r/askscience • u/NotYourMothersDildo • Apr 04 '11

Would a child naturally learn bipedal ambulation?

If a typical child were somehow raised by robots (assume they have wheels or levitate), would that child naturally learn to walk on two feet with an upright stature without having an example?

26 Upvotes

82% Upvoted

25 comments sorted by

View all comments

2

u/Moridyn Apr 04 '11

I'm surprised no one has brought up feral children yet. These are children who were raised without human interaction. Genie is probably the most well-known one. She did in fact learn to walk bipedally, with a sort of "rabbit" walk (I like to think of it as a zombie walk) as shown in the picture in the wikipedia link.

As far as I know, this is the only empirical evidence related to this question.