Human hunter gatherers have been found to apply similar foraging movements and tactics during hunting that many other animals such as sharks and honey bees do, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences published in a study.

The foraging behavior of animals from sharks to honey bees can be turned into a mathematical model which also describes human hunter-gatherer movement, scientists said.

Levy walk, a pattern that is found in the movements of many animals, has been found to replicate the Hadza tribe's movements while hunting, said University of Arizona scientist David Raichlen.

 The Hadza are one of the last big-game hunters in Africa, and one of the last groups on Earth to still forage on foot with traditional methods, the journal PNAS reported.

"Scientists have been interested in characterizing how animals search for a long time so we decided to look at whether human hunter-gatherers use similar patterns," said Raichlen.

Wristwatches with GPS units were worn by members of the tribe to track their movement on hunting trips. While the Hadza adapted other movement patterns, the Levy walk was the dominant theme of their movements, showed the GPS data.

"Detecting this pattern among the Hadza, as has been found in several other species, tells us that such patterns are likely the result of general foraging strategies that many species adopt, across a wide variety of contexts," said study co-author Brian Wood, an anthropologist at Yale University.

Adam Gordon, study co-author and a physical anthropologist at the University at Albany said, "This movement pattern seems to occur across species and across environments in humans, from East Africa to urban areas."

"It shows up all across the world in different species and links the way that we move around in the natural world. This suggests that it's a fundamental pattern likely present in our evolutionary history," said Gordon.

The Levy walk consists of a series of short movements in one area and then a longer trek to another area. Humans make use of it during visits to amusement parks, according to PNAS.

"We definitely use memories and cues from the environment as we search but this pattern seems to emerge in the process," said Raichlen.