7 ms·

So is mice, lizard and so on. But there are huge differences: * Primates can not sweat and self regulate body temperature through perspiration. * Primates ca

So is mice, lizard and so on. But there are huge differences: * Primates can not sweat and self regulate body temperature through perspiration. * Primates can not fast, most humans can go 40 days without eating, chimps would starve to death after couple of days. * Primates can not run for several hours and outrun a horse! Scaling up brain is not a problem, but keeping it supplied with energy is.

adrian_b 4y ago
All these are normal and necessary adaptations when switching from a vegetarian diet to animal hunting. All predators need the ability to fast. All non-ambush predators, like wolves or hyenas or humans, need adaptations that ensure enough endurance to pursue their prey for hours, without overheating or becoming too tired.
PartiallyTyped 4y ago
We generally can't outrun a horse[1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_versus_Horse_Marathon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_versus_Horse_Marathon
- t344344 4y ago
  Marathon is too short for this, try for 24 hours...
  - iamacyborg 4y ago
    Most folks can’t run 5k, let alone run for 24 hours.
    - Andrew_nenakhov 4y ago
      Almost any human trained from a childhood would be able to do endurance hunting. Human endurance thanks to sweating and other traits is especially advantageous in hot climate: horses can't ourtun humans indefinitely as they overheat and can't cool down as effectively as humans, so eventually a trained human will catch up a horse (and eat it).
      - iamacyborg 4y ago
        The key there being a trained human.
        throwaway173738 4y ago
        Doing it all your life since childhood counts as training for the sake of this argument.
        iamacyborg 4y ago
        I don’t know where you live but kids in the UK certainly don’t do much exercise through their childhood
        Andrew_nenakhov 4y ago
        They aren't expected to chase their food until in exhausts and can be easily killed and eaten.
        kaba0 4y ago
        That’s just deliberately missing the point. It is actually remarkable how quickly we can go from “untrained, can barely go down to the shop on foot without a racing heart” to running being barely a problem (unfortunately to many — it really is hard to burn more energy than what you normally eat with even quite long runs, we are that energy efficient at that). But the actual point is that people before the agricultural revolution was more than fit enough for that, and evolutionarily speaking that is no time at all, so.. yes, not even being trained from childhood, just deciding to train for that hard, most people could definitely do that.
        Andrew_nenakhov 4y ago
        If we take a person from a prehistorical hunter-gatherer society, you are either a trained and physically fit human, or a dead one.
      - ClumsyPilot 4y ago
    - Alan_Dillman 4y ago
      Most people's internal alarm for self preservation starts yelling long before endurance is truly tested. Nobody sprints for 24 hours, but I am certain that even the average couch potato can keep walking for 24 hours. They'd be hurting after, of course. From learning to jog, I can attest that it mostly about willpower, and I suppose, desperation at times. In death marches, such as in WWII, even many starving prisoners, walking from dawn to dusk, with beatings, lasted for days on the trail. The Americans and Filipinos on the Bataan Deathmarch are one example: >The total distance marched from Mariveles to San Fernando and from the Capas Train Station to various camps was 65 miles long. For the British there was The Burma Rail: >Camp Nong Pladuk was initially used as a transit camp from where the prisoners were transported or had to walk to work camps along the Burma Railway. And of course, the Jews and other victims of the Nazis were often force marched. My great great grandmother returned to her Volga German village in Russia after the rise of the Soviets, was arrested, sent to Siberia, where she worked in a camp for 7 years until her death from malnutrition and other neglects. And she was a grandmother at the time.
      - iamacyborg 4y ago
        > Most people's internal alarm for self preservation starts yelling long before endurance is truly tested. Nobody sprints for 24 hours, but I am certain that even the average couch potato can keep walking for 24 hours. They'd be hurting after, of course. From learning to jog, I can attest that it mostly about willpower, and I suppose, desperation at times. I'm not disputing this, but the response was that humans can't generally outrun a horse. Which is true. The average human will not be able to outrun the average horse.
        ClumsyPilot 4y ago
        > The average human will not be able to outrun the average horse. The average human can't fix a toilet. Because we specialise so much, average human can't do anything, but a trained human cam do everything. Whereas a horse is mostly always a horse.
        ralfd 4y ago
        Google finds: > How long does it take to train for marathon? Most marathon training plans range from 12 to 20 weeks. Beginning marathoners should aim to build their weekly mileage up to 50 miles over the four months leading up to race day. So even untrained couch potatoes could learn in 4 month to run a marathon. (And indeed many do and test themselves that way.)
    - t344344 4y ago
      Not everyone is obese american at verge of diabetes!
