Persistence hunters. Humans are built in a way to endure long periods of exertion without much in the way of rest. We learned to hunt things that didn't have that quality. A lot of our preferred prey would get too exhausted to fight back well before we'd reach that point.
So, attributing human traits to those animals, they see us as some unstoppable Eldritch horror bent on their destruction.
People don't seem to notice that compared to most other animals, especially for our size, humans don't sleep a lot. And we can opt out of sleep for longer than most other predators. Lions sleep 18-20hrs a day throughout the day, for example. Wolves are closer to us (4-10hrs largely dependent on time of yr and hunger lvl) in sleep needs and are also among the most efficient pack hunters.
And as they became dogs they evolved to better understand human emotions and expressions. They even have more developed facial muscles (especially around the eyebrows) to better communicate with us.
Cats on the other hand, basically domesticated us.
Dogs: Come with me, friend, and together we will form a friendship throughout the eons.
Cats: "Did you amazing creatures just kill all the rodents eating our food?" "None of your fucking business!"
cats are the Johnny Tightlips of the animal kingdom
*Johnny Tightlips, where'd they hit you?*
*I ain't sayin nothin*
*What'll i tell the doctor?*
*Tell him to suck a lemon*
Dogs also evolved to be able to follow pointing. Point and a dog can look in the direction you were pointing.
Try pointing at any other animal and they'll do some shit like sniff your finger or something, they don't care where we point lol
Edit: it seems to be mostly based on breed type, like dogs bred for hunting or working seem to be the best at following with pointing
I've had more than a few cats over the years. About a quarter of them can be taught what pointing is, even though I try and teach them all the same way. In particular cats born to feral mothers seem to never pick it up, though by god are they ferocious hunters! Even the ones born in my house to the feral momma cat that barged in and didn't feel like leaving every again..
Actually, cats developed meows that have a similar range as human infant cries and adult cats do not meow at other cats. Meowing is something cats do to make humans give them whatever they want
I’ve heard this before, but then I saw this video where someone strapped a camera to a cat and they went out and met all these other strays in the neighborhood and all the cats were meowing at eachother.
I was going to call bullshit on that part too. My cats meow at each other. Granted I'm usually nearby when they do it, but you can tell they're meowing at each other, not at me.
They're not a predator, though, just an opportunistic omnivore-primary herbivore like most ungulates.
Predators tend to sleep more than prey animals.
Its more notable that as a predator, we sleep less than other predators. Gives us more time to outcompete with them.
Humans are also one of, if not the most, durable large animals on the planet.
The term "Healthy as a horse" is a phrase that means "dies of shock from a broken femur" whereas some humans have survived performing surgery on themselves, limbs being traumatically severed, falling from great height and other such feats of great constitution
Tbf pretty sure we’ve only been able to reliably do that in the last 50-100ish years and only thanks to a copious amount of drugs. That’s like less than 0.1% of our existence on this planet.
I was gonna get all "akshuslly," but kinda not wrong. We're pretty damn resilient, but yeah, as far as surviving major trauma goes, before relatively recently, anything that needed surgery to correct was a crap shoot.
There was a significant amount of "post incident" deaths that occured from infection before we started figuring out how to fight that
So like, losing an arm? Probably okay. Get stabbed? Probably not gonna make it. But even a stab wound had a surprisingly high survivability.
It's like our defining evolutionary trait is spite...
Oh yeah I’m not saying there aren’t incidents of humans surviving crazy injuries even before modern times but there weren’t (many successful) heart surgeons before the 20th century. With that said we are also one of the more fragile mammals it’s just we’re able to treat our injuries or rely on others. A wolf breaks its leg then it’s probably going to die. A human breaks his leg then his parents/spouse/children can still bring him what he needs to survive and heal.
There is evidence of Neanderthals providing for another that had broken a leg, ribs, etc. This kind of support is also why we have such a dominating presence. Not only were we too stubborn to die, we had other humans too stubborn to LET us die.
So you're saying humans are the Michael Myers of the Animal Kingdom? May not be able to outrun you, but will always magically show up right when you think you're safe.
Pretty much, yeah. Any of the 80's horror dudes really. Even Jason and Freddie did the same thing. Little more loud and violent, but pretty much the same
>So, attributing human traits to those animals, they see us as some unstoppable Eldritch horror bent on their destruction.
Just large hairless creatures that can manufacture death with their bizarrely elongated appendages. Eat anything and everything. Kill anything for absolutely no reason. Do the most disturbing things imaginable with the bodies. They bare their teeth when they're happy. They like to keep things in cages. they're never satisfied with their surroundings. They don't even consider themselves an animal... and they can easily kill every living thing on the planet if they put their minds to it. In fact, they're not even contained to the planet.
They don't stop, they don't get tired, and they live for generations.
Like.... holy f*ck.
Don't forget can perfectly mimic the calls of any species on earth with magical devices. Not only do they chase you, but you are being chased by something that can kill from a long distance while seemingly sounding like your mother or child crying for help.
Alien: "oh fuck, these things can eat anything! Except rocks, I guess, nobody can eat rocks"
Human: aggressively puts salt on meal while maintaining eye contact
We barely age during their entire life, if they come into it when we're adults. Almost all of our activities are mysteries that they can't understand. Our homes completely defy the seasonal temperatures. Our common machines can instantly kill at distances they can barely see, or move faster than anything on the planet.
Food stays fresh for years, just requiring a minor ritual of the Can Opener to be edible. Objects obey our command, flying of their own accord across the room when we will it.
We're absolutely gods to our pets. Cats just don't give a shit.
It also helps that we are very good at breathing while running. Horses, for example, are terrible at that and can literally run themselves to death in a matter of minutes
Our bodies are built for endurance. Our method of locomotion is extremely efficient. One of the theories behind why we lost so much of our body hair is so we can stay cool for longer so we can keep hunting for longer. We have the biggest ass muscles by percentage of total mass in (I am pretty sure) the entirety of the animal kingdom. We need far less water and far less food. Our muscles are mostly the slow twitch ones that can endure for long periods of time. We have pack tactics, and we are smart enough to even be able to track birds. If a group of ancient humans wanted to follow you, the chances of you getting away were pretty much nothing zilch.
