Science Confirms The Obvious: Dudes Slow Down When Walking With Their Girlfriends
Walking Together Ministry of Information Photo Division Photographer, Imperial War Museums via Wikimedia Commons A person's optimal walking speed—which minimizes the amount of energy required to travel—usually correlates with body mass and leg length. People with longer legs and bigger bodies are more likely to have a faster walk. Because of the way men and women are typically built, men tend to naturally travel at faster speeds than women. So how on earth do lovebirds manage to walk around hand-in-hand without being dragged apart by their incompantible rates of travel? As a study out this week from Seattle Pacific University points out, from a metabolic energy conservation standpoint, men and women should never walk together, because "someone must pay the energetic penalty of deviating from his or her optimal speed in order to travel at the same speed as the...