The Amazon tribe that has evolved flat feet after years of catching primates to eat

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There are no fast food restaurants or grocery stores in the rainforests of eastern Ecuador, so if the Huaorani people want to eat they go out with a blowpipe and shoot a monkey. They are experts at shinning up trees and lying in wait for the primates, which they kill with poisoned darts fired from blowpipes.  There are less than 4,000 people in the Huaorani tribe and the small gene pool, along with the constant tree-climbing has led to them developing very flat feet, many of which have six toes. Some also have six fingers. Monkey meat is a staple of their diet, which also includes peccary pigs and toucans as well as plants and herbs foraged in the forest by the women.

The Huaorani live not far from the Rio Napo, which eventually flows into the mighty Amazon in neighbouring Peru. British photographer Pete Oxford, who took these images, said: 'The Huaorani Indians are a forest people highly in tune with their environment.
'Today they face radical change to their culture to the proximity of oil exploration within their territory and the Yasuni National Park and Biosphere Reserve, they are vastly changed.

They still largely hunt with blow pipes and spears eating a lot of monkeys and peccaries.'
The Huaorani, who are sometimes referred to as Waorani or Waos, are a native Amerindian tribe whose language bears no relation to any other tongue, not even Quechua, which is widely spoken in Ecuador. Mr Oxford said: 'In my lifetime, the world has witnessed a massive shrinking in world cultures and indigenous knowledge. We are all homogenising to the same thing. To me that is distressing.
'One of my greatest joys is spending time with people unlike myself. I am very conscious that when I visit a "foreign" tribe it is I, not them who are foreign.'

Source: DailyMail