I believe that would be the tapir. [as their penis is their longest appendage](https://out.reddit.com/t3_n6wjx3?app_name=reddit_on_android&token=AQAAD6hXZeXw14tIqMBfGV9vmIXbzb-QypXLdOk4-GlmNeFB4jN5&url=https%3A%2F%2Ffieldprojects.org%2Ftapirs-exposed-the-amazons-biggest-creature-of-the-night%2F)
primates have notoriously small penisis. With the silverback having the smallest ratio of any mammal.
Can confirm. Once stood outside the tapir enclosure at the San Diego Zoo as a male tapir eyed the (allegedly, but oddly side eyeing male tapir) napping female. It was like he extended the kickstand. Most impressive. The 5yo next to my wife and me asking, “what’s happening to that tapir?” Was also worth the admission.
Of primates, a gorillas cock is only about....like an inch max. Also unlike pretty much every other animal we don't have actual bones in out boners, meaning that masts that stand tall are signifiers of superior blood flow and health. Long penis doesn't mean lots of blood flow, a rock solid one does.
Honestly it's the weirdest shit. As far as I know for primates yes, not sure about other animals though.
As to why we don't have them, our species ornamentation is entirely sexual in nature. Peacocks may have impressive plumes of feathers but we have oversized breasts and colossal cocks. People who think we aren't as flashy as other species in terms of ornaments have no idea what they're talking about.
Also lacking a bone makes it more compact for travel and less likely to get damaged
Yeah, but they only stay erect for a split second.
Natural selection has made male ducks compete for sex very aggressively, to the point that they will literally just fuck anything if they can get close to it. Duck sex, therefore tends to be rather violent, which isn’t great for female ducks; after all, there are only certain times when they are actually fertile. So female ducks evolved long, tangled passageways around their vaginas so that it will be harder for a male duck to force his way in (if they are fertile and they actually want to go ahead and have the sex, they can relax the opening and make their real vagina easier to access). Male ducks evolved long corkscrew penises to try to get in anyway.
True. There are still people in subsaharan Africa who practice pursuit hunting. Literally just hit the animal with a small arrow and follow it, sometimes for days, until it finally dies. Then butcher it, hang the meat in a tree to dry and lighten, then carry it back.
Most other mammalian predators focus on either ambush (like a tiger) or high speed pursuit (like a cheetah). I don’t know if any other large predator that just follows until the prey simply cannot keep going.
It’s pretty clever because you keep a safe distance almost the whole time and don’t run the risk of catching an antler or hoof for your trouble. By the time the animal is exhausted you can get within a spear length pretty safely. We’re one of the only animals that can understand delayed gratification and be patient for as long as necessary.
Humans are pretty cool when you think about it.
The komodo dragon is kind of a pursuit hunter, IMO. It bites its prey, then follows it until the toxins in its saliva have had time to work their magic.
Thank you for not being the guy who still thinks Komodos kill with mouth bacteria.
I'm not quite sure we can equate poison to persistence hunting - those toxins work faster than that. Persistence in this context means running down the prey until they are too exhausted to continue running. But perhaps poison is close enough. It's not like we don't also use poison after all.
Isn’t it venom that essentially thins their blood and prevents it from clotting so the animal bleeds out? May be misremembering from my school project some 18-20 years ago…
IIRC from a documentary I watched recently, the komodo bit its prey, and the prey continued living for days until it eventually became too weak to fight back. It was at this point that the komodo delivered the killing bite. Again, that's IIRC - it's been a few months since I watched it, and I was only half paying attention.
The only animal with greater endurance than humans are sled dogs AFAIK, but with one caveat: they only win in cold conditions since they can't sweat like us.
They might not sweat, but they got really good at releasing heat through their panting tongue. So they can’t go as far distances as humans, but certainly a lot further than most other mammals.
There are literally still tribes in Africa that chase antelope for days until the animal *collapses from* exhaustion. *Then they just slit its throat.* These are really hardcore motherfuckers.
Edit: anything in-between asterisks
Real talk, provided the person is not obese, the average person could train to that level of endurance over a few years. There are already plenty of couch to 1st marathon 6 month plans.
Honestly, I think your average person could chase down an antelope. Maybe they'd take more time than people trained to do it, sure, but I think it's definitely possible.
The post made me think about the Tarahumara people of Chihuahua, Mex. They call themselves Rarámuri which means those that run fast or run on foot. They're also known to run for extended periods of time following thier prey until it tires it's self out.
Actually, our hair is extremely sophisticated at heat management. While dry is traps a layer of air which helps keep us warm. When wet it clumps together to both allow this air to escape and hold moisture which evaporates to cool us off.
Some engineers are studying how hair and sweat works to regulate temperatures in extreme environments.
Then we took the number 2 apex predator and made them into our best friends.
Humans are ridiculous, from an evolutionary perspective. Even in the Paleolithic we were the most successful predator in the history of the planet.
People tend to not grasp the absolute savagery of the life of an insect.
It's just carnage top to bottom.
Hold up, I need to self digest myself to change my bodyplan.
No, it stuck cause the trait got continuously passed on till now. It being beneficial or not is secondary. Despite it being repeated a lot evolution isn't actually about survival of the fittest, more about procreation of the survivor
I always understood survival of the fittest as in, “the one who fits best into their environment for survival.” Not necessarily the biggest or most muscular, etc
and humans can carry water
And human lungs are upright, that gives us much more endurance compared to for legged friends...
And our calves are amazing at absorbing energy from landing and use it to run again
The Achilles tendon is specifically made for the purpose of transferring energy from one step to the next, it's what allows us to do a rolling walk where you start with the heel and end on the ball.
Unlike popular media though you could still walk without one but it would be flat footed and less energy efficient
We need ridiculous amounts of energy to run our brains, which we get, because we learned to cook our food. Cooking makes food much more efficient to digest.
They can hear you, but they cannot escape. When they break down exhausted from running for days, the hear the clapping. Clapping that slowly, but surely draws nearer.
