this post was submitted on 22 Jun 2025
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So this is pretty neat:
https://www.science.org/content/article/born-run-early-endurance-running--may-have-evolved-help-humans-chase-down-prey
Humans aren't good at running fast, but we are good at running for a long time for long distances, so it's thought that we would just run after things until they got tired.
So like you know how people in horror movies would run and then look over their shoulder and Jason is somehow still there?
Funny enough there is another animal I know that can sweat, have more endurance than humans, and much faster than humans. Horses.
Imagine you fear getting caught by a horse or a human and then suddenly a human riding a horse shows up.
humans can beat a horse in a marathon!
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_versus_Horse_Marathon
https://www.managainsthorse.net/result.html
That's pretty cool. However, no human has ever won by more than 15min, and every horse has a 15min delay built into their times. So even the biggest winning margin of nearly 11 minutes would have lost to the horse if they had started at the same time.
The horses also all had humans on their backs. To my knowledge, none of the humans had horses on their backs.
For it to be scientifically accurate of a comparison, the ratio of weight:human needs to be equal to that of rider:horse, not a direct flip.
In case my phrasing is confusing, to illustrate what I mean here is an example: a 200lb horse carrying a 100lb human is equivalent to a 100lb human carrying a 50lb weight.
Things don't scale linearly like that. Many things are proportional to either the surface (so x²) or volume (x³) or complex combinations of those.
Oh true true. I forgot about the square-cube law.
This study analyzes historical results of three different man versus horse races (in Wales, in Virginia, and in California). The data shows that human performance decreases with temperature, but less so than horses, so that 30°C is approximately where the best humans can start outperforming the best horses that year.
I would think that even with 15 minutes of intermittent pauses/checks, that time is still productive for cooling the animal and would add less than 15 minutes to the theoretical total if they were allowed to run the whole time.
The Western States trail in the California Sierras used to be where a 100-mile horse race took place that horse and rider had to complete in 24 hours. At some point in the 1970s one of the riders decided not to take a horse, and he finished in 23 hours on foot. Now it's an annual footrace that the winner finishes in about 14 hours.
Also in very short races (up to 100m) if the human is an olympic athlete, though mostly because momentum is a bitch and it takes time for the horse to accelerate all that mass, and by the time it's done the race is already over (it also probably helps that the athlete knows what they're doing while the horse is just along for the ride and wondering where it can get some grass).
Horses sweat? Huh.
Yeah it turns to foam especially under saddles
Back in my reddit days I wrote a long comment about the fact that zombies are scary because they are the ultimate persistence hunters.
Zombies aren't scary. They're popular movie monsters because, while looking vaguely human, they're sufficiently "othered" that you can kill them without remorse (thus acting as a convenient stand-in for other groups that the audience wishes they could do that to) and because they represent an apocalypse that kills most of the people but leaves the stuff behind, meaning that you don't have to deal with society anymore but you'll still easily have a roof over your head and food on your table (albeit mostly canned food.)
Huh, never thought about it that way. Great metaphor, tbh.
I mean, them being walking corpses might also have something to do with it...
I remember reading that
That is scarier to me than the fast zombies.
It’s a consequence of bipedalism, less energy consumption to run but also slower
It's a few things that stem from bipedalism:
Combined with our unusual ability to cool ourselves by sweating, this gives us an advantage over pretty much any animal in the heat. Wolves and horses can still outrun humans in the cold, but lack the cooling mechanisms to maintain pace in the same heat that we can.
We also have by far the best throwing game in the world. Some animals can spit with reasonable accuracy, some apes can kind of lob shit in a general direction, and there's that one lizard that can spray blood from its eye, but nothing in the animal kingdom past or present has a human's innate ability for ranged attack. The average man can throw a fist sized rock hard and accurate enough to crack a skull from 20 yards with his bare hand. And we've spent the last 10,000 years inventing newer and more impressive ways of throwing stuff.
Humans domesticated dogs for their ability to hunt by scent. Dogs domesticated humans for their ability to throw a tennis ball.
That and the easy free meals and wamr place to sleep for not much effort in return.
Cats purr and get free shit.
Cats keep rodents under control so that our stored grain isn't destroyed or contaminated.
Mine doesn't. She just yells at me when she wants Fancy Feast.
I don't know, a hawk plummeting from the sky at 190km/h onto something the size of a small rodent is kind of impressive, too, if you count the bird throwing itself as throwing...
And for wanking, although that may just be an adaptation to compensate for our inability to lick our own dicks.
Yea but also tools
We don’t have to stop for water, we can bring some
Same for food
Our preys didn’t have such luck