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  • ill tell you why

    eldritch abominations fighting for control over our minds are trying to make us sway to them so we walk towards them because there's so many monsters however we end up walking in circles

  • The man in the beginning looks like Keith Lemon........

  • perhaps the heavenly bodies are working like this.

  • Really good video, I fear for my life if I get lost

  • 1:00 haha he crashed into a stump.

  • AMAIZING

  • Question: Would a blind-folded person that was asked to walk in circles then walk in straight line?

  • i think its for when we become zombies its so we wander around the planet and find our victims easier.

  • driving while blind-folded. OHH YEAH

  • The Mythbusters did this too.

  • I find the video and the experiment interesting but I think it needed this correction:

    You don't need an exclusively visual reference to walk in a straight line. It could either be a sound reference as in a blindfolded man following a voice or even a smell or an hotter or colder spot.

    Minor direction tilts could be necessary to ensure the person is following the signal correctly but, if you think about it, that happens when you are walking in the direction of a visual reference aswell.

  • its funny how the mythbusters had exactly the same results

  • Just guessing:- I think our right side is heavier than our left side since most of our organs are right tilted..... thats why the persons route turns towards the right.

  • surely by now (in all of time) somebody has considered the Coriolis Effect (moving objects deflect to the right in the northern hemisphere and to the left in the southern hemisphere) ??

  • @dac186 It's not coriolis

  • @andreirocks1992 so, you know for a fact what the cause is then?

  • .... is this true? I feel so gullible. 

  • funny theory, and this short is very well done

  • Its because there is no such thing as a straight line. You can't even say a line is straight if it only consists of 1 line and starts at one point and ends in another point. Even if you used a straight ruler. You still can't say it is straight. Even if you put your ruler on the grass or street. it is not straight as the world is Spherical hence the objects that were based on the floor/ground is not flat.

  • @keanoscarermitano619 dude that's just stupid, ignore the earth roundness. When you go to school you feel the roundness of the earth?

  • @RomanianUser I can see it when I look through the window.

  • @keanoscarermitano619 what??? that is plain impossible, how old are you?. no one can see the roudness of the earth. Maybe you're seeing a hill or valley or something. jesus

  • Breaking news: If you can't see you can't walk straight. Go figure. Now give someone a pen and ask them to draw a straight line while blindfolded. Why can't they do it? Maybe there is a deep hidden explanation.

  • of what i'am told is that the reason you can't walk straight without useing sun,moon.moutain ect. is that one of your legs left or right takes a bigger step than the other which well slowly make a circle either left or right and why you always seem to walk straight is becuase your eyes fix or correct how you walk and where your walking too

  • who is the animator?

  • Another idea is that when blindfolded we have nothing to guid us so we depend on our equilibrium aka our inner ear and we tend to circle right because the earth spins left

  • the soundtrack is loui armstrong right? Great video by the way

  • Sure does keep one from getting lost. Perhaps that's a survival trait.

  • The animation was made by Benjamin Timothy Arthur, whose youtube account is bentarthur. Thumbs up so that others can find more of his stuff!

  • epic animation :O

  • I tried telling this to the cops when i got pulled over for dui.

  • @admgrn LOL

  • fantastic animation!

  • @takatakboy

    cool, I was thinkin gteh same thing watching this video, I cared more for the animation xD

  • Kinda looks like Jack Black

  • The two most liked comments are gay jokes.

    Stay classy, YouTube.

  • @madamimadamimadam no they rnt...

  • @ComputerHelp007 They were ten months ago.

  • @madamimadamimadam hahah ok

  • @madamimadamimadam lol.......

  • The animation reminds of Hotel Dusk on the Nintendo DS lol

  • How blind people can walk straight ?

  • @vanhalenbr they can't/

  • @vanhalenbr

    probably they dont walk straigh, but in narrow places, their canes/dogs will make'em more aware fo their enviroments

  • The animation is well done. This video just blew mind! :0

  • Is that true?

  • What I want to know is, has anyone let a woman try this? I mean, it's been proven that men and women's brains are different, and function differently, so perhaps a female could do this?

    It just seemed odd to me that in all of the experiments no one ever thought to ask their wives for help ;)

  • @slekrod We did this for my son's science fair project, testing our whole family of six: 50% male, 50% female. Everyone turned, regardless of gender or age. It was a very fun experiment to perform by the way.

  • @slekrod I was thinking the exact same thing while watching it! I wonder if there would a difference? Or would we just circle in the opposite direction?