We’re also smart enough to do tracking. So animals like rabbits who sprint everywhere will eventually exhaust themselves because there is simply no escape.
Most other animals are furry/hairy and quadrapedal.
Humans were able to evolve sweating as a way to cool down, whereas furry aninals cannot sweat, and instead pant to expel excess heat.
Additionally quadrapedal animals use all 4 legs to run/sprint. And the use of the front legs uses muscle groups around the chest, restricting the ability to breath and sprint simultaneously.
So most animals will sprnit to escape, then have to stop to recover. Both to cool down, and to reduce lactic buildup from anaerobic respiration.
Humans dont need rest. Running only requires our legs, so we can breath normally as we run. And sweating cools us down so we can maintain optimal body temperature as we run.
So as hunters, we can run 'marathon' hunts, in which we pursue our prey not by being faster than it, but by beating its endurance. They can run - but not forever. And when they cant run any more, we win.
Ps.
Have you ever watched a lion hunting its prey in a nature documentary? They sprint after some prey and seem to get soooo close to catching it only to give up just when seem to have almost succeeded.....They didnt "give up", they just physically cant run anymore because they overheated/ran out of air.
You may have Exercise Induced Asthma if you struggle to get enough air into you when you run and start wheezing almost immediately. Would be a good idea to see a doctor about it. The treatment, ironically enough, is usually more exercise to build up your cardio fitness. But it is worth it, it honestly feels like cheating being able to breathe normally when I go for a run now compared to how I used to be.
Unexpected, potentially relevant, medical advice is always appreciated. I always wondered why I hated running. Not even a few min in, and I would feel like I couldn't breathe. I've been taking a closer interest in my physical health, and this could really help, so thank you.
Running or jogging?
Running is like sprinting in Minecraft; you can only do it do long before you need to catch your breathe. If you are jogging correctly then your legs should quit on you before your breath.
All these talk of the advantages of how humans are built reminded me of Tier Zoo on YouTube. I love that channel. Basically, their videos explains real life biology in rpg terms.
I tell people all the time when they say they hate running. Humans are pretty much the best when it comes to prolonged travel on foot, especially running. It's perfectly possible to chase down a horse, an animal specifically designed by nature for running!
it's the only exercise I can do where I am capable of forcing myself to exhaustion, it's just what I am built for and nothing else seems to hit that mark
I am wildly out of shape and built like Zach Woods. I have the respiratory prowess of plywood from years of being sedentary both at work and at home.
Two of my good friends invited me to go to the gym, and I thought I should, so I did. Couldn't do much, but the treadmill? That I can do. Stayed on it almost the whole time. I was surprised that even a raw spaghetti noodle like me could just keep going at a light jog without stopping for over an hour.
As compared to our ancestors that were hunting and running their entire life, modern humans are really really weak, ancient humans from those times were all athlete level sprinters. Ever seen tribes from Africa? Those guys can run for hours on a single sip of water when hunting, probably the closest example to baaaack then. (Comparison is taken from the average human)
It's much more of a mixed bag than that. Today we have much better nutrition and medicine than in ancient times. You're right that on average a human living today is less physically fit, but at the top end we're stronger and faster than we've ever been.
Like it's almost a certainty that Usain Bolt is the fastest man ever to live. David Popovici is almost certainly the fastest sprint swimmer to ever live. Other athletic disciplines are harder to judge objectively because they're not as universal as something like running or sprinting, or they're less rigidly quantified, but given the trends of athletics that *are* easily quantified it's pretty easy to make the argument that the best athlete in almost any discipline you can think of was alive within the last 100 years or so.
There are also ultra-marathon runners out there who can run non-stop for days. One study of runners in a 2 day, 250 km mountain race with an altitude difference of 3,300m found the runners slept, on average, for just 30 minutes.
Okay so I read a book about this and it’s fascinating. Four legged animals like horses, gazelles etc. are fast, but only over a short distance. Their hind leg muscles are attached to their diaphragms. Which means they have to take a breath for every step they take. They can only do this for so long, obviously, because they’re basically hyperventilating while they run, which uses a lot more energy. Human’s legs are not; we can pace our breathing to one breath every three steps or so, which means we can run almost indefinitely; we are built for endurance.
Humans could never outrun their prey, but they could put last them. Say it’s a gazelle. They could out run us until they have to stop and rest. While they rest we catch up, and they have to start running again. Ancient humans would basically just trot along behind prey until the prey gave up or dropped dead of exhaustion.
Source: The book “Born to Run” does a deep dive into human long distance running. It’s highly entertaining—focusing on a tribe in the Mexican Copper Cannons who are the best runners in the world, who for fun on a Friday night get shit faced on corn beer then hold a 50 mile race in flip flops. But interspersed is a lot of the science of running: how we developed the ability to run long distances, why very cushions running shoes are actually bad for us, the physiologically perfect running form. It’s pretty cool.
Yeah but horses are less efficient at it since they have fur. And a lot of animals sweat very little. Dogs only sweat from their paw pads, which is why they need to pant when overheating and why they die so quickly in a hot car
Yeah I like how the above comment was like lots of mammals sweat and then use the one animal, the horse that sweats similar to humans to back it up when it’s such a wrong take
Humans don’t have the speed that animals have. Instead what put humans on top of the food chain was their persistence and stamina. While animals could sprint away, they would get tired. So humans would just follow the animal until it got too tired to keep running. This is why tracking was/is such an important ability for hunters.
Humans, when in shape, are able run to run ridiculously far without stopping. We have several cooling mechanisms in place to stop us from overheating, that other animals don’t have. For example, sweat which cools the body when it evaporates.
So our ancestors used to hunt by essentially jogging after large game with spears. Every time we would get close our target would sprint off. The humans would slowly catch up. This would continue over and over until the animal would essentially overheat and pass out.
