Going by the first experiential evidence put forth by the scientists of the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics in Tubingen, Germany, it is quite common for people lost in an unfamiliar land to move around in circles!

Published in the Thursday edition of the journal Current Biology, the study, carried out using global positioning software (GPS), is based on the observation of nine people, who walked for hours in Germany's Bienwald forest and in the Sahara desert in Tunisia.

The lead researcher, Jan Souman, said that based on the analysis of the GPS-recorded trajectory of these people, it was found that all of them moved in circles and drifted from the straight-ahead path, if they had nothing to show them the way in an unknown topography.

The study also questions the long-standing explanation that since most people have one leg longer or stronger than the other, they generally have a 'systematic bias' for one particular direction.

Souman clarified: "Walking in circles is not caused by differences in leg length or strength, but more likely the result of increasing uncertainty about where straight ahead is.

Small random errors in the various sensory signals that provide information about walking direction add up over time, making what a person perceives to be straight ahead, drift away from the true straight ahead direction."