      - iamacyborg 4y ago
        You don't need to be obese to not be capable of running very far.
- robinduckett 4y ago
  No but we can chase them into traps we dug earlier and hunt them at our leisure
- lenlorijn 4y ago
  Basically we can. Not everyone, but you can imagine someone that relied on it for their survival definitely could. In these races the horse gets to subtract hold time. Take a look at this interview for example where one of the racers explains this, and won over a horse by an hour and 15 minutes: https://www.irunfar.com/catching-up-with-nick-coury https://www.irunfar.com/catching-up-with-nick-coury . It's also covered in this very nice episode of Radio Lab: https://radiolab.org/episodes/man-against-horse https://radiolab.org/episodes/man-against-horse
- PurpleRamen 4y ago
  In that race, Humans won 3 times, and in several other races the margin was in the low minutes. So I wouldn't say "generally" is true. And overall, it seems Humans benefit is to have more endurance than horses, so the longer the race, the more likely will they win. If we take a look at the numbers of humans doing a 24-hour-run[1], and compare it with Endurance-Riding[2], then humans seem to be able to run far longer, at peak even significant longer. Though, to be fair, it's possible that the numbers are skewed for the horse's safety, and riders are not going all out till the possible mile. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/24-hour_run https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/24-hour_run [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endurance_riding https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endurance_riding
ChuckNorris89 4y ago
>Primates can not run for several hours and outrun a horse But can you?
- t344344 4y ago
  I have to pay rent.
  - HPsquared 4y ago
    Most horses have it even worse.
    - t344344 4y ago
      Yeah, finding a horse for this stunt would be hard.
      - ben_w 4y ago
        Surely the point of the exercise is to find a horse, and the biggest difficulty is what you do with it when you actually catch up. And now consider this from the perspective of a wild horse: a strange being approaches, your instinctual neophobia tells you to flee. At a safe distance, you stop, only for the being to arrive again and the cycle to continue. You sleep, only to be awoken by its approach. Finally, too exhausted to run any further, you wait for the inevitable… only for the being to feed you a carrot, brush you mane, and wander off.
        deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
        t344344 4y ago
        I do not think horse would just "wander off" after that. It would need veterinary treatment and a long time for recovery. Look up details for horse marathon. Horses need several breaks and veterinary supervision. And that is just a few miles!
Narretz 4y ago
Primates, especially our close relatives, can sweat, just not as much as humans. https://www.kamilarlab.org/single-post/2018/02/22/sweaty-primates-give-clues-about-the-evolution-of-human-sweating https://www.kamilarlab.org/single-post/2018/02/22/sweaty-pri... Sounds like humans' sweat capability is also scaled up.
kriro 4y ago
I think on a higher level, the ability to fast might be the most important trait here (combined with the capability to innovate). At least, Robinson Crusoe type economics has me believe that one of the important things for a civilization to advance is the ability to save and invest. So (simplified) the human can catch some fish, take some time off from the day-to-day grind of catching fish and try to build some device to catch even more fish (so basically investing the initial fish). With the ability to fast, this process can be sort of forced more (you can still gamble on building a better net even if you don't catch enough fish in the first place). Rinse and repeat in other areas, and slowly "wealth" is built up. The longer you can go "save" without being forced to do something else, the more you can advance, and that's exponential gains. I'd be very curious if there are any studies on time sensibility across species. Obviously, it varies even among humans (cue children with candy experiment here). My hypothesis would be that the ability to delay satisfaction is quite vital for the development of a species. On a completely tangential note, I'd also be curious how it relates to "procrastination". Anecdotally, I fell like people who need everything "right now" struggle a lot less with procrastination. Edit: spelling
- t344344 4y ago
  Squirrels, ants and bees can build wealth as well. Humans can build complex societies and use weapons in organized way.
  - chii 4y ago
    > Squirrels, ants and bees can build wealth as well. investing isn't just storing "wealth" (ala, a storage of foods). Investing is using the time that such wealth affords you to invent new tools, to make more efficient methods/machines for making wealth! Animals are, currently, missing this part.
    - HPsquared 4y ago
      Animals do learn techniques and pass knowledge to their offspring. The only thing is, they don't make tools.
theonlybutlet 4y ago
Just a small correction. Humans are primates.

adrian_b 4y ago

All these are normal and necessary adaptations when switching from a vegetarian diet to animal hunting. All predators need the ability to fast. All non-ambush predators, like wolves or hyenas or humans, need adaptations that ensure enough endurance to pursue their prey for hours, without overheating or becoming too tired.