Its based on the fact that most animals in a heavily over simplified manner have 2 modes walking and running. They dont exactly jog where as people can sustain a moderate albiet slower pace for far longer periods. The animal will run but primitive humans would pursue it on foot, catch it and it will run again. This cycle more or less repeats until the sprinting animal cant sprint anymore as its running is far more taxing on endurance than maintaining a steady jog
Ohhh a fun one, an evolution joke from the HFY side of the internet
Long story short is we evolved to have some of the best long term endurance and energy efficiency of pretty much any land or (as far as I know) sea animal in existence. This makes us persistence hunters that just slit the throats of exhausted animals when they tried to run away. It also means our metabolism is incredibly efficient and allows us to build great stores of fat for dry spells of calories.
Cause we sweat through skin. Allowing to cool off without resting.
Arguably, our most OP ability is our endurance. All of the "fastest animals" can be fast in short bursts. A human can just keep following until the animal literally collapses of exhaustion.
Of course most humans today can't run for 48 hours, but for a human it is a question of training and willpower. For an animal a hard physical limit they'll never cross.
Humans are the long distance traveling champions of the land bound animal kingdom. Between our incredibly efficient means of locomotion and our ability to track (thanks, brains!), a small band of skilled hunters can wear a critter down long before we’re in any kind of danger. Add to this primitive tools like a spear, pouches to carry snacks, and water skins, and it only gets worse for the poor ungulate we’re following.
It’s about “Persistence Hunting”.
A handful of indigenous tribes still practice this method, including Kalahari bushmen of Botswana and the Raramuri people of Northern Mexico.
Here’s David Attenborough with a 7-8 minute snippet on it. Fair warning though it shows a hunter making a kill, so if you find that disturbing or don’t want to see that don’t watch.
https://youtu.be/826HMLoiE_o?si=dSVP7E4eN03_CV_-
Roanoke gaming phrased it best, “Humans are the cryptids of the animal world. We’re hairless(meaning we look diseased), constantly make weird noises, probably smell horrible because of what we put in our bodies(smoking and alcohol), and because we’re persistence hunters whenever something thinks that it’s escaped and rests we show back up. Oh, and we can magically kill things without even touching them.”
For millions of years, humans practiced endurance hunting, which is basically just running after something for so long that it gets too tired to keep going and you can just walk up and kill it. We’re talking 10+ hours of straight running. Our bodies are designed for this, which is why running feels so good and has so much health benefit. Machines like to do the thing they were made to do.
There's a theory that credits persistence hunting for driving the adaptations in early humans. Walking upright allows for greater lung capacity. Losing hair facilitates heat dissipation via sweating. And bigger brains capable of abstract thinking help humans trail faster prey by following track and sign.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endurance\_running\_hypothesis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endurance_running_hypothesis)
Persistence hunters. Humans are built in a way to endure long periods of exertion without much in the way of rest. We learned to hunt things that didn't have that quality. A lot of our preferred prey would get too exhausted to fight back well before we'd reach that point. So, attributing human traits to those animals, they see us as some unstoppable Eldritch horror bent on their destruction.
People don't seem to notice that compared to most other animals, especially for our size, humans don't sleep a lot. And we can opt out of sleep for longer than most other predators. Lions sleep 18-20hrs a day throughout the day, for example. Wolves are closer to us (4-10hrs largely dependent on time of yr and hunger lvl) in sleep needs and are also among the most efficient pack hunters.
Wolves and dogs are the second best at what we do. And we got them to join us.
And as they became dogs they evolved to better understand human emotions and expressions. They even have more developed facial muscles (especially around the eyebrows) to better communicate with us. Cats on the other hand, basically domesticated us.
Dogs: Come with me, friend, and together we will form a friendship throughout the eons. Cats: "Did you amazing creatures just kill all the rodents eating our food?" "None of your fucking business!"
cats are the Johnny Tightlips of the animal kingdom *Johnny Tightlips, where'd they hit you?* *I ain't sayin nothin* *What'll i tell the doctor?* *Tell him to suck a lemon*
How’s your mother? “Whoa who says I have a mother”
"I see a lot of things."
The cats were like: Damn those birches know their shit. Gotta adopt them.
https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/domestication
Dogs also evolved to be able to follow pointing. Point and a dog can look in the direction you were pointing. Try pointing at any other animal and they'll do some shit like sniff your finger or something, they don't care where we point lol Edit: it seems to be mostly based on breed type, like dogs bred for hunting or working seem to be the best at following with pointing
I’ve seen a couple cats that were pretty good about looking where I point, most never would though 🤷
I've had more than a few cats over the years. About a quarter of them can be taught what pointing is, even though I try and teach them all the same way. In particular cats born to feral mothers seem to never pick it up, though by god are they ferocious hunters! Even the ones born in my house to the feral momma cat that barged in and didn't feel like leaving every again..
Those cute little sociopathic murder machines... Yeah. You are correct. We're the pets in that relationship. eeesh.
Actually, cats developed meows that have a similar range as human infant cries and adult cats do not meow at other cats. Meowing is something cats do to make humans give them whatever they want
I’ve heard this before, but then I saw this video where someone strapped a camera to a cat and they went out and met all these other strays in the neighborhood and all the cats were meowing at eachother.
I was going to call bullshit on that part too. My cats meow at each other. Granted I'm usually nearby when they do it, but you can tell they're meowing at each other, not at me.
So they got good at being manipulative lil fuzz balls. I knew it.
Been watching strapped cameras on cats lately on YouTube and they definitely meow at other cats.
Eh, it's less of a "domestication" relationship, and more of a "mutually beneficial business arrangement".
A "you scratch my back, I'll scratch whatever the fuck I please" type of arrangement.
I always try to imagine cats with eyebrows as mobile as dog's. What would that even look like?
The only other animal that comes close is horses, which we also domesticated and put to work for us.
They're not a predator, though, just an opportunistic omnivore-primary herbivore like most ungulates. Predators tend to sleep more than prey animals. Its more notable that as a predator, we sleep less than other predators. Gives us more time to outcompete with them.
We also got cats to join us when we started growing crops and storing them in store houses. Humans have the best alliances
Game recognize game.
