National Geographic News, Reporting Your World Daily

Thursday, October 28, 2010

Photo: Humans Beat Chimps at Walking Efficiently


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By measuring oxygen consumption of chimps and humans on treadmills, as seen in the composite photograph above, scientists determined that, in walking, humans use one-fourth of the energy chimps require to get around.

Those energy savings may have shaped our evolution toward bipedalism, researchers suggest.

Photographs courtesy Cary Wolinsky