Previous Article |
Table of Contents
| Next Article
ANTHROPOLOGY
Chimpanzee locomotor energetics and the origin of human bipedalism

,
*Department of Anthropology, University of California, Davis, CA 95616;
Department of Anthropology, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721; and
Department of Anthropology, Washington University, St. Louis, MO 63130
Edited by David Pilbeam, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, and approved June 12, 2007 (received for review April 9, 2007)
| Abstract |
|---|
|
|
|---|
75% less costly than both quadrupedal and bipedal walking in chimpanzees. Variation in cost between bipedal and quadrupedal walking, as well as between chimpanzees and humans, is well explained by biomechanical differences in anatomy and gait, with the decreased cost of human walking attributable to our more extended hip and a longer hindlimb. Analyses of these features in early fossil hominins, coupled with analyses of bipedal walking in chimpanzees, indicate that bipedalism in early, ape-like hominins could indeed have been less costly than quadrupedal knucklewalking.
biomechanics | human evolution | locomotion | limb length | inverse dynamics
Testing this hypothesis requires comparative data not only on the cost of locomotion (COL) in humans and chimpanzees but also on the biomechanical determinants of these costs. The only previous study of chimpanzee locomotor cost used juvenile chimpanzees and indicated that bipedalism and quadrupedalism were equally costly in chimpanzees and that both were more costly than human locomotion (6). Although this study has been central to the debate over energetics and the evolution of bipedalism (3, 7), the reliability of these data has been questioned because adult and juvenile locomotor mechanics and costs can differ substantially (7) and because of recent evidence that bipedalism is more costly than quadrupedalism in other primates (8). Furthermore, the study by Taylor and Rowntree (6) did not include a biomechanical analysis of the determinants of chimpanzee locomotor costs, limiting the potential application of the study to the hominin fossil record.
Here, we compare human and adult chimpanzee locomotor energetics and biomechanics to determine links among anatomy, gait, and cost. Our study focuses on two primary questions. First, do adult chimpanzees follow the pattern of costs found previously for juveniles (6)? Second, do differences in anatomy and gait between bipedal and quadrupedal walking, as well as between chimpanzees and humans, explain observed differences in cost? Using this biomechanical approach to link differences in anatomy and gait to cost, we then examine what changes, if any, would lower the cost of bipedalism for an early hominin, such that bipedalism would be more economical than the ape-like quadrupedalism of the last common ancestor.
We focused on walking speeds because walking is the gait commonly used during terrestrial travel in wild chimpanzees (9). We tested two sets of predictions; first, based on recent studies of primate mechanics and energetics (8, 10), we predicted that bipedal and quadrupedal (i.e., "knucklewalking") costs will differ in adult chimpanzees and that both bipedal and quadrupedal walking in chimpanzees will be energetically more costly relative to other quadrupeds and humans. Second, following previous work (11, 12), we predicted that these differences in cost would be explained by corresponding differences in (i) the force required to support bodyweight during each step and (ii) the volume of muscle activated to generate one unit of ground force.
To test these predictions, we collected metabolic, kinematic, and kinetic data during walking from five chimpanzees, aged 6–33 years, and four adult humans (see Table 1 and Methods). The magnitude of ground force was estimated as the inverse of the duration of foot–ground contact time, tc, per step (11, 13), and the volume of muscle activated per unit of ground force, Vmusc, was estimated by using inverse dynamics (14) (see Methods). Following Roberts et al. (12), we predicted that the COL (ml of O2 kg–1 s–1), varies as the ratio of Vmusc and tc, Vmusc/tc. Thus, any difference in Vmusc/tc, either between species or between gaits, should lead to a proportional difference in COL.
