If there’s a critter out there who knows how to walk on ice, that would be penguins.
So it stands to reason that penguins are good animals to emulate when humans have difficulty navigating icy sidewalks.
Earlier this month, trauma and orthopaedic surgeons in Germany advised residents that if they want to avoid slipping on pavements, they should walk like penguins .
Their advisory, as demonstrated in the diagram above, gives pointers on how to walk like the aquatic bird. That means lean your torso forward so that the centre of gravity is on the front leg.
The drawing shows that most of us, when we walk normally, our body weight is split almost evenly over both legs which increases the risk of losing balance and falling on icy conditions.
Back in 2014, Berlin had another icy stretch of weather conditions and rescue services received 750 emergency calls and emergency rooms were overstretched with patients with bone fractures. In Vancouver recently, people unused to unusually icy roads also flooded into ERs with injuries and bone fractures.
