Why Are Humans Bipedal Essay

There 's many reasons our ancestors had begun walking around on their two legs instead of running on all fours. Evidence was collected during two trips to Guinea in West Africa, because of the trips, there has been one of several leading explanations for why humans became bipedal (an animal using only two legs to walk) millions of years ago. Researchers from Portugal, United States, Japan and England spent multiple weeks watching chimpanzees in their natural habitats to see how they moved about, seeing their behavior. They watched to see if the chimpanzees grabbed a fistful of tasty treats before someone else got to it, they stuffed the treats in their mouths and hands, running to a safe spot on their own two feet. They were four times more likely to maintain a human posture if treats were rare and there was some competition at hand. Over many generations, ancestors gradually developed the right muscles and skeletal system to be able to walk with …show more content…
Because of the change in the way we developed muscles and skeletal system, it also gave us aching backs and sore knees, along with may other issues.

Some anthropologists argue that carrying stuff was the main reason our ancestors became bipeds. It was not possible to turn back time and see what was actually happening all those years ago, so an international team of scientists turned to what they thought was the next best thing, wild chimps. Brian Richmond of George Washington University said "These chimpanzees provide a model of the ecological conditions under which our earliest ancestors might have begun walking on two legs. Something as simple as carrying, an activity we engage in every day, may have, under the right conditions, led to upright walking and set our ancestors on a path apart from other apes that ultimately led to the origin of our kind." Researchers spent 14 months watching chimps in one of the most famous sanctuaries in