Advantages
Knuckle-walking tends to evolve when the fingers of the forelimb are specialized for tasks other than locomotion on the ground. In the gorilla the fingers are used for the manipulation of food, and in chimpanzees for the manipulation of food and for climbing. In anteaters and pangolins the fingers have large claws for opening the mounds of social insects. Platypus fingers have webbing that extend past the fingers to aid in swimming, thus knuckle-walking is used to prevent stumbling.
It has been argued that knuckle-walking of chimpanzees and gorillas originally started from fist-walking as found in orangutans.
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Famous quotes containing the word advantages:
“The advantages found in history seem to be of three kinds, as it amuses the fancy, as it improves the understanding, and as it strengthens virtue.”
—David Hume (1711–1776)
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—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
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—Mary F. Eastman, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4 ch. 5, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)