|
| Results and Discussion |
|---|
|
|
|---|
75%) less expensive than chimpanzee locomotion (Fig. 1). Within the entire chimpanzee sample, bipedal walking was modestly, but not significantly, more costly (
10%) than quadrupedal walking (Fig. 1). This finding is consistent with previous work on juvenile chimpanzees (6), which indicated that bipedal and quadrupedal locomotion were equally costly for chimpanzees. However, differences in bipedal and quadrupedal cost varied among individuals (Fig. 1), and in contrast to the study by Taylor and Rowntree (6), most subjects exhibited significant differences between gaits. For three chimpanzees (C1-C3) bipedalism was 32.2% more expensive (P < 0.001, Student's paired t test), but for two other chimpanzees, bipedal costs were similar (P = 0.39; C5) or even less than quadrupedal costs (P < 0.05; C4).
|
|
|
0.2), walking costs are lower in humans than in chimpanzees. The influence of tc and joint angle on locomotor cost is further supported by subject C4. Only this chimpanzee used longer tc during bipedal walking and flexed her knee and hip to a similar degree during bipedal and quadrupedal walking (Fig. 4). As expected, C4 was also the only subject whose costs were lower during bipedal versus quadrupedal walking, although not as low as in humans (Fig. 1). These results highlight how slight kinematic changes can lead to large variations in locomotor cost and are consistent with previous work demonstrating that differences in posture can affect cost (18–20). Note, however, that chimpanzees cannot employ the full hip and knee extension typical of humans because of their distally oriented ischia, which reduce the ability of the hamstrings to produce an extensor moment when the femur is extended relative to the pelvis (21, 22). Chimpanzee pelvic anatomy thus requires them to walk with a flexed hip and knee throughout their stride. In contrast, human ischia are oriented dorsally, allowing large hamstrings extensor moments when the femur is fully extended (21).
|
However, previous morphological investigations have suggested that australopithecines walked with greater knee and hip flexion, and therefore greater cost, than modern humans (25, 26), although this issue remains intensely debated (27). Nonetheless, even if early hominins used a bent-hip, bent-knee form of bipedalism (25), our results suggest that early transitional forms would have reaped some energy savings with minor increases in hip extension and leg length. Given the evidence that the last common ancestor of humans and chimpanzees was a chimpanzee-like knucklewalker (28–30), the variation within our chimpanzee sample (Fig. 4) demonstrates that some members of the last common ancestor population likely had the ability to extend their hindlimb more fully and to use longer tc during bipedal locomotion. These kinematics would have decreased the cost of bipedal walking below that of quadrupedal knucklewalking in these individuals (Fig. 4, Table 1). Even small increases in energy savings from slight increases in hindlimb extension or length may have provided critical selection pressure for early hominins (31, 32).
Our results, therefore, support the hypothesis that energetics played an important role in the evolution of bipedalism. Unfortunately, a lack of postcranial evidence from the earliest hominins and their immediate forebears prevents us from testing the hypothesis that locomotor economy provided the initial evolutionary advantage for hominin bipedalism. However, regardless of the context under which bipedalism evolved, our biomechanical analysis of adult chimpanzee costs, coupled with previous analyses of early hominin pelvic and hindlimb morphology, suggests that improved locomotor economy may have accrued very early within the hominin lineage. Future fossil discoveries from the earliest hominins will resolve whether this energetic advantage was in fact the key factor in the evolution of hominin bipedalism.
| Methods |
|---|
|
|
|---|
During treadmill trials, subjects wore loose-fitting masks that collected expired air, and the mass-specific COL was measured via established open-flow methods (15). COL was measured at a range of speeds for each individual. Only trials lasting a minimum of 3 min, and in which the oxygen-consumption rate visibly plateaued, were included for analysis. Multiple COL measurements were taken at each speed for each subject, and means were used for subsequent analyses. For a subset of treadmill trials, a set of kinematic variables, including tc (i.e., duration of stance for one foot or hand) was collected via high-speed video (125 frames/s; Redlake, Tucson, AZ).
