Historical Belief and Experiments
For centuries, humans have been thought to have an inherent tendency to walk in circles. In 1928, biologist Asa Schaeffer claimed experiments demonstrated that blindfolded people walked, ran, swam, and drove in spirals, a phenomenon he attributed to a "spiral mechanism" in the brain.
Aviation navigator Harold Gatty believed humans walked in circles simply due to biological asymmetry; one leg is often longer and stronger than the other. "Anatomically, we are all unbalanced," Gatty wrote.
In 1986, Norwegian biologist F.O. Guldberg argued that circling is a "global principle" in biology. He cited examples such as birds circling over lighthouses, deep-sea fish spiraling around the light of a diver's lamp, hares and foxes running loops to evade predators, and even lost humans in fog wandering in circles.
Guldberg did not view circling as an error. Rather, he theorized that the circular movement ensured that lost animals could eventually find their way back to "the biotic birthplace where survival is most likely to be promoted and where wandering animals must return at regular intervals, be it the mother's mammary gland, the hen's warming and guiding wings, or the mother's instinctively chosen hiding tree or bush."
Modern Research
In 2009, researcher Jan Souman conducted experiments on the circling instinct. He equipped volunteers with GPS trackers and asked them to walk in a straight line through unfamiliar terrain, ranging from German forests to the Tunisian desert.
Without the aid of directional cues such as the sun, the subjects did indeed tend to circle back on their own path. However, this was not a true circular motion.
"Walking in a straight line may sound easy," Souman explained. "But if you think about it, it's not an easy task." Like riding a bicycle, walking in a straight line is actually a complex balancing act involving fine motor control, which is why it is an effective sobriety test.
Further experiments ruled out leg-length asymmetry as a factor. Souman also found no evidence for a "grand spiral instinct," but rather "small, scribbly circles, like a toddler with a crayon." While they sometimes looped back to a previous pointâ€"a common waypoint that led walkers to mistakenly believe they were circlingâ€"the subjects rarely ended up at their starting point.
Souman concluded that on average, without external navigation cues, lost humans tend not to stray far from their starting point, usually remaining within a radius of 100 meters, regardless of how long they wander.
Summary
Despite centuries of belief, the evidence suggests that humans do not have a strong instinct to walk in circles. While they may deviate from a straight path, they typically wander in haphazard patterns rather than true spirals. This phenomenon is likely due to the difficulty of maintaining a straight course without visual guidance rather than an inherent "circling gene."