Reason for Swinging Arms: Not Particularly Silly

Truth is even stranger than Monty Python's Flying Circus.

In the legendary Ministry of Silly Walks sketch, hilarity ensues as John Cleese's civil servant character, faced with budget cuts, must turn down a research and development funding request for Michael Palin's character's insufficiently silly walk.

Real life takes it from there (after nearly 40 years) as a research team uncovers precisely why it is that we swing our arms in opposition to our legs when we walk.

The biomechanical engineering team led by Steven Collins of the Delft University of Technology was able to disprove the long-held hypothesis that the arm swing was a still imprinted locomotive remnant of our knuckle-dragging days of brachiation. They further determined that the level of exertion required by walking with arms held firmly in place alongside the body was increased by more than 10 percent.

What they were able to determine was that swinging the arms simply makes walking easier. The balancing effect of swinging the arms in opposition to the legs (right hand forward with the left foot and vice versa) provides a dampening of the torque that bipedalism imposes on the body.

Photo courtesy of Schoffer, via Flickr.