There is an interesting story circulating on news media on the Internet about a Turkish family walking on all fours. There’s been speculation that they’d regressed in time to a point in our evolution when we were not bipedal (walked upright).
There are surprising photographs and video of the Ulas family in Turkey walking somewhat like primates on all fours but using the palms of their hands rather than the knuckles. It looks uncomfortable and obviously mobility is curtailed because it’s essentially unnatural for a bipedal animal (the human-animal) to walk on all four limbs. Conversely, it is natural for a primate such as a chimpanzee to walk on all four limbs.
Some scientists have added a little ‘spin’ to the story by discussing evolution and an astonishing reversal of evolution but the reason coming from other scientists is much simpler and based on common sense.
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The common sense reason
It’s a family who appear to have inherited a disease, Üner Tan syndrome, which damages the cerebellar vermis in the brain. This part of the brain manages balance. When damaged it can cause ataxia which is a loss of coordination. It appears though that the family members do not lack coordination generally but that initially they appear to have decided to walk on all four limbs because they had difficulties with balance when walking on two legs.
Üner Tan syndrome also affects brain development and can cause ‘mental retardation’ although I have not read that this family suffered from that aspect of the disease. One study states: ” in which affected individuals show quadrupedalism,”. But I don’t see why affected individuals want to walk on all fours unless what follows applies.
And the critical aspect of the story is that it appears that parents taught their children to walk on four limbs in order to protect them from falling over. And no doubt the children watched their parents walking on four limbs and copied them. They thought it was normal. And it became ingrained in their way of life.
And when something like that is established from a very young age, it becomes a deeply ingrained habit. They might have been frightened of changing as they were understandably frightened of the unknown and what might happen if they walked upright. This further ingrained the non-bipedal walking.
The cure
They were provided with a walking frame to gradually teach them to walk upright. And in a television programme about the story, the presenter, evolutionary psychologist Professor Nicholas Humphrey, of the London School of Economics (LSE), said that there was “an astonishing transformation”. He added the following:
The children who had never taken a step upright on two legs [used] this frame to walk across the room with such delight in their faces and a sense of achievement [that they had] “suddenly made a breakthrough into the world they never imagined they could ever enter.”
60 Minutes – Professor Nicholas Humphrey
Physiotherapists also helped. The important thing is that these children were born in disadvantaged circumstances and they now receive the kind of help they needed many years ago allowing them to walk like humans should walk which has no doubt freed them up to do so much more with their lives.
Message to anyone who has visited this site over the years: as you can see this article is not about cats. The reason? There are over 20k pages on cats and I have genuinely ALMOST run out of things to say. Also, Google search finds pages that are not about cats pretty well so apparently Google understands and accepts this 💕👍. I hope anyone who reads this does too. I need to keep writing articles for 2 reasons (1) keep the site alive and (2) keep me occupied 😒😁.
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