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Are there examples of how humans are/were able to outrun an animal until it collapses? I find it difficult to imagine unless you corner the animal and have enou

Are there examples of how humans are/were able to outrun an animal until it collapses? I find it difficult to imagine unless you corner the animal and have enough manpower to not be run over.

bradyd 6y ago
In the BBC documentary "The Life of Mamals", they followed San bushman doing persistence hunting. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p009lwhq https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p009lwhq
bewuethr 6y ago
"Born to Run" has long descriptions of that hunting method. https://www.chrismcdougall.com/born-to-run/ https://www.chrismcdougall.com/born-to-run/
dboreham 6y ago
If you watch big animals hunting (wolves, bear are the ones we have here), they also stand significant chance of being injured by prey (horns..), and as a result tend to harry the prey until it is exhausted and basically gives up. The other strategy is a quick surprise coup de grace, like lions. We have lions/pumas here but they're hard to spot and I've never seen one hunting but I assume it's like a scaled up version of a house cat, or big felines seen on TV.
- qqn 6y ago
  Where are you that you have all these top level predators? Edit: Wait, nvm. This is probably the west coast of North America, and by lions you mean mountain lions. I was thinking the ones with the manes right away.
  - int_19h 6y ago
    Russian Far East is also similar, except with tigers.
    - qqn 6y ago
      So that's the fabled land of "lions and tigers and bears, oh my!"
- pmichaud 6y ago
  I saw a mountain lion stalking some deer in Muir woods. He stalked slowly as you might expect, but he didn't get the deer.
- int_19h 6y ago
  It should also be noted that the main reason why humans didn't evolve into that kind of hunters is because that niche was already firmly occupied in the environment in which we believe that evolution took place (African savannah). On the other hand, consistently hunting successfully during the hottest part of the day was not something any big predator could do, so filling that niche allowed humans to reduce competition for prey. And, of course, the prey itself had theretofore evolved to deal with the other kinds of predators.
krmboya 6y ago
A more recent example, some folks in Kenya chased some cheetahs, that had been killing their goats, to exhaustion and handed them over to wildlife services. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-24953910 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-24953910
ordu 6y ago
> I find it difficult to imagine unless you corner the animal and have enough manpower to not be run over. It would be easy to imagine, if you had experience of collapsing from fatigue. Try to get on the roof of a skyscraper by stairs, you'll get all the needed experience. For more realism, you could run for a several floors, then rest for a few minutes, and to repeat it as needed. For even more realism find a person who is better than you at marathons, give him/her a stick and tell him/her to move slowly up by the stairs (1-2 steps per second, I believe, will do) and to beat you with the stick when he catches up with you. At some point you will prefer stick to moving further. It could be done without stairs on the plains, but it would take more time, up to a few hours. I couldn't give you experience, but I could give you some theory. Moving animal needs to absorb oxygen, to oxidize glucose into ATP. If animal tries to move faster than some limit based on the ability to absorb and utilize oxygen, then some of glucose metabolizes only halfway to H2O+CO2 and lactic acid. Muscles start to accumulate lactic acid. If concentration of lactic acid in muscles is high enough, animal feels it painful to strain muscles. The more concentration is the less strain is needed to feel pain, the higher level of pain at the same strain level. At some point even the slightest straining feels painful. Cells in muscles could die from too much acidity, but it hard to do because of pain. (Though a heart could be damaged this way, for this one needs to force his heart to work at ~180+ beats per minute for a ~10+ minutes, it doesn't feels like pain in the heart, so be careful when pushing your body to its limits). To get rid of lactic acid animal needs oxygen. Muscles could metabolize lactic acid to get energy, or the liver could do it. But in any case it needs oxygen, animal need to stop and to rest, or at least to run at lesser power, to have enough spare oxygen in a bloodstream. If animal have no time to stop and rest for long enough time, then lactic acid concentration continue to grow. It feels like overwhelming fatigue, pain in muscles, and all you want is to take a break. If you try to work your muscles through it, at some point they just stop working. But it is hard to get to this point, because of a pain and a loss of motivation to continue.
- jeremysalwen 6y ago
  FWIW the specific biological mechanism for fatigue you described is not accurate: https://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/16/health/nutrition/16run.html https://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/16/health/nutrition/16run.ht... but your basic point that you will eventually get tired enough that you can't move any further is true,
pbhjpbhj 6y ago
Humans can beat horses on a cross-country run (steeplechase). Amazing IMO.
brazzy 6y ago
No animal can sweat as much as humans do. They overheat. Pretty much the only animals that can outrun a well-trained human over marathon distances are sled dogs - and only in very cold weather.