During force-plate trials, subjects walked down a 10-m track equipped with an embedded force-plate (Kistler, Amherst, NY) recording at 4 kHz, providing vertical and fore-aft GRFs. Simultaneous kinematic data were collected via high-speed video (125 frames/s; Redlake), with joint centers for forelimbs and hindlimbs (shoulder, elbow, wrist, hip, knee, and ankle) marked on each subject by using nontoxic water-based white paint. Because flexion and extension of the limb joints occur primarily in the sagittal plane during walking and because mediolateral forces were smaller than anteroposterior ground forces and generally <10% of vertical ground forces, we restricted our analyses to the sagittal plane. Force-plate trials were accepted only if one limb (fore or hind) contacted the force-plate cleanly and if fore-aft GRF traces indicated constant forward speed.
Body mass and external measurements for each subject were used to calculate segment inertial properties by following Raichlen (33). Inverse dynamics were then used to calculate joint moments by following Winter (14), by using force and kinematic data. Joint moments were combined with published data on chimpanzee muscle moment arms (17) to calculate the opposing extensor muscle forces generated for each muscle group. The volume of muscle activated for each step was then calculated by following Roberts et al. (12), by using published muscle-fiber lengths (17).
Previous work (12) has shown that the mass-specific energy COL for terrestrial animals is a function of tc and Vmusc (cm3 N–1) activated to apply a unit of ground force, such that COL = k x (Vmusc/tc), where k is a constant relating oxygen consumption and force production (ml of O2 N–1). This relationship holds because the energy cost of terrestrial locomotion derives primarily from muscle forces generated to support bodyweight.
For comparison with humans, a similar dataset of locomotor cost, kinematics, and muscle activation was collected for a sample of four humans (one female and three males). Subjects were recreationally fit adults with no gait abnormalities and gave informed consent for this study. Human subjects committee approval was obtained before this study, and institutional guidelines were followed throughout. Methods for obtaining locomotor cost and kinetic data were identical to those used for chimpanzees, with the following exceptions: kinematics were measured via a high-speed infrared motion analysis system (Qualisys, Gothenburg, Sweden), data for muscle-fiber lengths and joint mechanical advantage were calculated by following Biewener et al. (20), and segment inertial properties were calculated by following Winter (14).
| Acknowledgements |
|---|
|
|
|---|
| Footnotes |
|---|
Abbreviations: COL, cost of locomotion (measured as the mass-specific rate of oxygen consumption, ml of O2 kg–1 s–1); GRF, ground reaction force; tc, contact time (the duration of foot–ground contact for one step); Vmusc, volume of muscle activated per unit of ground force during locomotion.
To whom correspondence should be addressed at: Department of Anthropology, Washington University, 119 McMillan Hall, St. Louis, MO 63130. E-mail: hpontzer{at}artsci.wustl.edu
Author contributions: M.D.S., D.A.R., and H.P. contributed equally to this work; M.D.S., D.A.R., and H.P. designed research; M.D.S., D.A.R., and H.P. performed research; M.D.S., D.A.R., and H.P. analyzed data; and M.D.S., D.A.R., and H.P. wrote the paper.
The authors declare no conflict of interest.
This article is a PNAS Direct Submission.
This article contains supporting information online at www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/0703267104/DC1.
© 2007 by The National Academy of Sciences of the USA
| References |
|---|
|
|
|---|
Related articles in PNAS:
This article has been cited by other articles in HighWire Press-hosted journals:
![]() |
B. G. Richmond and W. L. Jungers Orrorin tugenensis Femoral Morphology and the Evolution of Hominin Bipedalism Science, March 21, 2008; 319(5870): 1662 - 1665. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF] |
||||
![]() |
D. R. Begun, B. G. Richmond, and D. S. Strait Comment on "Origin of Human Bipedalism As an Adaptation for Locomotion on Flexible Branches" Science, November 16, 2007; 318(5853): 1066d - 1066d. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF] |
||||
![]() |
R. H. Crompton and S. K. S. Thorpe Response to Comment on "Origin of Human Bipedalism As an Adaptation for Locomotion on Flexible Branches" Science, November 16, 2007; 318(5853): 1066e - 1066e. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF] |
||||
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||