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  • this is fucking retarded.. the answer is so simple, I just don't get how this is so hard to figure out for some people...

    You can't walk straight with your eyes clothes because you FUCKING CAN'T SEE WHERE THE HELL YOU ARE GOING.

  • @TheCakeAintNoLie Yeah but why circle then? That doesn't explain anything. Sure you don't know where you're going but your BRAIN thinks you are, even when you're moving in a tight spiral pattern. We don't know why that is.

  • @SillyLitleGirl

    ah, sillylitlegirl

    that's a different question. the question being asked in this video is: 'why can't we walk straight?'

  • @TheCakeAintNoLie Well, then you're just arguing semantics. :) But, touche`. Mebbe contact video uploader and ask to change the title to "why do we walk in spirals like a drunken housefly while blindfolded"?

  • @SillyLitleGirl

    If I knew you in real life I'd ask you out

  • Well, earth rotate 15 degrees per hour (360/24) therefore if you concentrate and keep walking "straight" for an hour, your path on the ground will actually be a curve.

    This is also why long range airliners do not follow a straight line but an ellipse when they travel between two destinations. In that case, the shorter path is an ellipse in opposition of what most of the people may think.

  • @Virtualmix this isn't because of earth's rotation. Friction keeps you rotating right with the earth. And the effect this video explains occur in a matter of minutes, not hours.

  • I can understand slight turns when driving the car blindfolded, but don't you feel the more dramatic turns in the wheel you're just holding in your hands?

  • Super nice animation!!

  • This is a no brainer. From the last two generations on, people have been more and more open about their sexuality, thus making them unable to walk straight. They are becoming dangerously gayer and gayer. The generation G (as in Gay) will never be straight again, blindfolded or not.

  • @danielgfaria

    ok...your pun made me laugh fr like 20 secnds, but after that I realized you was terrible xD

  • My right arm is stronger than my left one. And I fap to this, yay!!

  • Legal Jacaré, agora poe a porra da legenda, né?

  • it's a self preservation mechanism. humans use to be very stupid as walk around blind folded. so if you stay in the area where you were secure, the chances of and up killed in some sort of accident is smaller than going beyond. if you practice, like those blind folks, you surely will walk straight. they do.

  • @tavarestattoo this seems to me a good explanation for why would we develop over evolutionary time a mechanism to keeps us from walking straight. But it doesn't explicitly explain what the specific mechanism is. Is it something in the brain? A simple asymmetry in the mechanism of walking?

  • @rafaelcalsaverini my guess is that isn`t anything cool like genetic evolution or gene memory, just a f&#$ing fear deep in the mind. as long as you practice this fear fades away. and even evel knievel had some fear, otherwise there wouldn`t be adrenaline...

  • whats the name of the cientificc?

  • I'm wondering if it's unconscious "course correction" behavior.

  • I think It's our way to go home. This mechanism simply helps everyone to find the place where one lives. Otherwise we all were lost in our childhood.

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  • The illustrated doctor in this video looks surprisingly like Jack Black.

  • isn't the explanation just brownian motion?

  • I wanna try that! (to my brother)

  • I've sometimes wondered if humans have a MAGNETIC SENSE, as some animals do.

    From these numerous experiments, we can conclude the answers is we don't.

  • Oh, I love this video!

  • 6 people ran into the tree while they were trying to walk straight :)

  • there is only one way to walk straight but alot of ways not to walk straight. Maybe that's why it's so difficult.

  • @krekbwoy I would agree with you but the detours are extremely dramatic, if the range was 5, 10 degrees I would consider it quite straight. They walk in circles...

  • We make a circles, because either we put our right leg on a greater distance or left. That causes us to head on a right or left side....

  • @lomaia49 And the car example?

  • @lomaia49 I think you are right, but it still doesn't explain what happened in the car experiment.

  • Why are the scientists assuming that walking straight is the default?! Walking chaotically is the default. Look at bacteria and other creatures without navigation tools. It is only because of the development of eyes and ears that we ever gained the ability to walk straight. We are sight dominant, so when you take away someone's primary compass, of course they will not walk straight! It's like taking a ship out on the sea without a compass, map, GPS, etc.

    No way to navigate = not navigating.

  • i have an idea. people who are able to walk in a straight line would be more likely to end up in different environmental zone than people who wander in circles. if you went out foraging for resources and always tended to circle around within the same area, you would tend to stay isolated within the environment in which you started and are best adapted to. this would slow the speed at which humans migrate, increasing their ability to adapt to change by slowing the speed at which they encounter it

  • @maxsmouha fucking awesome. I should have seen that one!

