Do blindfolded people in Australia walk in a counter clockwise spiral?

Depends how much they've been drinking.
>> ^nanrod:

Do blindfolded people in Australia walk in a counter clockwise spiral?

Maybe related to this? http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=a-natural-log

Very interesting indeed

>> ^oritteropo:

Depends how much they've been drinking.
>> ^nanrod:
Do blindfolded people in Australia walk in a counter clockwise spiral?



If it's enough they walk perfectly straight...so they can pass sobriety tests

My question is what about blind people? Do they develop the ability to walk in straight line after not having the ability to see for a long period of time? If so, can a blind folded person train to be more proficient to walk that way by prolonged visual deprivation?

Maybe our legs are not perfectly equal to the other or we rely on one dominant leg over the other and therefore more effort is put forth with one leg, lending to an overcompensation on one side causing us the walk in curves.

a)
Because we're not quite that evolved. In the evolution of ape to man a lumbar curve had to be formed.
This process has not been necessarily smooth and there is quite a bit of evidence to suggest that we are still well within it. The result is that our spines as a species have a tendency to distort. Balance is upset.

and

b)
We learn to balance by linking it with sight and the ability to keep our eyes on the horizontal.
There are other ways to balance, but we don't practice those. We could certainly learn to do it through other sensory capacity.

>> ^Sagemind:

Maybe our legs are not perfectly equal to the other or we rely on one dominant leg over the other and therefore more effort is put forth with one leg, lending to an overcompensation on one side causing us the walk in curves.


I don't think so. In this link, they show the whole animation that you see here and that similar experiments have been done with swimming and driving. So whatever is going on, it's not simply because of the legs.

It could be a defense mechanism...if we suddenly get blinded, we don't run in a straight line so we're harder to find or catch.

Coriolis Effect?

Mythbusters did an episode on that one...

Wasn't a reason for this that people aren't symmetrical, and usually have one side of the body stronger. So they turn around like if you paddle harder with one of your hands in a boat you begin to turn?