Sometimes, I ponder things a little too hard. Or I think about them a little too long. Sometimes, it makes an interesting story. The rest of the time, it just hangs around in the back of my head and waits for an opportunity to be useful.

Most of them… just hang around in the culch box of my brain. And what better place to unload them onto other people than this blog? After all, I owe my very few readers a thing or two from the depths of my mind.

And the first bizarre thing that I thought about too much is..

Skipping.

Yup.

Consider this: It’s a gait that has survived for generations. There’s not a time when some people didn’t traverse the land by going hoppity skippity as they went. It’s usually an expression of happiness.

But…

Where did it come from? Why do humans skip along?

What possible evolutionary benefit is skippity hopping along on our way?

When you think about it too long, you realise a few things. Skipping is faster than walking. It takes less energy than running, and can potentially be sustained longer than running. So it covers a lot of ground in a comparatively short time with comparatively less energy.

Humans are pursuit predators. We run our prey down and exhaust them. And what better way to pursue longer than skipping along? Faster than a walk. Less energy than running. Maintainable for longer than running, too.

The resultant mental image is quasi-hilarious. Our ancient ancestors following the tracks of their prey. Skipping along with their weapons held almost negligently in their hands and being chill about the entire thing.

The prey would be exhausted sooner, chased for less time, and the tribe would get to eat all the sooner.

At least, that’s my thought process on that. There’s no proof. The only human trackway I know about in the fossil record was from a small family of australopithecines. They were walking, not skipping. Unless some other trackway gets found where humans or hominids were chasing their prey gets found? There’s nothing to say, one way or another, about whether or not I’m right.

I’m just thinking things through in a logical fashion.

Or what passes for logic from me.

Feel free to debate it. I’d love to see where this goes.