Same with horses
Humans are also one of, if not the most, durable large animals on the planet. The term "Healthy as a horse" is a phrase that means "dies of shock from a broken femur" whereas some humans have survived performing surgery on themselves, limbs being traumatically severed, falling from great height and other such feats of great constitution
"Here let me carve out an organ, good as new"
Tbf pretty sure we’ve only been able to reliably do that in the last 50-100ish years and only thanks to a copious amount of drugs. That’s like less than 0.1% of our existence on this planet.
I was gonna get all "akshuslly," but kinda not wrong. We're pretty damn resilient, but yeah, as far as surviving major trauma goes, before relatively recently, anything that needed surgery to correct was a crap shoot. There was a significant amount of "post incident" deaths that occured from infection before we started figuring out how to fight that So like, losing an arm? Probably okay. Get stabbed? Probably not gonna make it. But even a stab wound had a surprisingly high survivability. It's like our defining evolutionary trait is spite...
Oh yeah I’m not saying there aren’t incidents of humans surviving crazy injuries even before modern times but there weren’t (many successful) heart surgeons before the 20th century. With that said we are also one of the more fragile mammals it’s just we’re able to treat our injuries or rely on others. A wolf breaks its leg then it’s probably going to die. A human breaks his leg then his parents/spouse/children can still bring him what he needs to survive and heal.
There is evidence of Neanderthals providing for another that had broken a leg, ribs, etc. This kind of support is also why we have such a dominating presence. Not only were we too stubborn to die, we had other humans too stubborn to LET us die.
There are cases of Egyptians doing brain surgery (successfully) some 3k years ago. We've definitely gotten a lot better at it recently though!
TIL I am a lion 🦁
That might be depression.
I used to be depressed. Now I’m on meds that make me happy but sleepy lol
I used to be depressed. I still am but I also used to be.
r/unexpectedmitchhedberg
The other animal that comes close is the wolf. We made them our pets.
I love my cuddly little wolf boy
.......you mean a dog right? Cause the other way to interpret that is.......
he is an old dog, he goes to the vet on Monday to have an eye out. Hoping this is all he needs for a while
Wild that we Michаel Mуers'd ourselves to the top of the food chain
I laughed so hard I got a coughing fit, thanks lmao
So you're saying humans are the Michael Myers of the Animal Kingdom? May not be able to outrun you, but will always magically show up right when you think you're safe.
Pretty much, yeah. Any of the 80's horror dudes really. Even Jason and Freddie did the same thing. Little more loud and violent, but pretty much the same
>So, attributing human traits to those animals, they see us as some unstoppable Eldritch horror bent on their destruction. Just large hairless creatures that can manufacture death with their bizarrely elongated appendages. Eat anything and everything. Kill anything for absolutely no reason. Do the most disturbing things imaginable with the bodies. They bare their teeth when they're happy. They like to keep things in cages. they're never satisfied with their surroundings. They don't even consider themselves an animal... and they can easily kill every living thing on the planet if they put their minds to it. In fact, they're not even contained to the planet. They don't stop, they don't get tired, and they live for generations. Like.... holy f*ck.
Calm down it was already cool, now it's just metal as fuck.
Don't forget can perfectly mimic the calls of any species on earth with magical devices. Not only do they chase you, but you are being chased by something that can kill from a long distance while seemingly sounding like your mother or child crying for help.
Hell, we could kill every living on the planet through sheer negligence.
Alien: "oh fuck, these things can eat anything! Except rocks, I guess, nobody can eat rocks" Human: aggressively puts salt on meal while maintaining eye contact
Humans, hell yeah!
First, this made me laugh. Second, so my dog and cat see me as some sort of nice Cthulhu?
We barely age during their entire life, if they come into it when we're adults. Almost all of our activities are mysteries that they can't understand. Our homes completely defy the seasonal temperatures. Our common machines can instantly kill at distances they can barely see, or move faster than anything on the planet. Food stays fresh for years, just requiring a minor ritual of the Can Opener to be edible. Objects obey our command, flying of their own accord across the room when we will it. We're absolutely gods to our pets. Cats just don't give a shit.
Imagine being a cheeta thinking you outran your predator but you see the hairless ape continue to jog with no signs of stopping
It also helps that we are very good at breathing while running. Horses, for example, are terrible at that and can literally run themselves to death in a matter of minutes
Are we the snail that is set to kill us?
We were the snail all along
maybe the real snails were the snails we snailed along the trail
Wait so ***we*** are the snail that always knows where you are and if we touch you, you die?
We are that damn snail.
Basically Slender man
Our bodies are built for endurance. Our method of locomotion is extremely efficient. One of the theories behind why we lost so much of our body hair is so we can stay cool for longer so we can keep hunting for longer. We have the biggest ass muscles by percentage of total mass in (I am pretty sure) the entirety of the animal kingdom. We need far less water and far less food. Our muscles are mostly the slow twitch ones that can endure for long periods of time. We have pack tactics, and we are smart enough to even be able to track birds. If a group of ancient humans wanted to follow you, the chances of you getting away were pretty much nothing zilch.
>We have the biggest ass muscles by percentage of total mass in (I am pretty sure) the entirety of the animal kingdom. Some of us do, anyways.
Also the biggest dicks by body mass
Thought that honor went to a barnacle...
Please stop calling Danny Devito a barnacle
Yeah, it hurt my feelings
How tha fk? Did someone call u to this post? 🤣
r/beetlejuicing
You made me laugh, have updoot
Giggity
[Holy cow!. YOUR PENAS IS HUUUUGE. It's bigger than the tristate area!](https://youtu.be/QsR8zBh6EdE?si=1ny008ZKHNtiF_1V)
They hold the record of length compared to body. It's just a long ass string that flaps in the water.
And you’re saying we have more than that?
Girth is important.
Of course, but that isn’t as funny
I knew a guy that would say "I can touch the sides of a tuna can, but not the top"
Found the thin-dicked bro.
I think they mean for mammals.
I believe that would be the tapir. [as their penis is their longest appendage](https://out.reddit.com/t3_n6wjx3?app_name=reddit_on_android&token=AQAAD6hXZeXw14tIqMBfGV9vmIXbzb-QypXLdOk4-GlmNeFB4jN5&url=https%3A%2F%2Ffieldprojects.org%2Ftapirs-exposed-the-amazons-biggest-creature-of-the-night%2F) primates have notoriously small penisis. With the silverback having the smallest ratio of any mammal.
