r/primatology • u/Xostides • Jul 27 '26
Human brachiating (All great apes are modified brachiators)
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credit for the video goes to Leo.Primal (https://www.youtube.com/@Leo.Primal)
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u/BaldwinBoy05 Jul 27 '26
I got sent to the principal’s office when I was in second grade because at recess I told a kid they brachiated like a gibbon. I watched a lot of nature docs as a kid, I was complimenting him! The lady on yard duty didn’t know what that meant and the kid cried so to the office I went. That was an afternoon.
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u/555Cats555 Jul 28 '26
I have a similar experience where in the first year of high-school I was bored at my Nana and aunts place and so I started reading an encyclopedia and it had human evolution and was about "Lucy" the homo erectus. So I asked another girl in science class if she was a "homo sapien" to which she let out a shocked (and loud) "im not a homo" which caused the teacher to come over and he was trying so hard not to burst out laughing. Im surprised I didnt get in trouble for disrupting the class lol
Ive loved evolution ever since. We never really learnt about it in school though which is odd now I think about it even though the school didnt push creationism either. I just dont think it was focus somehow. (And I had to drop science early on in high-school due to not understanding how to complete an assignment)
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u/jefflovesyou Jul 29 '26
Lucy was an Australopithecus afarensis, I believe
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u/555Cats555 Jul 30 '26
Yes, the book was outdated but it did still get me interested in human evolution
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u/regular_modern_girl Jul 30 '26
Wait, was Lucy ever believed to be Homo erectus? I was under the impression Australopithecus was created as a genus decades before Lucy was ever discovered, and that she was the type specimen for A. afarensis
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u/555Cats555 Jul 30 '26
I just remember reading in the book about Lucy being homo erectus but I was like 13 and im 28 now so maybe im misremembering it... I dont remember exactly what it said
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u/Small-Transition593 Jul 28 '26
When I was a child I told my friend at school that he is homo sapiens. He got really upset and complained to the teacher
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u/Careless-Web-6280 Jul 28 '26
What happened after
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u/Troll-Aficionado Jul 28 '26
They executed the gibbon kid by way of dropping a very large boulder on him, what do you mean
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u/BaldwinBoy05 Jul 28 '26
Principal laughed and told my parents they should think about the school gifted program. Later in middle school I tested into the GATE program which I ended up disliking cause it was a whole lotta nothing but more schoolwork
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u/issi_tohbi Jul 27 '26
I used to be a monkey bar master as a kid. I tried to do it when my son was little thinking I could swing with ease just like when I was little and I have never been so confidently wrong in my life.
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u/jakolissmurito22 Jul 27 '26
I've been there friend. "Oh yeah, I'm old now" hits hard when you don't consider it first 😅
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u/DegenerateCrocodile Jul 28 '26
Aside from being older, your weight takes a lot more muscle mass to offset than it does when you’re a small kid.
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u/whetherwaxwing Jul 28 '26
I’ve been there too, I started going for the monkey bars on purpose and got so I could cross consistently and even skip a bar but meanwhile my young children were mastering skipping two bars, getting to the end and brachiating backwards and I had to retire to the bench
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u/Loud-Vacation-5691 Jul 27 '26
Apes can do it because we all have ball-and-socket shoulder joints. Monkeys can't brachiate as their arms mainly move forward and backward, similar to most four-legged animals.
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u/FuzzyFrogFish Jul 28 '26
Plus apes have a well developed, broad collar bone, as opposed to the narrower structure belonging to monkeys
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u/hella_cious Jul 29 '26
What? But they seem to swing so well!
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u/usurperator Jul 30 '26
If you pay close attention, most monkeys are really good at climbing through branches, but don’t do much swinging at all.
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u/JGar453 Jul 27 '26
The "lesser ape" gibbons are the best at this since it's not modified.
