March 07, 2006
Quad Walk

Pat and Joshua share a no-prize for bringing us, at almost the same time, news of the discovery of "quadrupedal" humans:

The discovery of a Turkish family that walks on all fours could aid research into the evolution of humans.
...
The siblings, the subject of a new BBC documentary to be aired on March 17, suffer from a genetic abnormality that may prevent them from walking upright.

Instead, they use their palms like heels with their fingers sticking up from the ground.

I'm a wee bit suspicious of the whole thing... humans are rigged up pretty strongly for bipedalism, making us worse than useless at knuckle-walking, let alone pure quadrapedalism. Then again, if it does check out, it would be very interesting to see what sort of modifications they do have to their skeletons. While they seem rigid, over very long periods of time bone can be extremely plastic, allowing substantial modification in detail to most parts of the body.

"Substantial", but not that substantial. Very curious...

Posted by scott at March 07, 2006 12:55 PM

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