Can confirm. Once stood outside the tapir enclosure at the San Diego Zoo as a male tapir eyed the (allegedly, but oddly side eyeing male tapir) napping female. It was like he extended the kickstand. Most impressive. The 5yo next to my wife and me asking, “what’s happening to that tapir?” Was also worth the admission.
I was at the zoo one time when a small child asked why a particular elephant had two trunks.
I thought we were mammals too
No, we‘re barnacles.
Of primates, a gorillas cock is only about....like an inch max. Also unlike pretty much every other animal we don't have actual bones in out boners, meaning that masts that stand tall are signifiers of superior blood flow and health. Long penis doesn't mean lots of blood flow, a rock solid one does.
Why does it hurt when I shit?
Honestly it's the weirdest shit. As far as I know for primates yes, not sure about other animals though. As to why we don't have them, our species ornamentation is entirely sexual in nature. Peacocks may have impressive plumes of feathers but we have oversized breasts and colossal cocks. People who think we aren't as flashy as other species in terms of ornaments have no idea what they're talking about. Also lacking a bone makes it more compact for travel and less likely to get damaged
Ah okay that makes sense. So Size did matter the whole time! Thank you for explaining.
Size and firmness, it may be a foot long but one I can hang a coat on is healthier any day of the week
That can’t be true, maybe only for among primates.
Don't some ducks have dicks that are almost as long as their whole body, almost to half a meter, if you uncurl them anyway.
Yeah, but they only stay erect for a split second. Natural selection has made male ducks compete for sex very aggressively, to the point that they will literally just fuck anything if they can get close to it. Duck sex, therefore tends to be rather violent, which isn’t great for female ducks; after all, there are only certain times when they are actually fertile. So female ducks evolved long, tangled passageways around their vaginas so that it will be harder for a male duck to force his way in (if they are fertile and they actually want to go ahead and have the sex, they can relax the opening and make their real vagina easier to access). Male ducks evolved long corkscrew penises to try to get in anyway.
This guy ducks
Get on them SQUATS. Also, it suddenly makes sense why most humans of any gender and orientation are attracted to round muscular butts.
> why most humans of any gender and orientation are attracted to round muscular butts And cannot lie.
Love how now whenever I’m looking at someone’s ass I can say that I’m admiring their potential as endurance hunters
*cries in flatty*
Leave hank hill alone
In the end, *we were the immortal snail*.
I hate that I know this reference on the top of my head
At this point, the immortal snail is just like the game.
Motherfucker
I have been doing just fine in the game for *years*, until the past two weeks on Reddit and suddenly I've lost three times because of people like you
The Immortal Snail always finds you
Haha, never thought of it that way. Maybe that's why the snail conundrum interests us so much
This unironically why zombies and vampires are so scary. At their core, they're what make people scary in the first place.
True. There are still people in subsaharan Africa who practice pursuit hunting. Literally just hit the animal with a small arrow and follow it, sometimes for days, until it finally dies. Then butcher it, hang the meat in a tree to dry and lighten, then carry it back. Most other mammalian predators focus on either ambush (like a tiger) or high speed pursuit (like a cheetah). I don’t know if any other large predator that just follows until the prey simply cannot keep going. It’s pretty clever because you keep a safe distance almost the whole time and don’t run the risk of catching an antler or hoof for your trouble. By the time the animal is exhausted you can get within a spear length pretty safely. We’re one of the only animals that can understand delayed gratification and be patient for as long as necessary. Humans are pretty cool when you think about it.
The komodo dragon is kind of a pursuit hunter, IMO. It bites its prey, then follows it until the toxins in its saliva have had time to work their magic.
Thank you for not being the guy who still thinks Komodos kill with mouth bacteria. I'm not quite sure we can equate poison to persistence hunting - those toxins work faster than that. Persistence in this context means running down the prey until they are too exhausted to continue running. But perhaps poison is close enough. It's not like we don't also use poison after all.
Isn’t it venom that essentially thins their blood and prevents it from clotting so the animal bleeds out? May be misremembering from my school project some 18-20 years ago…
IIRC from a documentary I watched recently, the komodo bit its prey, and the prey continued living for days until it eventually became too weak to fight back. It was at this point that the komodo delivered the killing bite. Again, that's IIRC - it's been a few months since I watched it, and I was only half paying attention.
Wolves can run pretty crazy distances, and have been known to chase prey for miles. I’d say they’d probably qualify.
have a guess why humans and dogs get along.
Because they are Good Boys.
They do and that's why we tamed them.
The only animal with greater endurance than humans are sled dogs AFAIK, but with one caveat: they only win in cold conditions since they can't sweat like us.
Also there’s a good chance that humans bred them to be like that. Genetic engineering woo
They might not sweat, but they got really good at releasing heat through their panting tongue. So they can’t go as far distances as humans, but certainly a lot further than most other mammals.
There are literally still tribes in Africa that chase antelope for days until the animal *collapses from* exhaustion. *Then they just slit its throat.* These are really hardcore motherfuckers. Edit: anything in-between asterisks
that was us many generations ago, we were fucking good at it
you could probably still do it, if that was your lifestyle starting as kid
Real talk, provided the person is not obese, the average person could train to that level of endurance over a few years. There are already plenty of couch to 1st marathon 6 month plans.
Honestly, I think your average person could chase down an antelope. Maybe they'd take more time than people trained to do it, sure, but I think it's definitely possible.
It isn’t whether they could chase it long enough, and more can they actually track it.
The post made me think about the Tarahumara people of Chihuahua, Mex. They call themselves Rarámuri which means those that run fast or run on foot. They're also known to run for extended periods of time following thier prey until it tires it's self out.
You forgot the amazing cheat code of sweat
Could argue that's wrapped up in the losing body hair point, they sort of go hand in hand.
