Is the ability to tiptoe designed for intimidation?

No it is just part of what and who we are. We don’t use most of what we are capable of and if we knew how much we are able to really do we would be amazed. In Time. Smile

Hmmm…come to think of it,there are alot of bad-ass ballerinas out there… ;)

lol @lucillelucillelucille. We just do it when we feel the need to: sneaking up on someone, trying to get away quietly, playing hide & seek haha, and to reach things on the top shelf. i’m sure it can be intimidating at times. depends on the situation.

According to this logic, women in high heels are to be somewhat feared which is true enough in my case, I suppose but I’ve never seen anyone “tiptoe” into a fight. Muhammed Ali and other boxers might be (might have been) “on their toes” in the ring, but no one would say (for comprehension) that they “tiptoed” in the ring in a heavyweight fight, unless they meant to imply that they weren’t really fighting.

????

I would say that the ability to tiptoe evolved from the need to keep from hurting our heels on treacherous terrain.

We have toes; they’re like shortened fingers. Might as well use them. How and why you might want to use them is entirely up to you.

I would think that it has more to do with us being a plantigrade species, rather than digigrade.

It’s an undocumented feature. The bones and muscles and such are the same ones used in normal walking; we just coordinate the movements a bit differently. A learned behavior, I would expect.

Standing on your toes might work as an intimidation tactic, but it is horrible for stability. Bipedal stature is unstable enough in the first place, but when you lop a good 80–90% off of the base, you definitely can’t absorb an impact without falling over.

@Aesthetic_Mess I use full-footed steps when I sneak. :\

@nullo The Native Americans walked toe to heel when sneaking. Try it in the woods sometime with a pair of moccasins on. It is quite effective.

As many have hinted towards resting our weight on our toes is useful when attempting to be sneaky, but I would presume the primary reasoning behind it is simply balance. Given the manner in which humans typically hold themselves and their weight distribution having toes is useful so that if we begin to fall forward we don’t have much difficult in holding ourselves on our toes temporarily to regain balance.

Well – this seems to be based on the idea that a feature is selected because of usefulness. Remember that natural selection is an undirected process based on current and most supported understanding. We don’t have features in order to do something – we have them because they created or maintained a beneficial behavior. The fact we still have toes may be because they proved useful for the above or, in comparison with many of our close evolutionary relatives, they were at one point more similar to the dextrous examples of chimpanzees and didn’t retain their usefulness, and so were, not to imply any intent, selected out or down. The fact that we can use our toes and the structure of our feet to either appear larger, reach things otherwise out of reach, peer over things formerly too high, jump, and sneak shows the current benefits provided…but doesn’t say anything about whether they were developed to do any of the above. That implies, potentially, a little too much intent.

it’s something fairies do.

Tiptoing is obviously for sneeking out of the house or to scare your little sister.