Nature. In an experiment, I don't know yet. Why is Blight so far? Like, it sounds so simple.

They had no idea. But now the data's... I find this not only refreshing, but at some level astounding.

Nature.

Welcome back to the nature podcast.

This week, an early ape offers a glimpse of how walking on two feet might have evolved,

how science might need to change in the next 150 years,

and the bottlenecks for vaccine development.

I'm Benjamin Thompson. And I'm

Charmany Bundell.

First up, one of the defining characteristics of humans, unlike our other great ape cousins,

is that we are fully bipedal. We walk upright on two legs. But exactly when and how our species

evolved to stand on its own two feet isn't very clear. This week, scientists report the discovery

of an ape fossil that moved around in a way that hasn't been seen before,

and which could shed some light on how humans began to take their first steps.

Reporter Annand Jagatir takes up the story.

Humans are unique among the living primates in having a skeleton that's well adapted for walking on two feet,

right from the bottom of our skulls all the way down to our toes.

Chimps, gorillas, bonobos, orangutans, even gibbons, are able to walk bipedally,

but they do this just sort of infrequently.

So they don't have adaptations to their skeleton for this kind of behavior.

They can do it when they need to, you know, when they're carrying a bunch of fruit or something

like this. This is Tracy Kivel, an anthropologist from the University of Kent in the UK.

...