Family that walk on all fours have ‘undone the last three million years of evolution’

All families have their own little ways and traditions, but one group of relatives has a trait so unusual that scientists have labelled them as being totally different from the rest of the human race.

The Ulas family has been the focus of interest in the field of evolution for years after they were discovered in a remote village in Turkey moving around on all fours.

In the early 2000s, a scientific study was published about the Ulas siblings and their unusual bear-like way of moving, with experts having differing opinions on the cause of this abnormality.

In the years following the paper’s publication, Professor Nicholas Humphrey, a renowned evolutionary psychologist from the London School of Economics (LSE), made a trip to Turkey to meet the remarkable family.

The Ulas’ mother and father had an astonishing 18 children, out of which, a remarkable six were born with the ability to walk on all fours, a phenomenon that has never been observed in modern adult humans before.

They made a documentary about the family back in 2018.

“The thing that sets us apart from the rest of the animal kingdom is the fact that we’re the species that walks on two legs and carries our heads held high,” he added.

“Of course, it’s language and all the rest, but it’s very important to our sense of being different from others in the animal kingdom. These people are crossing that boundary.”

The documentary portrays the Ulas as “the missing link between man and ape” and implies they shouldn’t be in existence at all.

And still, no one has managed to determine the exact reason behind the peculiar gait.

While some experts believe it’s due to a genetic issue that has “undone the last three million years of evolution”, others dismiss the notion that there is a particular “gene” responsible for upright walking, instead suggesting something else is at play.

Humphrey noted that the affected siblings, of which five are still alive and range in age from 22 to 38, all experience a specific type of brain damage.

The documentary featured MRI scans, which showed that they each had a shrunk section of the brain known as the cerebellar vermis.

However, the professor also pointed out that this alone doesn’t account for their walking on four legs.

He pointed out: “Other children who have suffered damage to the cerebellum, even those without a cerebellum altogether, can still walk upright.”

He also pointed out that the Ulas’ four-legged stance is distinct from that of our closest animal relatives, the chimpanzees and gorillas, in one significant way.

While these primates move on their knuckles, Turkish children use the palms of their hands, placing their weight on their wrists and lifting their fingers off the ground.

Broadcast a documentary about the family itself.

“The children have kept their dexterity intact, such as the girls in the family who are skilled in crochet and embroidery,” he added.

Humphrey has suggested that this could possibly be the way our direct ancestors used to walk.

By keeping their fingers flexible, our early ancestors would have been able to handle tools, which was essential to the development of the human body and intelligence.

“I think it’s possible that what we’re seeing here is a period in time when we were no longer walking on all fours like chimpanzees, but it was a crucial step between climbing down from the trees and becoming fully upright on two legs,” Humphrey said to the news outlet.

The LSE researcher also suggested that there could be more straightforward reasons for the Ulas children’s ability to walk on all fours: they were simply not taught to walk on two feet.

In the small village in Ireland where they grew up, there was no local healthcare service to assist the children with disabilities as they transitioned from crawling on all fours as babies to walking upright on their own two feet.

He gave the Ulases a walking frame and within a few hours, there was an astonishing transformation.

He remembered the kids who had never taken a step on two feet using this frame to walk across the room with big smiles on their faces and a sense of pride in their achievement,” he said, noting it was like they’d “made a major breakthrough into a whole new world they never thought they’d reach.

He said that witnessing their eagerness to walk upright, with the help of physiotherapists, gave him a “newfound respect for the human spirit”.

He said it helped him see how people in the most difficult situations can overcome their struggles, no matter what they have to do to keep their dignity and sense of self.

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