Greg Laden and Ad Hominem are stalking the Aquatic Ape Theory, but I’m on the tail of the Monkey King!

My friend and colleague, the anthroblogorific Lisa Wynn, sent me a link to this amazing video of Jyoti Raj, aka the ‘Indian monkey king’ or the ‘Chitrandurga Spiderman’ (from the name of the fort he is seen scaling). Lisa sent the video link after I revealed during lunch the startling depth of my fascination with the variability of human feet (see my previous post on barefoot running). If you haven’t already seen it, here’s the video: ‘India Monkey King scales new heights.’

Among the reasons I’m glad Lisa introduced me to Jyoti Raj (including that I’m going to use the video in my lecture on humans as primates next week), I’ve been collecting materials on free climbing for my sports book, a chapter I haven’t started to write. She suggested I check out the last few moments of the video, in which Raj appears to use his toes actively to climb. That is, Raj appears in the last few seconds to be climbing with bare feet and actually using his toes to grasp the corners of the structure.

Since I’m spending a fair bit of time thinking about feet these days, I thought I would take the opportunity presented by Mr. Jyoti Raj’s amazing ability to climb – especially the possibility that he might be grasping with his toes when he climbs, and not just resting weight on his feet – to string together a sprawling, loosely-connected consideration of activity-derived anatomical abnormality, or, if you prefer, freaky feet.

This posting, however, is also a plea for help, as I’m really hoping someone out there can help me to find good research, even single case studies, on the kinds of anatomical features that develop with intense training. But I’ll make my plea for help clearer as I go. For now, on to Spiderman…

Continue reading “The monkey king’s feet and a plea for help”