hips, say paleoanthropologist Nathan Thompson of Stony Brook University in New York and his colleagues. So even if Australopithecus afarensis, a hominid best known for Lucy’s partial skeleton, had a somewhat chimplike build, that didn’t prevent these ancient hominids from sauntering efficiently across East African landscapes, the researchers propose October 6 in Nature Communications.
“We know now that the more chimplike aspects of Lucy’s trunk wouldn’t have posed a barrier to upright walking,” Thompson says.
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