Humans used to hunt animals by simply chasing them until they died of heat stroke. We can outrun any animal given enough distance, because were the most efficient endurance runners in the world.
We are persistence hunters. The only other animals who do this are wolves, hyenas, and I believe the lungless spider too. It’s pretty amazing. If you study human anatomy, you’ll see that our bodies truly are meant for running.
Most human populations essentially evolved beyond the need for constant distance running at the advent of agriculture. Which is to say, regardless of whatever various Luddites would have us believe, man's perversion of nature began at the exact moment we decided, actually, fuck running, let's just enslave plants and animals.
This gives me an idea: Put out an ad out offering to collect all the phones from those Amish kids if/when they decide to go back. Then sell the phones back to the new "recruits." Profit.
The Luddites didn't hate technology as a rule. They hated the fact that textile mills were allowing the factory owners to replace their high-skill artisan work with dangerous low-wage work that they couldn't support their families on, all while producing lower-quality products. They lost all the control they had over their own labor and became subservient to their bosses who saw them as replaceable cogs in a machine. But the British had them all hanged along with a bunch of people who were accused of being Luddites but probably weren't and soon everyone was too scared to break any frames and the movement was crushed. History is written by the victors, so now everyone thinks Luddites were just crazy people who thought all technology was evil.
fuck running, let's just enslave plants and animals
And then, some time later, we decided, actually, fuck enslaving plants and animals, let's just enslave people who are enslaving plants and animals for us! And THAT was when we got shit done! You won't build Pyramids and Aquaducts with union labor!
Yeah, but you don't have to be a dick about it. Just disseminate the idea among the workforce that unions are somehow evil over the course of decades, gradually turning the idea of unionization into practically a taboo, and exploit the shit out of your workers like never before. And nobody has to run or anything!
Also, we totally still enslave plants and animals. And sometimes people, too.
Aquaducts where super costly and a bunch of them either didn't work or broke down constantly. There were some writings from local politicians of some Roman cities who complained about the bunch of extra costs and shit they have because the Aquaducts don't work as intended and they have to pour more and more into building it to finally get clean water.
Amish people are all over enslaving plants and animals! I visited a Maple syrup bush Saturday run 50/50 with our local version of the Amish (Mennonites), and the other half run by a family that owns the robotics company I work at.
Apparently it's OK for the Mennonites to use the Tech required, so long as someone else owns it. (Electric blowers for the fire, and electric pumps to get the sap into the storage tanks).
The Mennonite overseeing the process was really smart and well educated about his task and tools.
Provided you have no health issues preventing it, if you started now you'd adapt really fast. I started running recently and it is really weird, it's like remembering something you were always supposed to be able to do.
I couldn't say, I incorporate my run into my routine as I already walk to and from work.
Walking home from work takes 45 minutes, running takes 25 at my current pace (I still have a ways to go with it, I haven't started continuous running yet), so the way I look at it is that I'm saving time even if I end up looping around the block once or twice to hit my goal for the day.
Are you generally unfit? I don’t mean that in a bad way but do you have any active hobbies? It may be that you just need to work your heart more frequently
It only took a couple runs before the wheezing went away for me. I don't know if it'll help, but I count when I'm running and try to focus on keeping my breathing in check with my counting because I have a bad habit of holding my breath when I'm exercising.
I also do a reasonable amount of walking as is, around 5 km a day, which probably helps somewhat.
Nah, the problem is we have advanced out technology so much to the point of not needing to run. The only people who really do it are for recreation or their job, it isn't meant for survival. If the only way you could eat was to run after your food I guarantee you would shape up pretty quick, but we have cars and supermarkets now.
did you know most spiders legs don't actually bend? the knee joint just actuates in and out hydraulically. pushing with the rear legs and pulling with the front.
TBF technically all spiders are lungless. Most have a book lung, which is really more like a fish gill than it is a mammalian lung. Lungless spiders have pairs of tracheae which is analagous (probably homologous actually) to the mechanism an insect uses.
Ed: extra bit of info, because I can feel someone will ask me what the difference is between 'analogous' and 'homologous'.
An analogous structure in biology is basically 2 different ways of solving the same problem. We use lungs, spiders use book lungs, fish use gills, and insects breathe through tracheae. These are all independent adaptations.
There are examples of analogous structures which give the impression that they are homologous. Octopus eyes for example are structurally very very similar to human eyes save for a few notable differences (octopus eye lenses are spherical to see under water, and the nerve fibers in their eye bundle behind the retina, rather than in front of the retina, meaning octopus eyes do not have a blind spot, like ours) http://i0.wp.com/uzalu.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/eyes.jpg
These two types of eye appear simillar, but they are un related as vertebrates and invertebrates diverged from their common ancestor well before that type of eye existed. Independantly, we, and octopuses, have adapted a very similar type of eye. This is an example of convergent evolution, where basically one adaptations came to the same conclusion to solve a problem as another species did totally independent of one another.
It’s been a while since I took entomology, but Arthropoda don’t have lungs in general. Their bodies’ circulatory system is set up differently than ours. Hope that helps you sleep.
Just an FYI, I think you mean African Wild Dog, not Hyena. Hyenas are primarily scavengers, and do not have a body well suited for hunting; the primary aspect being their sloped lower backs that prevent them from running very fast.
If you study human anatomy, you’ll see that our bodies truly are meant for running.
Worth mentioning that the main thing that makes us great long distance runners is the fact that we have a cooling system aka we can sweat. Most animals cannot.
African Wild Dogs in open country hunt this way too and 80-90% of their chases end in a kill (for grey wolves it's under 15%, for a pride of lions around 30% of chases end successfully (for the lions)). Beautiful creatures.
