Why are humans so weak (pound for pound) compared to many other animals?
In: Biology
For starters, we spend about 20% of our energy intake on running our big brains. On the plus side, our big brains do allow us to scurry up some really nutritious, high energy diets. So that’s not much a problem.
Muscles take a lot of energy to maintain. Diet permitting, our bodies increase or decrease our muscle mass depending on our level of exercise. Ie. it makes no sense to waste a lot of energy maintaining muscles if you spend all day behind a desk.
When we exercise and eat healthily, we’re pretty fit and strong really. We can stay active all day long. We’re fantastic runners. Some early humans were subsistence runners that would literally chase prey animals until they collapsed from exhaustion.
At the end of the day, every species works with the energy budget it’s got. Some animals survive by using as little energy as possible. Either living very slow lives like sloths or just being very lethargic until they briefly burst into action like a crocodile.
Some animals like cows eat very low nutrition food sources like grass but they spend almost every waking moment eating and every resting moment digesting, allowing them to grow big and muscular.
Some animals live very energetic lifestyles and as a result, need as much high nutrition food as they can find. Many kinds of mice, hummingbirds etc.
Humans are flexible. Our muscle mass can change quickly, we spend a lot of energy on our brains. But the payoff is that we can thrive pretty much anywhere without just growing dumb and big.
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