  • i know that when u walk, the step with right foot is longer then the step with left foot, so it can make a circle i the difference increases, but i dont know now, as i saw the part with the car.

  • @ungod111 Same here. I saw that movie "The Flight of the Phoenix" and there is a part when some guy says something like you said, but the car part messed it up.

  • It could be something to do with the earth gravity or due to the fact that the earth itself is circle !!

  • Isn't it obvious?  Going straight is far more strange than not going straight.

  • I love the animation of this!

  • why would we walk straight without seeing shit? we're not robots yet. dumb video

  • I think that we can't walk straight because we are always thinking about it, worrying whether we are walking in right direction, and trying to "fix" this course of our walking. Or something like that =)

  • I was hoping for an answer to the problem by the end of the video. :\

  • Walking with the sun or moon as a guiding point won't help you very much either, for obvious reasons...

  • @Thijz

    What are these obvious reasons?

    The sun and moon travel in a regular, predictable route. If I can observe the movement of the sun or moon over the period of a half-hour, say, I could get a lot of information as to which way is north, what time it is and use that to get quicker readings in the future. If you simply acknowledge that they are not stationary, the sun and moon are perfect guideposts.

  • @xyleborus2 Sure, but if we can't even walk in a straight line by ourselves, how do you think someone will if he uses a moving obstacle as a guide? :P You got to have a really good sense of time and direction.

  • the title is actually why we can't go straight. funny how the poster felt the need to alter that title.

  • when you flush the toilet... why does it spin too?!

  • Yay! None of us are straight! I'm not alone!

  • nice

  • fuck the moon, i look at it and it follows me - -

  • @lightingrings and then you woke up

  • @Neueregel not really, i slept after 0o

  • So are you calling me gay because I won't go straight? I'm not gay, you are, man.

  • Blind people have it tough |:

  • I wonder if this has anything to do with the Coriolis effect.

  • Maybe it's a supervivence matter. Because when you go out to explore without really knowing what are you going and what you can get, in the beginings our brain was made to go back to the safe point of start. So you don't end up without energies and also in a bizarre place where you can't or don't know how to get more.

  • @amomp3 I wish you had phrased this better... but I think that has something to do with it. A fear of what you may be blindly walking you into pulling you off course.

  • I subscribed.

  • I get the feeling it has to do with the movement of air and our sense of balance. Take our eyes out of the equation and suddenly our balance is our compass, the moving air plays with the differential air pressure between our ears and blammo! Disorientation!

  • amazingly useless! :) cool animation

  • I need a way to test this, I just can't believe it

  • 1920's compared to 2010's probably same effect if tested

  • I think people tend to rotate slightly on their feet, without noticing it.

    Only 1/100000 of a degree with each step would bring you way out of course.

    There is no way to prevent that.

  • Is there a Coriolis effect to this? Does it work the other way around in the Southern Hemisphere?

  • I want to try this now.

  • Can animals do it?

    Has anyone tried it on leveled ground?

  • Cool story and animation. Robert Krulwich and Ben Arthur are a great team!

  • Quite fascinating.

  • I find it hard to believe that NOBODY has been able to do this. If this is true; then all of the test subjects have been less than intelligent. I am confident that I could do this, with maybe a slight variation in direction. There are a number of ways a person can use their own body as a tool to keep themselves on a straight path while blinded. Swimming would be a totally different story.

  • the term "straight" itself loses it's WHOLE meaning if you don't SEE anything, because "straight" is ALWAYS towards something...if all you see is black, than the term "straight" doesn't mean anything anymore to your brain, you have no where to go straight TO....

  • omg everyone, including the scientists are looking WAYY too deeply into this... the answer is very simple: a straight line starts from point "A" and goes to a point "B" ... how the HECK do you want to walk straight if you can't SEE the point "B" ??? it's just VISUAL, nothing else... you can't draw while blindfolded and you can't catch something while blindfolded so why should you be able to walk straight while blindfolded??

  • Ha! For guys it's an easy explanation. Obviously your masturbating arm carries slightly more muscle than your other arm, thus more weight. Your body's constant fight to remain balanced has come to tell your brain that leaning right (or left) is actually straight up and down. Therefore, walking straight becomes walking tilted which becomes walking in circles. So the lesson here is this: GIVE YOUR OTHER HAND A TRY. It might be better than you think.

