Using one's head
Susan Milius
Science
Nepalese porters are the most efficient human load carriers yet recorded. They beat the former champions, African women balancing burdens on their heads, says Norman Heglund of the Catholic University of Louvain in Belgium. He and his colleagues observed porters, ages 11 to 68, on a footpath at 2,800 meters elevation.
For men, loads averaged 93 percent of body weight but went up to 183 percent. Women's loads averaged 66 percent. The researchers fitted breathing monitors to some porters and documented that they could carry 60 percent of their body weight using half the energy that young Europeans use to carry backpacks. The porters walk slowly and rest often but go many hours with big loads, the team notes in the June 17 Science.
********
References:
Bastien, G.J. … and N.C. Heglund. 2005. Energetics of load carrying in Nepalese porters. Science 308(June 17):1755. Abstract available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.1111513.
Further Readings:
Maloiy, G.M.O., N.C. Heglund, et al. 1986. Energetic cost of carrying loads: Have African women discovered an economic way? Nature 319(Feb. 20):668–669.Abstract available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/319668a0.
Sources:
Norman C. Heglund
Unité de Physiologie et Biomécanique de la Locomotion
Faculté de Médecine
Université catholique de Louvain
Belgium
From Science News, Volume 167, No. 25, June 18, 2005, p. 389.