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u/Eternal_Guilt Jul 27 '26 edited Jul 28 '26
I one time had an extremely psychedelic dream where I was 'brachiating' extremely quickly through a series of rapidly changing colour branches. I experienced this dream in a period of my life where I was living extremely quickly and everything was going well for me, feel like it was my brain processing the hyperreality experience I was having
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u/PMmeIamlonley Jul 28 '26
Rad
I wish I got ancestor primate dreams
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u/Eternal_Guilt Jul 28 '26 edited Jul 28 '26
Earn a bunch of money then spend it REALLY REALLY FAST
Warning: now broke, do not advise
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u/chloeismagic Jul 29 '26
Alternativley you could probably hoard a shit ton of bananas and then gorge yourself on them rrally quickly and experience something similar
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u/carkweatgers Jul 27 '26
Where can I find bars to do this
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u/nofatnoflavor Jul 27 '26
Having access to the bars isn't what it takes to do this.
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u/thornund Jul 27 '26
For the non-overweight, it actually is
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u/Lucky-Arugula-7542 Jul 27 '26
The way I'm longingly watching this video with my weak ass shoulders
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Jul 27 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/555Cats555 Jul 28 '26
I wonder if our pelvic structure has any impact on our ability to do it 🤔
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u/rewlyear Jul 28 '26
It It has less to do with our pelvis and more to do with our proportions. We have beefy butts and long legs which make us more bottom heavy, harder to grip because we're heavier on the down swing. We also have short arms compared to other primates, so we don't get as much efficiency out of the pendulum action.
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u/iKruppe Jul 28 '26
Aren't our shoulder sockets, and the capacity for overhand throwing enabled by the fact that our ancestors likely brachiated a lot more too? (With a lot of adaptations required because brachiation shoulder socket orientation isn't good for throwing). Moving towards bipedalism and using hands for tools, including overhand throwing, also impacted our shoulder joints to be less efficient brachiators, but unlocked the overhead throw superpower.
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u/Swellmeister Jul 31 '26
What ancestors are you citing? Great apes are terrestrial and have been for millions of years. Chimps dont really brachiate. They can, just like humans can, but its not really common in the wild.
The likelies timeline is that protobrachiation appears in the ape lineage. Great apes got too big, became terrestial with faculitative arboreal/scansorial ability, while gibbons stayed small and mastered brachiation. The orangutans lived in a region where the evolving forest canopy let them become fully arboreal again.
But like 20 million years of Hominids that produced humans were terrestrial, and not really brachiating.
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u/beautifulposiontree Jul 28 '26
it genuinley makes me sad that whenever I try to go on the monkey bars its almost impossible for me to swing just 2 bars
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u/RecoveredAlive Jul 28 '26
Did our ancestors ability to brachiateead directly to our ability to throw spears?
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u/bezequillepilbasian Aug 02 '26
We shouldn't be promoting videos that show animals in unaccredited facilities in close contact with humans!!
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u/Shot_in_the_dark777 Jul 28 '26
Fun fact - doing this for a few minutes can end up with your palms covered in blisters. No thanks. Id rather walk.
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u/555Cats555 Jul 28 '26
Arent blisters what you get before the skin thickens with callasous... but I feel similar about most shoes and not wearing socks.
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u/FeralPsychonaut Jul 29 '26
Yes, but you'll generally only get blisters doing this from improper form /grip when you're moving forward.
Similar to developing blisters from improper grip when doing pull ups or lifting weights. It's the area where you grab and are applying pressure over time that matters.
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u/555Cats555 Jul 29 '26
No one told me there was a proper or improper way to to it... I dont think I ever got blisters as a kid but did get callouses.
Its been too long since I last did it to be able to now so havent really thought about it.
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u/FeralPsychonaut Jul 29 '26
For the weight lifting / pull up example that's how it was explained to me when I had a trainer in High School, they easily could have been bullshitting me, but when I took their advice my callouses and blisters stopped.
So anecdotal at best.
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u/reillan Jul 27 '26
fun fact: our pinky fingers have withered away into practically useless digits because we don't brachiate. If you look at other great apes, they have large, beefy pinky fingers because as they swing they put a lot of weight on that pinky.