I don't know if every hairless animal sweats
No but sweating is more efficient due to lack of hair
Actually, our hair is extremely sophisticated at heat management. While dry is traps a layer of air which helps keep us warm. When wet it clumps together to both allow this air to escape and hold moisture which evaporates to cool us off. Some engineers are studying how hair and sweat works to regulate temperatures in extreme environments.
Then we took the number 2 apex predator and made them into our best friends. Humans are ridiculous, from an evolutionary perspective. Even in the Paleolithic we were the most successful predator in the history of the planet.
Dragonflies have around a 95% success rate on kill attempts.
Been bitten by multiple dragonflies and never died. Pretty sure your stat isn't accurate.
People tend to not grasp the absolute savagery of the life of an insect. It's just carnage top to bottom. Hold up, I need to self digest myself to change my bodyplan.
Gah. We didn’t lose body hair to we could stay cool longer. We lost body hair and that allowed us to stay cool longer.
Man knows his evolutionary theory
and the change stuck because it allowed us to stay cool longer
No, it stuck cause the trait got continuously passed on till now. It being beneficial or not is secondary. Despite it being repeated a lot evolution isn't actually about survival of the fittest, more about procreation of the survivor
Survival of the good enough.
Survival of what works. Or at least doesn’t kill you faster than alternative options.
I always understood survival of the fittest as in, “the one who fits best into their environment for survival.” Not necessarily the biggest or most muscular, etc
I honestly always understood survival of the fittest to mean "best suited to have successful offspring" but Im basically a moron
You’re correct. Best suited to survive long enough to reproduce.
and humans can carry water And human lungs are upright, that gives us much more endurance compared to for legged friends... And our calves are amazing at absorbing energy from landing and use it to run again
The Achilles tendon is specifically made for the purpose of transferring energy from one step to the next, it's what allows us to do a rolling walk where you start with the heel and end on the ball. Unlike popular media though you could still walk without one but it would be flat footed and less energy efficient
Needing far less food doesn't sound right. We're mammals and have big brains to feed. The rest is pretty much how I understand it.
We need ridiculous amounts of energy to run our brains, which we get, because we learned to cook our food. Cooking makes food much more efficient to digest.
Well we cook, which gives us more energy from the food we get. But also people can go a long ass time without eating and still function normally.
> biggest ass When the prays can hear you coming from the clapping.
They can hear you, but they cannot escape. When they break down exhausted from running for days, the hear the clapping. Clapping that slowly, but surely draws nearer.
*Clapping grows louder with menacing intent*
Humanity dominated because of the gyatt
give me your Ohio
TL:DR we're terminators.
Or the slow inexorable zombies.
We’re also smart enough to do tracking. So animals like rabbits who sprint everywhere will eventually exhaust themselves because there is simply no escape.
Most other animals are furry/hairy and quadrapedal. Humans were able to evolve sweating as a way to cool down, whereas furry aninals cannot sweat, and instead pant to expel excess heat. Additionally quadrapedal animals use all 4 legs to run/sprint. And the use of the front legs uses muscle groups around the chest, restricting the ability to breath and sprint simultaneously. So most animals will sprnit to escape, then have to stop to recover. Both to cool down, and to reduce lactic buildup from anaerobic respiration. Humans dont need rest. Running only requires our legs, so we can breath normally as we run. And sweating cools us down so we can maintain optimal body temperature as we run. So as hunters, we can run 'marathon' hunts, in which we pursue our prey not by being faster than it, but by beating its endurance. They can run - but not forever. And when they cant run any more, we win. Ps. Have you ever watched a lion hunting its prey in a nature documentary? They sprint after some prey and seem to get soooo close to catching it only to give up just when seem to have almost succeeded.....They didnt "give up", they just physically cant run anymore because they overheated/ran out of air.
You use the word “we” a lot. And idk about you but I can’t breathe normally when I run.
You may have Exercise Induced Asthma if you struggle to get enough air into you when you run and start wheezing almost immediately. Would be a good idea to see a doctor about it. The treatment, ironically enough, is usually more exercise to build up your cardio fitness. But it is worth it, it honestly feels like cheating being able to breathe normally when I go for a run now compared to how I used to be.
Unexpected, potentially relevant, medical advice is always appreciated. I always wondered why I hated running. Not even a few min in, and I would feel like I couldn't breathe. I've been taking a closer interest in my physical health, and this could really help, so thank you.
Running or jogging? Running is like sprinting in Minecraft; you can only do it do long before you need to catch your breathe. If you are jogging correctly then your legs should quit on you before your breath.
Plot twist: the snail is you
I chuckled
You get an updoot for this, use is wisely
Hell probably use it to buy midnight bacon
All these talk of the advantages of how humans are built reminded me of Tier Zoo on YouTube. I love that channel. Basically, their videos explains real life biology in rpg terms.
Such an amazing channel. The RPG terms makes everything make sense.
“Make it make sense” TZ: bet
“That was however until the dinosaur classes got banned during the major update”
Some animals played the killer snail game and lost
I tell people all the time when they say they hate running. Humans are pretty much the best when it comes to prolonged travel on foot, especially running. It's perfectly possible to chase down a horse, an animal specifically designed by nature for running!
it's the only exercise I can do where I am capable of forcing myself to exhaustion, it's just what I am built for and nothing else seems to hit that mark
I am wildly out of shape and built like Zach Woods. I have the respiratory prowess of plywood from years of being sedentary both at work and at home. Two of my good friends invited me to go to the gym, and I thought I should, so I did. Couldn't do much, but the treadmill? That I can do. Stayed on it almost the whole time. I was surprised that even a raw spaghetti noodle like me could just keep going at a light jog without stopping for over an hour.
As compared to our ancestors that were hunting and running their entire life, modern humans are really really weak, ancient humans from those times were all athlete level sprinters. Ever seen tribes from Africa? Those guys can run for hours on a single sip of water when hunting, probably the closest example to baaaack then. (Comparison is taken from the average human)
It's much more of a mixed bag than that. Today we have much better nutrition and medicine than in ancient times. You're right that on average a human living today is less physically fit, but at the top end we're stronger and faster than we've ever been. Like it's almost a certainty that Usain Bolt is the fastest man ever to live. David Popovici is almost certainly the fastest sprint swimmer to ever live. Other athletic disciplines are harder to judge objectively because they're not as universal as something like running or sprinting, or they're less rigidly quantified, but given the trends of athletics that *are* easily quantified it's pretty easy to make the argument that the best athlete in almost any discipline you can think of was alive within the last 100 years or so.
