CHIMP FEET

                                  CHIMP FEET

Sanders Theater at Harvard University in Boston is the venue for the Annual IG Nobel prize awards. These awards recognize important work done by various folk throughout the world in bringing the results of their improbable research to universal notice. In 2006, for example, one such prize was awarded to a researcher in the Netherlands whose work revealed that the female mosquito Anopheles  Gambia was as much attracted to Limburger cheese as she was to smelly feet.

Not to be outdone, more recently it seems, according to the American Journal of Anthropology, researchers at the University of Boston have concluded that one in every 13 of us has feet that resemble those of our ancestor, the chimp.

When I was reading the article that contained this information, I was on a plane, and I was at once transfixed. I wanted to rush to the toilet to check out my feet. However, the toilets were permanently occupied, so I waited to get home.

According to the studies done, not everyone’s feet are the same, and those that are noticeably different have similarities with the feet of our ancestors. Those feet are such as enable the fortunate possessors of them to climb trees, just as chimps do. It was, therefore, in this vein that, having arrived home, I removed my shoes and socks, peered down at my feet, and quickly breathed a sigh of relief. Not that I was really worried. My feet, I already was aware, were unquestionably more like blocks, wide as a camel’s, and toes jammed tight as sardines in a can. Besides this, I never had any inclination to climb trees.

But then, I thought, what of the 13^th of us? Where are they, and how quickly can I find one of them? I was anxious to find one to check not just the feet, but if they possessed any other features, characteristic of our ancestor, that I might have missed in all these years. It would have to be women’s feet. They are more apt, in public, to wear open-toed shoes thus facilitating the task at hand. So I started at the local Supermarket. It should not take me long to track down this 13^th person. And here, indeed, were women in abundance. I commenced, somewhat slinking around the store feeling self-conscious, not wishing to be conspicuous. I tried making one glance take in as many feet as possible. All was going well when one woman looked at me like I was scopophilic, so I promptly removed myself. I had to regroup.

A glance, I concluded, was easy, but a prolonged glance was not so easy. The woman whose feet your gaze gets to fix upon, will not be aware that you are checking on her feet for anthropological reasons, that is, how chimp-like they are, but instead consider you as the creep that your embarrassment may make you appear. I decided, therefore, I must find someplace else, somewhere with a lot of people hanging around, with nothing to do but wait.

So I went to the Post Office, and the layout at this particular Post Office, I soon found out, was ideal. First of all, there was a long line of people. Secondly, over half of them were women of which six had open-toed shoes. And thirdly there was not one of them who did not have to walk past me to get to the counter to be served. I was in luck! My eyes got glued to the third lady. Her toes were very long and angular, and I could envisage her shinning up the trunk of a tree swinging from branch to branch. I could not tell whether, in accordance with the study done at the University of Boston, she also had flat feet.

She was wearing high heels so it was not easy to tell. I took a quick glance at the article which, by dint of good fortune, I had with me, and read that there was a third ingredient; the lack of a bone under the foot which would make the feet flexible, facilitating the ability to climb trees. This was awkward.  How could I possibly find out whether she lacked such a bone in mid-foot and underneath at that? Maybe I could drop my keys on the floor and check it out that way; too difficult. My back hurt and my knees were not up to bending right then. Anyhow, I felt 100% confident I had found my 13^th person.  But, what about the rest of her?  What other features of our ancestor might she have in identifying as akin to our chip friends? Maybe crinkly fingers, small ears, a hunched shoulder, and sunken eyes? No good. She caught me in the act, and I had to pretend it was the counter lady I was gazing at, not her.

Not at all unnerved by my encounter at the Post office, I felt, on the contrary, exhilarated. I had found one of the 13. The next step; finding others. Perhaps I might unwittingly uncover other gems of anthropology!

Going out these days has become a bit of an obsession. I have to find more of these 13th footers. But then, I got to thinking. I could not have been the only one to have read that article. There must be a whole host of other people who had read it and now had the same idea as me. In fact, come to think of it, there was a guy when I was in line at the Post office, who had dropped his keys! Wow, I thought, this is big!

The researchers at the University of Boston (all men by the way), who did the study, obviously had not done an impact study while they were at it. Had they done so they would have taken into account the likely effects of letting loose the results of their research on the rest of us. Women, bothered by a whole new breed of snoopers, will, without a doubt, rush into stores to snap up the remaining stocks of socks and sneakers they can find. 13, of course, equates to 8% of the world population. With about 7 billion of us, this means that we have about 910,000,000, give or take a few million, potential tree climbers in our midst. What percentage of the tree climbers, one wonders, would an impact study have unveiled women wishing to escape comparisons and join the rush to cover their feet? The slump in sock purchasing would be over!

Then a rather odd thing happened to me. I decided to try out this subject matter on a lady whom I hardly knew. While she was reading my article, I sat anxiously watching her every expression. Her reaction, after reading it, was to get up, give me a big hug and say, “thank God, I always suspected,” she exclaimed, proudly puffing out her feet with almost half-inch gaps between her toes, which actually resembled rather those of a gorilla than a chimp! “I love climbing trees,” she told me.

She even let me take a peek at the layout under her feet. “Ha!” I shouted with excitement, “flappers”.

So she gave me an extra hug.” I’ve got the feet of a Chimp!” She cried, proudly waving one of her crinkly feet at me