A "mathematical pattern of movement" called the Lévy walk has been observed in a wide variety of species such as honeybees and sharks; but for the first time ever scientists have found it in humans on the hunt for food.
"Scientists have been interested in characterizing how animals search for a long time," said David Raichlen, an associate professor at the University of Arizona School of Anthropology said in a statement. "So we decided to look at whether human hunter-gatherers use similar patterns."
The pattern involves a number of short movements in an isolated area, followed by a "long trek" to another region where the process is repeated.The team looked at some of the last human populations that hunts large game by foot on the planes of Africa, the Hadza people of Tanzania.
"If you want to understand human hunter-gatherer movement, you have to work with a group like the Hadza," Raichlen said.
The team fitted Hadza individuals with wristwatches that used GPS technology to track their movement while they were hunting or foraging. The team observed that the Hadza's movement followed the Lévy walk pattern, which is seen in other hunting and foraging animals.
"This movement pattern seems to occur across species and across environments in humans, from East Africa to urban areas," Adam Gordon, study co-author and a physical anthropologist at the University at Albany, State University of New York, said. "It shows up all across the world in different species and links the way that we move around in the natural world. This suggests that it's a fundamental pattern likely present in our evolutionary history."
The Lévy walk is not only seen in hunting and foraging situations; the pattern has been observed in humans who are navigating an amusement park or urban space,
"Think about your life," Raichlen said. "What do you do on a normal day? Go to work and come back, walk short distances around your house? Then every once in a while you take these long steps, on foot, bike, in a car or on a plane. We tend to take short steps in one area and then take longer strides to get to another area."
The team believes these movements are not conscious, but rather taken from environmental cues.
In the future the team hopes to uncover why this pattern tends to emerge.
"We're very interested in studying why the Hadza use this pattern, what's driving their hunting strategies and when they use this pattern versus another pattern," co-author Herman Pontzer said.
The team also believes the findings could help scientists understand how human civilizations moved and worked throughout history.
"We can characterize these movement patterns across different human environments, and that means we can use this movement pattern to understand past mobility," Raichlen said. "Also, finding patterns in nature is always fun."
