New study claims that humans are ‘surprisingly bad’ at walking

There are few things more emphatic than a self-assured walk.

Somebody who knows how to stroll with style can have an entire room under their command pretty much as soon as they make an entrance. Case in point: Unfortunately only a select few can pull off a McMahon-esque walk on a regular basis. In fact, according to a new study, most of us are just trying to get through the day without falling over. A team of US Scientists from Perdue University, in the US, have found that humans are 'surprisingly bad' at walking, and that it might have been a lot easier if we'd just stuck to all fours. They monitored a group of generally fit and healthy undergraduates to observe their falling patterns, asking the participants to notify them of every stumble in each 24 hour period, over the course of 16 weeks. By the end of the study, half of the students taking part had either tripped or outright stacked it. When you think about the typically boozy lifestyle of the average university-goer this might not initially seem that surprising. But while some of the recorded falls were attributed to alcohol or extreme sports, 58% occurred when simply walking along the street. The report did note that hazardous winter weather had been a factor in the study, but the falling rate was still 30% when those cases were removed from the results. Essentially, the researchers deduced that we've just never really mastered walking on two legs. In the results, published in the journal Human Movement Science, they said: "The fact that the majority of falls occurred while walking supports the prevailing argument that bipeds are mechanically unstable and also demonstrates that walking is a challenging task. These results address an understudied yet important question, and highlight the mechanically unstable nature of bipedal locomotion." So next time you see your fellow man hit the deck, fight that irresistible urge to laugh at his misfortune. We're all in this together.