Would humans naturally learn to walk without their parents assistance as small children?

Question

I feel though I'm asking a really stupid question. Interested to see how much of our ability to walk is pre-programmed in our brains or is taught to us by our external environment.

Answer 1

I believe its an inbuilt ability we all have

Answer 2

Actually, this is quite a fascinating question.

The short answer is that they will learn to walk upright as long as they have *seen* another person walk upright. It's a bit difficult to answer with total certainty, since such a study would never be authorized. ;-)

To answer your question more generally, although most of our abilities are innate, they are "activated" by our external environment; humans are able to adapt their senses in order to survive. As most people know, a blind person will develop better than average hearing.

However, the older one gets, the less adaptable he or she is. For example, a newborn child has the ability to hear and immitate sounds used in any language. After only a few months, she will lose that ability. She will only be able to detect and speak in her own language.

Several people above have mentioned "Feral Children"-- children raised by animals-- and (unfortunately) this is our best method of study. Kamala and Amala, two children raised by wolves, ran on all fours. They would kneel in order to reach food or things they wanted, but they could not immitate standing.

Interesting sidenote: After living outdoors, some of the feral children could no longer distinguish between hot and cold. Human senses can both improve and degenerate for the sake of adaptation to an environment.

As I said originally, though, this is only a best guess. Many of the "feral children" cases are poorly documented, and some could be hoaxes. It's an engrossing topic, in any case.

Answer 3

Yes and no.
Yes because our evolutive path has adapted our bodies to walk and run like we do. It's not like breathing but is a natural way of locomotion.
And no because this hypothetical human might exist in an environment where walking-running is not needed, be raised by dogs (the documented cases say that the children moved in fours) or a gravity free environment, the space, where this motor skills would deteriorate (as in astronauts).
So the answer is: use or lose it.

Answer 4

Probably.

There used to be a practice called swaddling. Small children were wrapped tightly to prevent them from crawling around. Apparently when the child was finally unwrapped, walking was not a problem.

Of course during the process children did watch adults walk about. The traditional 'raised by wolves' stories have the kids racing along on all fours.

If you truly had an environment where a kid had NO examples, I suspect the greater reach (for food) resulting from standing up, would guide the child into 2 legged locomotion. The length of our limbs and angel of our hips are not well suited for 4 limb travel.

Answer 5

It might help you to know that it has been proved that Language is innate (pre-programmed) in humans, see the works of Noam Chomsky and Steve Pinkers "The Language Instinct".

I am sure that children learning to walk is much more innate than speech, the only conceivable way of subverting the child's ability to walk would be for the parents to prevent the child from seeing anyone walking, possible perverting the child's view of how humans move. Otherwise the baby will automatically learn, by way of complex and manifold instincts.

Even feral children, who were raised by dogs and other animals (even chickens!), easily augmented their stance from their wild upbringing, which often resulted in four-legged gaits, to human bipedal locomotion.

Answer 6

your question isn't stupid, its one of the best I've read. i think as humans we will never walk upright unaided as its not our natural gait. somewhere along the line a chimp for whatever reason decided to walk on two legs his/her off spring seen this and copied it. chimps apart from humans and a few others are the only animals that use tools, but we are the ultimate predator, opposable thumbs and foward facing eyes and more importantly a large brain that can learn without instinct give us the edge over other animals. we arent supposed to walk upright but we do it anyway.

Answer 7

Babies have an inherent ability to walk. Come the right time, they will learn and teach themselves how to walk. Some babies walk earlier than others.

my baby started walking while I did not even offer her any assistance. One day I was just setting watching TV and she got up and walked.

My little cousin had told me that she walks but I thought he was lying since I had not seen her walk.(Apparently she has been trying to walk when she was playing with him), But when the time was right, she showed me that she can actually walk. Ever since then , she has not stopped walking.

Answer 8

Yes. Children will walk eventually even without assistance. But as children, they are drawn to imitating what they see. So seeing others in their manner of walking, sitting, eating;..they too, will be doing in the same manner, in the long run.

Answer 9

To learn how to walk as a toddler is from instinct,I think it is pre-program in our brain,in the learning process,someone helps and support the child until she can walk by herself. I admire you ,for your intelligent question .

Answer 10

There's a natural progression beginning with a rocking motion while immobile to walking unaided but if raised by wolves, they might learn to walk on all fours.

Answer 11

it's not pre programmed. The baby follows the model - biped or quadruped -
and if there's no stimulus, then there's no curiosity and the ability to learn to walk disappears or is too slow