Eli5: how are humans, who are two legged, able to out endure creatures that are four legged?
In: 1455
Big lungs and the ability to sweat on to bear skin. The most important limiting factor for endurance with most animals is the ability to remove heat from your body. Humans are very good at that because we’re naked AF and sweat. Most mammals cannot sweat as it doesn’t work with fur and would lead to death in winter.
That in addition to simple tools like carrying water and footwear means our endurance (when trained properly) is absolutely staggering and is only realistically limited by our need for sleep, food and water. We can carry food and water with us so those limiting factors do not matter, but we cannot do anything about sleep except sleep.
This means humans can realistically jog for hours and hours on end where as most animals can only maintain that kind of speed for minutes before they begin to overheat and need to stop and rest.
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