Are there examples of how humans are/were able to outrun an animal until it collapses? I find it difficult to imagine unless you corner the animal and have enough manpower to not be run over.

bradyd 6y ago

In the BBC documentary "The Life of Mamals", they followed San bushman doing persistence hunting. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p009lwhq https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p009lwhq

bewuethr 6y ago

"Born to Run" has long descriptions of that hunting method. https://www.chrismcdougall.com/born-to-run/ https://www.chrismcdougall.com/born-to-run/

dboreham 6y ago

If you watch big animals hunting (wolves, bear are the ones we have here), they also stand significant chance of being injured by prey (horns..), and as a result tend to harry the prey until it is exhausted and basically gives up. The other strategy is a quick surprise coup de grace, like lions. We have lions/pumas here but they're hard to spot and I've never seen one hunting but I assume it's like a scaled up version of a house cat, or big felines seen on TV.

qqn 6y ago
Where are you that you have all these top level predators? Edit: Wait, nvm. This is probably the west coast of North America, and by lions you mean mountain lions. I was thinking the ones with the manes right away.
- int_19h 6y ago
  Russian Far East is also similar, except with tigers.
  - qqn 6y ago
    So that's the fabled land of "lions and tigers and bears, oh my!"
pmichaud 6y ago
I saw a mountain lion stalking some deer in Muir woods. He stalked slowly as you might expect, but he didn't get the deer.
int_19h 6y ago
It should also be noted that the main reason why humans didn't evolve into that kind of hunters is because that niche was already firmly occupied in the environment in which we believe that evolution took place (African savannah). On the other hand, consistently hunting successfully during the hottest part of the day was not something any big predator could do, so filling that niche allowed humans to reduce competition for prey. And, of course, the prey itself had theretofore evolved to deal with the other kinds of predators.

krmboya 6y ago

A more recent example, some folks in Kenya chased some cheetahs, that had been killing their goats, to exhaustion and handed them over to wildlife services. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-24953910 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-24953910

ordu 6y ago

> I find it difficult to imagine unless you corner the animal and have enough manpower to not be run over. It would be easy to imagine, if you had experience of collapsing from fatigue. Try to get on the roof of a skyscraper by stairs, you'll get all the needed experience. For more realism, you could run for a several floors, then rest for a few minutes, and to repeat it as needed. For even more realism find a person who is better than you at marathons, give him/her a stick and tell him/her to move slowly up by the stairs (1-2 steps per second, I believe, will do) and to beat you with the stick when he catches up with you. At some point you will prefer stick to moving further. It could be done without stairs on the plains, but it would take more time, up to a few hours. I couldn't give you experience, but I could give you some theory. Moving animal needs to absorb oxygen, to oxidize glucose into ATP. If animal tries to move faster than some limit based on the ability to absorb and utilize oxygen, then some of glucose metabolizes only halfway to H2O+CO2 and lactic acid. Muscles start to accumulate lactic acid. If concentration of lactic acid in muscles is high enough, animal feels it painful to strain muscles. The more concentration is the less strain is needed to feel pain, the higher level of pain at the same strain level. At some point even the slightest straining feels painful. Cells in muscles could die from too much acidity, but it hard to do because of pain. (Though a heart could be damaged this way, for this one needs to force his heart to work at ~180+ beats per minute for a ~10+ minutes, it doesn't feels like pain in the heart, so be careful when pushing your body to its limits). To get rid of lactic acid animal needs oxygen. Muscles could metabolize lactic acid to get energy, or the liver could do it. But in any case it needs oxygen, animal need to stop and to rest, or at least to run at lesser power, to have enough spare oxygen in a bloodstream. If animal have no time to stop and rest for long enough time, then lactic acid concentration continue to grow. It feels like overwhelming fatigue, pain in muscles, and all you want is to take a break. If you try to work your muscles through it, at some point they just stop working. But it is hard to get to this point, because of a pain and a loss of motivation to continue.

jeremysalwen 6y ago
FWIW the specific biological mechanism for fatigue you described is not accurate: https://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/16/health/nutrition/16run.html https://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/16/health/nutrition/16run.ht... but your basic point that you will eventually get tired enough that you can't move any further is true,

pbhjpbhj 6y ago

Humans can beat horses on a cross-country run (steeplechase). Amazing IMO.

brazzy 6y ago

No animal can sweat as much as humans do. They overheat. Pretty much the only animals that can outrun a well-trained human over marathon distances are sled dogs - and only in very cold weather.