Human hand-walkers: five siblings who never stood up - LSE Research Online

Humphrey, Nicholas, Skoyles, John R. and Keynes, Roger (2005) Human hand-walkers: five siblings who never stood up. . Centre for Philosophy of Natural and Social Science, London School of Economics and Political Science, London, UK.

Abstract

Human beings begin life as quadrupeds, crawling on all fours, but none has ever been known to retain this gait and develop it into a proficient replacement for adult bipedality. We report the case of a family in which five siblings, who suffer from a rare form of cerebellar ataxia, are still quadrupeds as adults - walking and running on their feet and wrists. We describe the remarkable features of this gait, discuss how it has developed in the members of this family, and consider whether a similar gait may have been used by human ancestors.

Item Type:	Monograph (Discussion Paper)
Official URL:	http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/CPNSS/
Additional Information:	Published 2005 © London School of Economics and Political Science. LSE has developed LSE Research Online so that users may access research output of the School. Copyright © and Moral Rights for the papers on this site are retained by the individual authors and/or other copyright owners. Users may download and/or print one copy of any article(s) in LSE Research Online to facilitate their private study or for non-commercial research. You may not engage in further distribution of the material or use it for any profit-making activities or any commercial gain. You may freely distribute the URL (http://eprints.lse.ac.uk) of the LSE Research Online website.
Divisions:	CPNSS
Subjects:	Q Science > Q Science (General) R Medicine > R Medicine (General) G Geography. Anthropology. Recreation > GN Anthropology
Date Deposited:	06 Mar 2006
Last Modified:	11 Dec 2024 18:43
URI:	http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/463

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