Читать книгу Anthropology For Dummies - Cameron M. Smith - Страница 90

The terrestrial quadrupeds get around on all fours, but on the ground rather than habitually in the trees. These animals include the baboons, which live in large, complex social groups (troops) and can be fearsome to humans. One troop in South Africa particularly disliked one turn-of-the-century British officer and regularly pelted him — and only him — whenever they saw him marching his own troops! The terrestrial quadrupeds have the following attributes:

 Moderately strong arms and legs

 Lack of massive upper- or lower-body build for either brachiating or clinging-and-leaping

 Calloused feet, hands, and buttocks from spending so much time on the ground

Technically, the chimps and gorillas mix things up a little: They spend a lot of time on the ground, so they’re officially terrestrial quadrupeds, but they have the bodies of arboreal quadrupeds because they’ve only recently (in evolutionary time) come down from the trees in a substantial way. They have one important distinguishing characteristic: heavily built, locking knuckles that allow the heavy upper body to be supported with the knuckles of the hands by pressing down on the ground.

Other primates do some locomotor mixing as well. Bonobos, a kind of West African chimpanzee, are terrestrial quadrupeds, but they also spend some time brachiating and even walking on two legs. This walking is different than human walking, though, because the bonobos only do it on occasion, which is called opportunistic locomotion. Humans walk habitually, meaning their anatomy is adapted for this kind of locomotion.