Eli5: how are humans, who are two legged, able to out endure creatures that are four legged?
In: 1455
We can sweat and cool off so we don’t overheat.
Imagine a race between all sorts of cars. Remove the oil from all of them except one. That car will last longer than every other car.
The way humans walk is absurdly efficient too. We sort lean forwards and catch ourselves each step which doesn’t require much energy at all.
It’s the brain-to-leg ratio! The more legs you have, the more difficult to coordinate. That’s why we can easily outrun centipedes – who get their legs tangled within the first few meters of the track. Follow me for more useful insights. 😉
Our bipedal motion is VERY energy efficient. A human can walk all day. Meanwhile, most four-legged animals can only move faster than us in short sprints. So all we have to do is just outlast them until they’re too tired to try to run anymore.
It’s the brain-to-leg ratio! The more legs you have, the more difficult to coordinate. That’s why we can easily outrun centipedes – who get their legs tangled within the first few meters of the track. Follow me for more useful insights. 😉
All great explanations here, but one thing that hasn’t been mentioned much is our leg shape. The Achilles tendon alone makes humans ridiculously efficient, because it allows us to regain a lot of the energy we use when stepping. It acts as a spring, storing energy on the downward stride, and releasing it when we push off.
Then there is the human butt. We have a huge ass which powers our long legs.
Our bipedal motion is VERY energy efficient. A human can walk all day. Meanwhile, most four-legged animals can only move faster than us in short sprints. So all we have to do is just outlast them until they’re too tired to try to run anymore.
Larger groups can take on anything as long as it’s not advanced tech.
From utilizing fire and the larger groups it supported we started developing language amongst a ton of other things, but this was arguably the most important evolved characteristic that sets us apart from other organisms.
With language we band even larger groups that can cooperate better. Larger battles happen too, but the victor takes more spoils. From language we get a linguistic system where people start stitching fictions based off their experience to make sense of their reality…
Then bingo bango bongo, ya have even MORE people cooperating together under a cause they perceive bigger than themselves. Sumerian creation myths and society, Egyptian creation myths and society, canaan and others, Greek, Roman, and Abrahamic creation “stories” and societies. Technology advances exponentially but our nature moves as slow as evolution.
It’s funny to think that once we develop a different nature, better from avaricious human nature, that we may not be considered humans any longer
What you quoted is called the endurance running hypothesis or persistence hunting and although it caught on in pop-sci and pseudo science circles, there is very little evidence that humans hunted by running down prey animals for many hours at a stretch until it fell exhausted.
First of all, we really arent able to outrun that many animals. You will travel farther in a day on horseback, than jogging. Hence even while carrying your extra weight, the horse is able to out endure you. You will also travel farther using a dog sled than on foot. Huskeys dragging you and all your stuff cover more miles per day than you could even on skis, hence are more endurant than you as well.
Second, running at high volumes burns an absolute assload of calories. At 3 lifting sessions and 5 runs per week (totalling 40 miles per week, which probably isnt even enough to be a persistance hunter) I maintain bodyweight at about 4000 to 4200 calories per day. Where are you going to reliably get that many calories without the comforts and efficiency of modern civilization and industrialized farming? You just wont. Foraging and hunting wont cut it.
Third. Running makes you sweat. A lot. If you are a hunter gatherer, you do not have a convenient way to carry on you any significant amounts of water. You dont have a 2 liter camelbak on you and even 2 liters is not that much water if you are running for 4 hours or more. And then you need even more water to get back to where you ran from while dragging your prey. And you needed water to walk to where you first sighted prey. And you need water to walk from there to your actual camp. Taking of running away from your camp for multiple hours chasing after a prey animal would put you at a huge risk of dehydration, heat stroke and death.
Fourth. It just doesnt make any sense to hunt that way. Humans are creative, able to think ahead and able to learn from past experiences. We dont bet our lives on a straight test of physical capability in anything else we do. We use weapons, we stalk prey, we ambush and trap and sneak up and attack from too close a distance to leave time to react, we set up fake attacks to chase prey into an ambush or into a dead end… Hell, that is how we kill each other even today, by looking for the most advantageous way in which we can possibly do it. That is true whether is a criminal murderer or a large scale war between nations. But somehow we would not do that to hunt? Why?
All great explanations here, but one thing that hasn’t been mentioned much is our leg shape. The Achilles tendon alone makes humans ridiculously efficient, because it allows us to regain a lot of the energy we use when stepping. It acts as a spring, storing energy on the downward stride, and releasing it when we push off.
Then there is the human butt. We have a huge ass which powers our long legs.
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