[looping8]

It also feels a little strange in writing. Examples:

"Figure Figure11 shows a mountain gorilla lying on the ground on his side without a pillow" - Of course it is without a pillow, it's a mountain gorilla! What is this clarification?

"To start with, some Westerners have to hold on to a doorframe." - Would it not be better to say "you may have to hold on" or "newbies"? It is not like Westerners have some special physiological feature that makes them do it, it's about lack of practice.

[adrian_b]

I have read your comment before reading the article, and at that time I have thought that you must be right.

Nevertheless, after reading the article I have seen that the clarification about the gorilla sleeping without a pillow made perfect sense in its context, because it has not been added to provide any additional information, but it was added for emphasis, in a context where the sleeping positions in modern environments were contrasted with their correspondents that are common both in non-modernized environments and for similar primates.

Moreover, I interpret his phrase "To start with" as having the same meaning as your suggestion "newbies".

Using a door frame in the beginning is indeed good practical advice for achieving the full squat position for those who are not used to it.

[watwut]

It did not made sense to me, because I am not a gorilla. They have different bodies. They look kinda similar in body shape, but they climb treat the way I will never be able to no matter how much I train.

So, gorila sleeping position implies exactly nothing for my sleeping position.

[kijin]

A pillow doesn't need to be a factory-made product that you buy at a store. Plenty of humans make pillows out of natural objects when sleeping outdoors. I can totally imagine a mountain gorilla using a chunk of wood, or even a body part of another gorilla, as a "pillow" if it makes them feel more comfortable.

[navane]

My dog loves pillows. But he doesn't move them. If he's laying down, and a pillow-like object is near, he'll use it. But if the sun moves, he'll move, without the pillow.

[bee_rider]

Humans are environment-changers. That’s why dogs teamed up with humans. Humans seem to spend a lot of time doing strange and seemingly useless things, like banging rocks together and looking at shiny boxes, but at the end of the day there is always extra food and the environment around humans is full of mysteriously comfortable objects.

[slow_typist]

If our dog wants to rest and a fleece or wool blanket happens to be in reach, it will pull it in position (and sometimes even fold it) in order to rest its snout on it. But admittedly it does not move the blanket substantially. I have yet to understand how it decides where to rest though. There is a lot of places and none seems to really dominate the other ones.

[navane]

I have been paying more attention and ours loves head rests. So maybe they don't understand how to make or move them, he definitely prefers them. Disputing the original claim, or dogs differ too much from primates.

[yencabulator]

For what it's worth, my dog does carry big fluffy toys around, often putting her chin on them.

[ErigmolCt]

In order to protect skin on your face from acne or wrinkles I think it preferable to sleep on a pillow

[malfist]

I don't think gorillas are too worried about acne or wrinkles.

[helboi4]

Yeah im sure there are many tribespeople with pillows. It feels wierdly racist that this guy is acting like people in societies like this just live instinctually like gorillas and don't actually have the universal human trait of creating and relying on manmade tools.

[throwway120385]

The thing that makes it not racist for me is that he's clearly trying to point out that, as primates, in non-Western surroundings and when not socialized to prefer soft beds with fluffy pillows we tend to adopt similar sleeping positions as other primates do. It would be very racist if he had adopted a sneering "look at the lowly primitives" tone, but he's trying to show that these sleeping positions have helped him immensely and he's suggesting that we might research sleep positioning more as there seem to be differences in the two populations under comparison.

You can look at the COVID pandemic for an example of how body positioning has helped change how well people can breathe. Proning of severely sick patients substantially improved outcomes. That's literally just rolling the patient from their back to their stomach. So there might be something interesting there that we can learn if we pay attention. And he's trying to say "we can learn something from these people if only we pay attention."

[chillingeffect]

He's viewing humans and gorillas as primates, not viewing tribespeople as gorillas.

Tribes people don't live instinctually. They have culture, like us. The critique here is our culture could benefit from observing how their culture does it.

[thaumasiotes]

> Of course it is without a pillow, it's a mountain gorilla!

That doesn't follow at all. Gorillas are well known for their habit of making nests. Making pillows isn't difficult.

[elric]

Indeed. Many animals build nests. It's not a skill unique to humans at all. Finding something comfortable to rest on isn't a particularly difficult skill to master.

[olalonde]

I'm a human and I don't think I'd be able to make a (comfortable) pillow...

[thaumasiotes]

Go pull a bunch of grass, and put it in a pile. You now have a working pillow.

[olalonde]

That doesn't sound comfortable. I'd probably rather sleep on my arm than a pile of grass...

[avery17]

Im sure if you spent your whole life sleeping on the ground youd work something out to make it more comfortable

[olalonde]

But that was the point... why don't gorillas make pillows then? My contention was that making a pillow is actually difficult. I wouldn't be surprised if pillows were seldom used by early humans.

[thaumasiotes]

This is a failure of your imagination, not the grass.

[watwut]

It can be actually comfortable.

[082349872349872]

You (most likely) have two comfortable potential pillows distal to your elbows...

(I don't use any of these positions, but I most commonly nap on a heated wooden floor in an insect-free environment. Oddly enough, I also support my temple on the dorsal surface of a wrist; it had never occurred to me that in addition to comfort, it keeps both ears free?)

[jacobolus]

> It is not like Westerners have some special physiological feature that makes them do it, it's about lack of practice.

Lack of practice causes a "special physiological feature": ankle inflexibility. For some people it would take a significant amount of time stretching the ankles every day to recover enough ankle flexibility to squat, and that could perhaps still be insufficient, as joint mobility is established based on the range of motion used in childhood.

[techcode]

All the babies/toddlers I've seen (my own kids included) naturally do that "asian/slav squat" - for example to pick up toys from the ground, or when they want to rest a bit without completely sitting, right?

So at which point/age do some of us stop doing that type of squat before "use it or lose it" kicks in?

[helboi4]

Funnily, as a brit, I have always had the ability to sit in a deep squat comfortably and it's not even from tons of practice. I only even realised that its unusual to be able to do and that it may be good for you when I was about 21. By which point there were many people who couldn't do it already. I certainly hadn't been practicing it throughout my teenage years.

[frereubu]

I'm a Brit who can squat too, and I think it has quite a bit to do with not weather shoes at home and wearing "barefoot" shoes / zero-drop trainers outside. I have a hunch that it's lengthened my calf muscles and achilles tendons, which makes squatting much more comfortable. I couldn't really do it before switching to barefoot shoes.

[throwaway828]

Having lived in Asia for 10 years I observed that I had gained the ability to squat, quite comfortably too, that I never had on arrival.

Funny old world.

[helboi4]

I have never worn shoes at home, that's for sure. Not into barefoot shoes though. I'm not really sure why it is for me. If it's to do with calf muscles, I guess we could attribute it that my mother never learned how to drive and so we used to walk EVERYWHERE. And we lived in a tiny town.