Kinematics and ontogeny of locomotion in monkeys and human babies

Early ontogenetic stages are often assumed to reflect or to be similar to past phylogenetic stages within the evolution of man. Therefore, as a first step, the quadrupedal crawling locomotion of human children was analysed and compared to the quadrupedal walk of Macaca fascicularis. The movements of the human child were not only more irregular, they differed from the walk of the monkey mainly through extraordinarily short swing phases, and also through strong scoliotic movements of the spine. There is a compulsory synchronisation in the hip and knee joint movements of the human crawling baby. We conclude that human crawling may be a behavioural recapitulation of a quadrupedal evolutionary stage. However, with reference to kinematics, man is not only characterised by his unique, habitually bipedal, upright gait but also by a second, equally unique locomotion, namely crawling, which he assumes for a short phase during his first year of life.--The walking movements of the limbs in toddling infants were mainly characterised by i) rather stiff, abducted arms, which were moved mostly by spine torsions (similar to those of bipedally walking Gorilla) and not as a suspensory pendulum. However, they rather work as levers for the elastic torsion pendulum of the spine. ii) They are also characterised by frequently lacking the minor knee flexion, which occurs at about the heel strike within each stride of the adult human. Besides many other details of the results, foot movements differed from adult ones mainly in that the whole plantar surface was placed flat on the ground within a few milliseconds.