Humans = superior endurance runners (better than horses, antelopes, etc)

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fisheye

Grandmaster Knight
I just learnt that humans are one of the best species out there for endurance running, and can outrun nearly anything over sufficiently long distances (and sufficiently hot temperatures).

http://discovermagazine.com/2006/may/tramps-like-us

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_versus_Horse_Marathon
Man vs Horse marathon: runners have closely comparable times vs horses, and won on a few occaisions.

Kalahari tribesmen use their superior running powers to run down antelopes to exhaustion on a regular basis!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9wI-9RJi0Qo&feature=related

Sounds like our lightly armored River pirates should be running much faster over long distances than those heavily loaded Swadian cavalrymen!
 
Long distance endurance is not a very useful evolutionary adaptation IMO. You need speed bursts to outrun predators. Hunting is about sprinting and surprise, not marathons. This is where humans come up short.
 
so true.

allthesedamnnamesaretaken said:
Long distance endurance is not a very useful evolutionary adaptation IMO. You need speed bursts to outrun predators. Hunting is about sprinting and surprise, not marathons. This is where humans come up short.

thats why we have brains. getting game without fast sprints is were hard... unless you surround it or/and throw it with javelin. and predators aren't big problem if you have big group of people throwing stones at them(ok. they are still a problem but not as big.), of course lone humans were easy targets and predators got plenty of our ancestors.

for hunter/gatherer walking/running long distances in short time is really important. we are actually well equipped to survive in wild... as long as we have a tribe to protect us.

EDIT: and even if your pray is faster than you can still catch it if you can trace is and run longer than it. as seen on video.
 
siprus said:
thats why we have brains. getting game without fast sprints is were hard... unless you surround it or/and throw it with javelin. and predators aren't big problem if you have big group of people throwing stones at them(ok. they are still a problem but not as big.), of course lone humans were easy targets and predators got plenty of our ancestors.

The usual hunting technique for pre and early humans, as far as we can tell, was to shoot or spear the beast from ambush, then simply walk after the wounded animal until it fell from exhaustion and blood loss. You can't really surround them without getting downwind.
Domesticating dogs gave a huge advantage to this, in terms of both tracking and harrassing the prey.
 
Yep, some humans do outrun horses over long distances. The British learned it the hard way in what is now remembered as the great Battle of Isandlwana.
 
To build traps are also a nice thing, both for defense against predators, and to hunt game.

The "chase and kill" could also be used. A few guys try to scare the animal to run towards some other guys waiting with weapons or traps of some kind.

Having a good endurance it a good feat, but it was not the only way of getting food.

(of course, they also ate fruit, roots, berries, and a lot of other things. I could imagine they could also eat things that we cant really digest anymore, like soft birch leafs and twigs, like the beavers do. Of course, I don't know for certain that they ate twigs, but I could imagine they would)
 
The remarkable endurance of the human animal also probably explains how massive continent-size empires were built simply by marching soldiers around without needing to put every man on a horse or a truck.
 
Archonsod said:
siprus said:
thats why we have brains. getting game without fast sprints is were hard... unless you surround it or/and throw it with javelin. and predators aren't big problem if you have big group of people throwing stones at them(ok. they are still a problem but not as big.), of course lone humans were easy targets and predators got plenty of our ancestors.

The usual hunting technique for pre and early humans, as far as we can tell, was to shoot or spear the beast from ambush, then simply walk after the wounded animal until it fell from exhaustion and blood loss. You can't really surround them without getting downwind.
Domesticating dogs gave a huge advantage to this, in terms of both tracking and harrassing the prey.

I also saw in a show that when they managed to use resin to make rain proof torches, one of our ancestors circled groups of animals and scared them off the edge of a high cliff.
 
Yes, all in all it is our brain that feed us.

To be able to kill animals in a different way.

Traps, chase to death (either cliffs, or ambush), new weapons, and eventually learning to grow crops and hold livestock.. We suck compared to animals in many ways, but we have brains...
 
I can see how endurance running without weapons, traps or tricks would still be useful for catching prey. Just keep following the prey for long enough and it'll drop down. Might take a while, but I can definitely see it work.

Hehe. The Zulu kingdom: Inventor of the zerg rush.
 
allthesedamnnamesaretaken said:
Long distance endurance is not a very useful evolutionary adaptation IMO. You need speed bursts to outrun predators. Hunting is about sprinting and surprise, not marathons. This is where humans come up short.
Tell that to the antelopes hunted down by the Kalahari tribesmen.
 
Humans kick alot of ass. What we may lack in raw strength (fairly useless for hunting, really), we make up for in running endurance. We used to spook animals over and over again until they got really slow and either died from exhaustion or were killed. Some people are even capable for running for 10-12 hours non-stop. Brains aren't our only advantage.
 
And you think your the first to realise that?

What you are using now is part of the inventions of the most sucesful species ever, no other animal makes anything, they have no concept of money, your whole post was worthless.
 
Captain Pyjama Shark said:
What?  I think he was making a point that endurance running was another advantage of ours.

The human's biggest advantage is that he has a good brain that God gave him that he can actually use to do new stuff. For example, making cars so you don't have to run all that way to get to the store. I guess it's a matter of lazyness, and/or fitness and build of a person. Not everyone can do what those African guys just did.
 
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