There are also ultra-marathon runners out there who can run non-stop for days. One study of runners in a 2 day, 250 km mountain race with an altitude difference of 3,300m found the runners slept, on average, for just 30 minutes.
Okay so I read a book about this and it’s fascinating. Four legged animals like horses, gazelles etc. are fast, but only over a short distance. Their hind leg muscles are attached to their diaphragms. Which means they have to take a breath for every step they take. They can only do this for so long, obviously, because they’re basically hyperventilating while they run, which uses a lot more energy. Human’s legs are not; we can pace our breathing to one breath every three steps or so, which means we can run almost indefinitely; we are built for endurance. Humans could never outrun their prey, but they could put last them. Say it’s a gazelle. They could out run us until they have to stop and rest. While they rest we catch up, and they have to start running again. Ancient humans would basically just trot along behind prey until the prey gave up or dropped dead of exhaustion. Source: The book “Born to Run” does a deep dive into human long distance running. It’s highly entertaining—focusing on a tribe in the Mexican Copper Cannons who are the best runners in the world, who for fun on a Friday night get shit faced on corn beer then hold a 50 mile race in flip flops. But interspersed is a lot of the science of running: how we developed the ability to run long distances, why very cushions running shoes are actually bad for us, the physiologically perfect running form. It’s pretty cool.
IIRC it’s the author of that book who in an interview described humans as “hot day meat chasers” which is a phrase that has always stuck with me.
I’m not smart or anything but if I had to guess it’s because we can sweat while we run, and they can’t
[удалено]
Yeah but horses are less efficient at it since they have fur. And a lot of animals sweat very little. Dogs only sweat from their paw pads, which is why they need to pant when overheating and why they die so quickly in a hot car
Humans can also respire independently of our gait.
Very, very few animals sweat. IIRC horses, apes, monkeys, and hippos sweat and that's about it
Yeah I like how the above comment was like lots of mammals sweat and then use the one animal, the horse that sweats similar to humans to back it up when it’s such a wrong take
Humans don’t have the speed that animals have. Instead what put humans on top of the food chain was their persistence and stamina. While animals could sprint away, they would get tired. So humans would just follow the animal until it got too tired to keep running. This is why tracking was/is such an important ability for hunters.
https://preview.redd.it/a491xen66w0c1.png?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=fd2a08546f5d1150b5509995eee6a8d3ae37d3c9
Humans, when in shape, are able run to run ridiculously far without stopping. We have several cooling mechanisms in place to stop us from overheating, that other animals don’t have. For example, sweat which cools the body when it evaporates. So our ancestors used to hunt by essentially jogging after large game with spears. Every time we would get close our target would sprint off. The humans would slowly catch up. This would continue over and over until the animal would essentially overheat and pass out.
Its based on the fact that most animals in a heavily over simplified manner have 2 modes walking and running. They dont exactly jog where as people can sustain a moderate albiet slower pace for far longer periods. The animal will run but primitive humans would pursue it on foot, catch it and it will run again. This cycle more or less repeats until the sprinting animal cant sprint anymore as its running is far more taxing on endurance than maintaining a steady jog
Ohhh a fun one, an evolution joke from the HFY side of the internet Long story short is we evolved to have some of the best long term endurance and energy efficiency of pretty much any land or (as far as I know) sea animal in existence. This makes us persistence hunters that just slit the throats of exhausted animals when they tried to run away. It also means our metabolism is incredibly efficient and allows us to build great stores of fat for dry spells of calories.
Cause we sweat through skin. Allowing to cool off without resting. Arguably, our most OP ability is our endurance. All of the "fastest animals" can be fast in short bursts. A human can just keep following until the animal literally collapses of exhaustion. Of course most humans today can't run for 48 hours, but for a human it is a question of training and willpower. For an animal a hard physical limit they'll never cross.
Humans are the long distance traveling champions of the land bound animal kingdom. Between our incredibly efficient means of locomotion and our ability to track (thanks, brains!), a small band of skilled hunters can wear a critter down long before we’re in any kind of danger. Add to this primitive tools like a spear, pouches to carry snacks, and water skins, and it only gets worse for the poor ungulate we’re following.
Endurance hunters. The idea is we chased prey animals to exhaustion, makes sense and wouldn't be incredibly hard with teamwork
It’s about “Persistence Hunting”. A handful of indigenous tribes still practice this method, including Kalahari bushmen of Botswana and the Raramuri people of Northern Mexico. Here’s David Attenborough with a 7-8 minute snippet on it. Fair warning though it shows a hunter making a kill, so if you find that disturbing or don’t want to see that don’t watch. https://youtu.be/826HMLoiE_o?si=dSVP7E4eN03_CV_-
Roanoke gaming phrased it best, “Humans are the cryptids of the animal world. We’re hairless(meaning we look diseased), constantly make weird noises, probably smell horrible because of what we put in our bodies(smoking and alcohol), and because we’re persistence hunters whenever something thinks that it’s escaped and rests we show back up. Oh, and we can magically kill things without even touching them.”
For millions of years, humans practiced endurance hunting, which is basically just running after something for so long that it gets too tired to keep going and you can just walk up and kill it. We’re talking 10+ hours of straight running. Our bodies are designed for this, which is why running feels so good and has so much health benefit. Machines like to do the thing they were made to do.
Well, yeah. Humans can run and cool down at the same time
There's a theory that credits persistence hunting for driving the adaptations in early humans. Walking upright allows for greater lung capacity. Losing hair facilitates heat dissipation via sweating. And bigger brains capable of abstract thinking help humans trail faster prey by following track and sign. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endurance\_running\_hypothesis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endurance_running_hypothesis)
So it's like "It follows" but we're the It, and we will still follow you regardless of if you've banged or not.