Penguin Shuffle: The Next Rage?

Penguins manage to waddle without falling over. And Max Kurz thinks if he can figure out why, he might be able to help older people with walking problems, folks with foot injuries who struggle in their stride, and maybe even toddlers, so-named for the obvious reason.

"We can envision a scenario where elderly may be able to put their walkers or canes down because they've learned to make the same adjustments in their walking patterns," said Kurz, a professor at the University of Houston. "This research may aid in developing a way to teach those people how to walk more efficiently despite their side-to-side motion, to learn the same kind of stability as the penguin."

Kurz figures penguins have learned to use the waddling motion in a way that makes their movements more efficient, adjusting for the limitations of the size of their legs and their weight.

"They may have an elegant movement strategy for stability that we're unaware of," he said.

Humans, on the other hand, have not developed such a mechanism to adjust for such dramatic side-to-side motion. So, if we simply waddle, chances are we'll fall, but some aspects of a penguin's wobble could be beneficial.

The study involves dozens of King penguins from Moody Gardens in Galveston, Texas. They can travel more than 75 miles across rugged ground terrain to reach their nesting sites.

In the lab, they're eager test subjects.

"It's almost like playtime for them. We can't hold them back," Kurz said. "There is one in particular that always wants to cut in front of the other penguins, so that he can walk across the mat first. It's pretty cute."

--Robert Roy Britt

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Credit: NOAA/Laureen Lock