Free-running
or its official name Parkour is moving through the urban jungle rather as our
ancestors would in the heavily wooded areas bordering on the veldt. Perhaps
these days there is a bigger running component in the swinging, climbing, and
jumping that goes into Parkour.
The BBC Nature group had a good time at the
Society for Experimental Biology’s gig in Salzburg as they produced an other eye-catching
article on the work of Coward from U Birmingham (1). The focus was initially on
orangutans whose habitat is disappearing and becoming dispersed as the greed of
the loggers rule the world.
Orangs
have to eat a lot and keep eating as they don’t get too much nutritional value
out of each mouthful. Left undisturbed in large areas, they cope as they have
been doing for a very long time. But now things are tougher. They have to move
more and Parkouring around their decimated habitat takes a lot of energy. How
do they do it on a poor diet? That is the question delved into at U of
Birmingham.
Not
being able to sign up any orangs for their experiments, they had to sign up
Parkour athletes as substitutes. In addition, grants don’t stretch to Parkour
expeditions in the jungles of Borneo, so they had to make do with a modified
gym, simulated to be like the orang habitat.
Being
experimental biologists, the team wanted quantitative measurements of the
energy expenditure and so oxygen masks were mandatory. Well, it turned out that
the orangs knew a thing or two as they swing bendy trees back and forth to
cross gaps rather than climb down, run and climb up again. When our
Parkouring orang subs tried both
methods, they used up to ten times less oxygen by swinging back and forth on
bendy poles to cross gaps.
Perhaps
we could have these for crossing busy roads rather than having pedestrian
bridges. Parkouring our way to work each morning should definitely keep the
weight off.
- http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/18686671