  • I think the car story is bullshit. Why would you turn the wheel if you wanted to go straight?

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  • I really like how this video Is made! It's so pedagogic, but yet very nicely made. Interesting facts by the way!

    Regards/

  • Answer the damn question!

  • does the rotation or revolution of the earth have anything to do with it?

  • @JWStreeter Earth rotation rotation -> Coriolis force. Now, an agent can tell on which side on earth is he! How? The water spins in different directions when you flush it (water has memory, experiment needs to be precise)

    -> human ear has fluid that send impulses to the brain about your balance state -> Coriolis force + ear fluid = ? need an experiment.

  • @JWStreeter Or go south of the equator and see if the pattern reverses. Know what I mean? Interesting.

  • @JWStreeter like north or south of the equator?

  • @JWStreeter like north or south of the equator?

  • @JWStreeter no, that seem pretty unlikely. the earth is way to big to feel that its moving eyes opened or closed.

  • @JWStreeter I doubt it, as birds can fly in perfectly straight migration routes.

    But then some say they may be able to detect magnetic north.

  • @JWStreeter that would explain the automotive example. Do straight lines really exist in nature? Are they just an illusion we create using two points of reference? Google: Path integral formulation

  • @JWStreeter might be a valid point in there :D

  • @JWStreeter Not really, no.

  • @JWStreeter

    nothing to do

  • @JWStreeter I was thinking the same thing

  • @JWStreeter I would think so

  • @JWStreeter the full moon causes this odds

  • @JWStreeter nope. Coriolis force would be way too small to cause this. 

  • @JWStreeter maybe, because considering the earth's size, to do a full rotation in only 24 hours, everybody is at least, thousands of km per hour, wich could infuence our sense of direction

  • @JWStreeter You would have to walk for a long time and a long distance for that to work, but it is an interesting theory.

  • @JWStreeter I'm sure the rotation of the earth has to do with it. It creates a coriolis force. I bet that most people on the southern hemisphere will walk counter clockwise. The force acts on the fluid inside our middle ear, creating deviations. If a person were to walk slowly, he would make tighter turns. As is apparent in the experiments: the further a person has walked, and thus the more tired he is, the tighter the circles. Older people have more viscous fluid, making wider circles maybe.

  • stupid evolution, thought you were so smart giving us thumbs but we can't even walk straight!

  • @toskoforce lol blind ppl don't walk around aimlessly. They typically have helper dogs or walking sticks.

  • Call me crazy but., is this related to our ability to make decisions in life? Love? Hi Reddit!

  • Maybe man walks according to magnetic fields when blind. Such as message pigeons do in flight.

  • @toskoforce The blind usually use a cane to check what is around them so they can stay on, say, a straight sidewalk. They can tell where the grass is on one side of the pavement and where the edge of the curb is on their other side. What would happen if you took that cane away and allowed them to try to walk in a straight line in a field? I've no idea. Since they have no reference point (in that they can't judge where they are by the sensory input of touch) I would guess the same would happen.

  • Is it not because the curvature of the earth, so because we have nothing to see where we're going our balance tries to do the work for us, since the earth curves ever so slightly we walk on the curve, so it feels like we're in a straight line. Kind of like how a penny rolls around and around in a circle in a stretched bowl, leading to the centre.

  • It looks like Jack black!

  • its obviously the right leg is bigger so we turn.

  • damn thanks to this film im stuck with this question

  • awesome animation..

  • The animator: YT user bentarthur

  • The animation and story is awesome. DO MORE OF THESE.

  • Can do true blind people do better in going straight? I know they can hear better than people who can see.

  • The NPR videos are so good, but they get very few views... Yet Justin Bieber and Lady Gaga get millions. How sad...

  • @Netanel17

    its because people are generally idiots, and this video is not in vivid color, doesnt have rapidly moving pictures. and of course no violence or other rated R or x content

  • @Netanel17 Maybe we are better of with most of us remaining distracted. At least in this stage of our development. Enjoy your exceptional perspective in silence :)

  • this is what causes crop circles

    two birds with one stone hehe

  • The animation this is absolutely fantastic. ^_~

  • How about: In ancient societies, only certain members of the tribe would leave the campsite to hunt for food - most likely during nighttime, when navigation would be more difficult. Those who had a tendency to walk straight would have a far harder time finding their way back to the camp than those who naturally walked in circles. If a hunting party set out and got lost, those who circled back would have a higher likelihood of survival and passing on their circlewalking genes