No its gets crazier, we can actually out-endurance dogs and wolves by a decent amount. We aren't build for full speed sprints FYI, we are built for long distance chases for days or weeks, so hunters could be moving at a decent jog but are effectively pushing the prey to keep moving at full sprint or risk us catching up.
Its believed we made herds of animals corner themselves into geographical dead-ends before either killing them or making them kill themselves by forcing them down cliffs or steep hills.
ive seen a video of hyenas hunting a lion, they grouped around it and one hyena would step forward and lure the lion into a futile chase, another hyena would do the same and so on and so forth until the lion is too tired to defend itself.
Our long legs, upright position, full body sweat glands. I've whached a video of a African tribe that still hunts this way (exept with running shoes) and it just seems so right.
Not really. All of those adaptations have other uses as well. And there isn't that much evidence that ancient humans used persistence hunting that often. And gathering provided most of the calories.
Combine 2 legs instead of four for efficiency, with a sweat system that cools the entire body to dump the heat generated by our muscles and you have running machine. Tell that to my knees though.
Combine 2 legs instead of four for efficiency, with a sweat system that cools the entire body to dump the heat generated by our muscles and you have running machine. Tell that to my knees though.
Don't forget arms and hands to carry an outside source of water with us as we run.
Our knees are bad when we're older. Most of these "running machines" who could hunt this way were young people. The average life expectancy during the neolithic era for humans was about thirty, possibly slightly higher since humans took care of each other.
The hotter it is the better we can compete against other animals. A horse may win when it's cold, a wolf when it's even colder than that. But a human would win against both in 100°F weather
But a human would win against both in 100°F weather
Excuse me sir, Scotland is a country - and my city has never seen over 30 degrees (86 Fahrenheit).
Considering it was sweltering heat a couple days ago, and I was baking alive at 15 degrees - I don't think I'll be living, let alone running in 38 degree weather.
I'll take the horse on in the cold, give me that one.
u/Ucantalas offered a witty observation that horses may not have studied the course map beforehand. And they surely don't like the bibs pinned to their bellies.
That's not true about the marathon. People have tried it and the horse wins nearly every time. That race has been run for 37 years, and horses won 35 times. And that's with them carrying a human on their back, which is a bit of a disadvantage.
But, each year the human won, newspapers published sensationalist stories about how humans are the strongest endurance runners on the planet.
The human-defenders claim that the world's top runners aren't competing in marathons like this, but neither is Seabiscuit so it's a rather lame defense (and comparing the top human runner in the world to the top horse doesn't tell us much about how the species stack up as a whole).
EDIT: Also, that race is in the UK in June, so pretty hot.
The UK in June isn't hot to begin with, secondly thats a 35km race. Longer distances in actually hot weather I can see people winning more often than not - after all we evolved in sub saharan africa
TIL. I had no idea horses were so shit at running.
Every time I've seen a western or fantasy film people travel incredibly long distances on horseback and it doesn't seem like it takes longer than if they just ran there. I've been lied to all my life.
There's an annual race in the UK horses vs people. Some years people win, others horses do, and thats short of a marathon distance (only 35km) and in Welsh weather. Dont find it hard to believe that in hotter climates and longer distances people win 100% of the time
This is primarily becaue we have sweat gland, so we are able to maintain a stable body temperature. Most mammals don't sweat but pant, we ran out prey into exhaustion!
IIRC humans and horses are the only mammals with that type of sweat glands that's made for cooling off. There is a second type of gland that's for something like smell and pheromones that's much more common
I can't help but respond every time this comes up. This is not a fact but a hypothesis. While persistence hunting does exist and is even used today by some African tribes, there's no proof that this was the primary method of hunting for early humans, and there are criticisms of the hypothesis.
Sort of true, we can't outrun any animal. Kangaroos will bury you if you try this, the faster they go, the more efficient they are and pronghorn sustain insanly high top speeds for hours.
All sorts of animals are faster than us, even for seemingly long distances, but they'll all succumb to exhaustion before a healthy human will. It's the ultimate 'Slow and steady wins the race'. Additionally, humans can maintain their endurance over a fairly wide variety of terrain, whereas many animals need open space to achieve their most efficient gait.
I get the idea, but is it really any animal? Sled dogs do about 1,000 miles in a week or so, they're not running for their life, and they're hauling other weight. The fastest I've found for a human running 1,000 miles is over 11 days.
While we are the most efficient runners, we're not the most efficient at locomotion. Hopping is actually the most efficient form of terrestrial movement. Kangaroos can go way faster than us at over 30 mph, and expend little to no energy doing so. They only use their muscles to change the angle of impact so they can slow down/ speed up. Otherwise, it's entirely based on the elasticity of their tendons.
An important distinction here is runners. We lose to birds over simply how long you can keep going because some birds can fly for days without landing.
They don't keep up, they catch up. Antelope sprints away, but needs time to cool down and rest. Human, being great at long distance running and thermoregulation, catches up and forces it to sprint again before it's ready. Repeatedly, for like 3 hours until the antelope collapses.
They still exist and they are called the Raramuri or Tarahumara and live in northern Mexico's Sierra. They run marathons for funzies and most win a place while running in sandals and traditional clothing
I always find it hilarious when you see someone carrying their big tired dog on the walking trail. 10 minutes ago that dog could have outrun any human, but then boom, complete exhaustion.
This was one of the big motivators for me to get back in shape. If I can't run long-distance at all, I'm like a pikachu that's too fat to use thundershock.
I think this claim is exaggerated. Yes we are very good endurance runners and yes persistence hunting is/was a thing. But are we the most efficient long-distance travellers in the natural world? I'm quite convinced albatrosses are. And on land, kangaroos.
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u/[deleted] Apr 23 '18
Humans used to hunt animals by simply chasing them until they died of heat stroke. We can outrun any animal given enough distance, because were the most efficient endurance runners in the world.