Lost People Really Do Walk In Circles

How hard is it to walk in a straight line? Very hard, actually - according to a new study by psychologist Jan Souman of the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, people who are lost in the woods or desert actually do walk in circles:

At first, Souman wasn't sure if that common sensation was actually true. When lost, he suspected, people might veer to the left or right. But he didn't expect them to actually walk in true circles.

To find out, he instructed nine people to walk as straight as possible in one direction for several hours.

Six walkers forged through a flat, forested region of Germany. Three trekked through the Sahara desert in southern Tunisia. (A sandstorm stopped further testing in the desert). All walkers wore GPS receivers so that the researchers could analyze their routes.

The results, published today in the journal Current Biology, showed that no matter how hard people tried to walk in a straight line, they often ended up going in circles without ever realizing that they were crossing their own paths.

Link

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by OddNumber.


It seems the same force the makes ducks fly in a "v" formation, the one that guides monarch butterflies through their annual transamerican journey, the one that makes moss grow on the north side of trees, is at work in humans as well, albeit to a less productive degree. I am not surprised. This is nature's tuning fork we are responding to.

It is also impossible to walk in a straight line when your eyes are closed.
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When I was a boy scout the reason I was given was one leg your dominat tends to steer you. So with a right dominant leg you will veer to the left and vice a versa.
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When you think about it - how likely is it that we'd be able to walk in a reliable straight line? Any deviation will eventually bring you back around - a straight line is highly improbable.
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Where do I go to get funded to study stuff like this? This fact has been known for thousands of years. Your legs are not identical in length.

I don't remember if it was in survival school or the Boy Scouts I first learned how to deal with this well known phenomenon. Or was it kindergarten? Shessh.
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the reason why scientific studies like this are performed is to clarify the reasons behind such phenomena. Otherwise we could equally attribute it to a longer leg, the position of the sun, or the invisible sky man.
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Ersatz,
The reason has been clear for thousands of years. The study didn't do anything that hadn't already been done with simple empirically gathered data.

I'm not against the scientific method, I support that wholeheartedly.
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"nature's tuning fork"....really? How gullible!

Geese fly in a V because they're drifting not unlike Nascar racers. Moss grows on the north side of trees (kinda...sorta) in this hemisphere because fo the position of the sun.

It's not Nature's tuning fork. It's the reality of the physics of existence.

Feel free to thank the Lord for that. But not any anthropomorphized "nature"!
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