It is a common scenario: when we get lost in the wilderness, we wind up walking in circles. Much to our dismay, at some point we’ll revisit our tracks and feel despair that we’ll never make it out of this loop and back to civilization. The German research scientist, Jan Souman’s empirical data confirms that humans have a tendency to not only walk lopsided but to self-navigate within a loop when lost.
In the study, participants were instructed to walk straight from two different starting positions (marked as red dots). The blue line represents the trajectory participants walked on a cloudy day (participants PS, KS, RF), and the yellow line (participant SM) on a clear day when the sun was visible.
The illustration shows that the blue line participants could not walk in a straight line and made several turns, whereas the yellow line participant (SM) could walk a far distance in a relatively straight line. From this analysis, we can conclude that weather strongly determines our ability to navigate linearly. This also explains why we walk in circles when lost in a dense forest or in the dark. When people lose their external sight pointers, such as the sun or moon, it is nearly impossible to maintain their course.
Some of the theories to explain why we tend to walk in circles when we do not have access to reliable cues according to Pat Tawrell, author of Camping & Wilderness Survival,
This video by NPR shows what happens when humans try to walk straight while blindfolded.
There are a few things you can do sans blindfold to orient yourself (Camping & Wilderness Survival by Pat Tawrell),
The likelihood of walking in circles in a remote area without access to navigational tools or visible focal points is no surprise when you consider all the ways one can walk crooked versus straight.
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