Barefoot, five-finger, super-minimal, zero-drop. Whatever joggers embrace as the approach-du-jour for improving form, most of these trends stem from one physiological principal: people who grow up running sans footwear—the way our ancestors did for hundreds of thousands of years—run by landing on their fore- or mid-foot. A new study finds, however, that not all habitually [...]

A new study suggests that we might be thinking about tree climbing in our recent ancestors all wrong. The traditional idea that our ancestors descended from the trees and gradually—and exclusively—began walking upright might be a gross over simplification. Fossil evidence from early hominins suggests that adaptations for tree climbing, such as long arms and [...]

How would you walk if you had five arms and no brains? If you’re a brittle star, the answer turns out to be quite well (for an echinoderm)—although it’s a little complicated. The blunt-spined brittle star (Ophiocoma echinata) looks like a claymation creature from an alien horror movie as it moves its disk-like body along [...]

Do animals give much thought to voluntary behavior? Before you or I reach for a cup of coffee, we make a conscious—even if barely so—decision to do it. But what about tiny-brained crustaceans? How does a crayfish decide to be on its way? Researchers in Japan are trying to crack this neural code, known in [...]

I’ve been walking around my city of Raleigh recently, thrilled with new signs telling me how long it will take me to walk hither or yon. I could see from the signs – simple design, plastic construction, strapped to utility poles – that they weren’t a civic undertaking. Amazing: guerilla direction signs. A culture in [...]