Strolling upright over the savannah with a backache – preferable to death, anyday!

Stepping out onto the savannah grasslands, our quadruped forebears exchanged swinging in the trees for bipedal gait, probably not all at once, but one step at a time, so to speak. Seeing Tarzan swinging through the trees makes one deeply resentful of the ease and grace with which he clearly achieves such a difficult feat, particularly when he is also clasping Jane. The romanticised and anthropomorphosized  view of monkeys is that swinging through the tress, breeze ruffling their soft furr, they haven’t a care in the world. Wrong! On a bad day at the end of a long swinging trajectory, they miss the next branch, or the branch breaks. Their terminal fall to broken bones and delayed death plus or minus the predator, or simply immediate death, ensues. No parachute. No fireman trampoline. No safety harness. No second chance. Pronto finale!

So, the next time you have a backache, as for all intents and purposes we all do, have a thought for the trouble evolution has spared you; monkeys don’t have osteopaths. Strolling upright over the savannah with a backache -  preferable to death, anyday!