Alumni:
Humans are interesting critters – particularly when you think about our physiology and how it connects to our evolutionary past. As habitual bipeds, we are forced into an upright and vertical form of locomotion. How good is it really, though, and what occurs when we try to move more quickly and/or for greater distances? Are we “better” walkers or runners? Are we built for both? What happens when we try to run long distances like marathons (26.2 miles) or ultras (31 miles and up), and why/how do some people make it look so easy? Is it genetics? Culture? These are some of the questions we will examine in our brief discussion. Come join us if you are curious about human evolution, or running, or are a runner, or know a runner, or used to be a runner, or would only run if being chased by a large predator – and might have to think about whether it was worth it even then.
Faculty Member: Vicki Bentley-Condit, Senior Faculty, AnthropologyDiscussion Date: Wednesday, September 27 at 4 p.m.
Vicki Bentley-Condit has taught biological anthropology at Grinnell since 1995. She is a primatologist who has conducted research with both wild and captive baboon populations and captive rhesus macaques. Her primary research interests are mother-infant relationships and infant development. However, her most recent research has been focused upon baboon nutrition and laboratory analyses of food samples from a wild population of baboons in Kenya conducted at the Smithsonian National Zoological Park Nutrition Lab in Washington, DC.