Our feet were designed to grasp, which is why you have a lot of bones in them. They were not designed to support a lot of weight, which is one reason they ache at the end of a long day of standing or walking. As Jeremy Taylor points out in Body by Darwin, ostriches have eliminated this problem by fusing the bones of their feet and ankle, but then ostriches have had 250 million years to adjust to upright walking, roughly forty times as long as we have had. All bodies
