Nepalese porters are the most efficient human load carriers yet recorded. They beat the former champions, African women balancing burdens on their heads, says Norman Heglund of the Catholic University of Louvain in Belgium. He and his colleagues observed porters, ages 11 to 68, on a footpath at 2,800 meters elevation.
For men, loads averaged 93 percent of body weight but went up to 183 percent.