PartiallyTyped 4y ago

We generally can't outrun a horse[1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_versus_Horse_Marathon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_versus_Horse_Marathon

t344344 4y ago
Marathon is too short for this, try for 24 hours...
- iamacyborg 4y ago
  Most folks can’t run 5k, let alone run for 24 hours.
  - Andrew_nenakhov 4y ago
    Almost any human trained from a childhood would be able to do endurance hunting. Human endurance thanks to sweating and other traits is especially advantageous in hot climate: horses can't ourtun humans indefinitely as they overheat and can't cool down as effectively as humans, so eventually a trained human will catch up a horse (and eat it).
    - iamacyborg 4y ago
      The key there being a trained human.
      - throwaway173738 4y ago
        Doing it all your life since childhood counts as training for the sake of this argument.
        iamacyborg 4y ago
        I don’t know where you live but kids in the UK certainly don’t do much exercise through their childhood
        Andrew_nenakhov 4y ago
        They aren't expected to chase their food until in exhausts and can be easily killed and eaten.
        kaba0 4y ago
        That’s just deliberately missing the point. It is actually remarkable how quickly we can go from “untrained, can barely go down to the shop on foot without a racing heart” to running being barely a problem (unfortunately to many — it really is hard to burn more energy than what you normally eat with even quite long runs, we are that energy efficient at that). But the actual point is that people before the agricultural revolution was more than fit enough for that, and evolutionarily speaking that is no time at all, so.. yes, not even being trained from childhood, just deciding to train for that hard, most people could definitely do that.
      - Andrew_nenakhov 4y ago
        If we take a person from a prehistorical hunter-gatherer society, you are either a trained and physically fit human, or a dead one.
    - ClumsyPilot 4y ago
  - Alan_Dillman 4y ago
    Most people's internal alarm for self preservation starts yelling long before endurance is truly tested. Nobody sprints for 24 hours, but I am certain that even the average couch potato can keep walking for 24 hours. They'd be hurting after, of course. From learning to jog, I can attest that it mostly about willpower, and I suppose, desperation at times. In death marches, such as in WWII, even many starving prisoners, walking from dawn to dusk, with beatings, lasted for days on the trail. The Americans and Filipinos on the Bataan Deathmarch are one example: >The total distance marched from Mariveles to San Fernando and from the Capas Train Station to various camps was 65 miles long. For the British there was The Burma Rail: >Camp Nong Pladuk was initially used as a transit camp from where the prisoners were transported or had to walk to work camps along the Burma Railway. And of course, the Jews and other victims of the Nazis were often force marched. My great great grandmother returned to her Volga German village in Russia after the rise of the Soviets, was arrested, sent to Siberia, where she worked in a camp for 7 years until her death from malnutrition and other neglects. And she was a grandmother at the time.
    - iamacyborg 4y ago
      > Most people's internal alarm for self preservation starts yelling long before endurance is truly tested. Nobody sprints for 24 hours, but I am certain that even the average couch potato can keep walking for 24 hours. They'd be hurting after, of course. From learning to jog, I can attest that it mostly about willpower, and I suppose, desperation at times. I'm not disputing this, but the response was that humans can't generally outrun a horse. Which is true. The average human will not be able to outrun the average horse.
      - ClumsyPilot 4y ago
        > The average human will not be able to outrun the average horse. The average human can't fix a toilet. Because we specialise so much, average human can't do anything, but a trained human cam do everything. Whereas a horse is mostly always a horse.
      - ralfd 4y ago
        Google finds: > How long does it take to train for marathon? Most marathon training plans range from 12 to 20 weeks. Beginning marathoners should aim to build their weekly mileage up to 50 miles over the four months leading up to race day. So even untrained couch potatoes could learn in 4 month to run a marathon. (And indeed many do and test themselves that way.)
  - t344344 4y ago
    Not everyone is obese american at verge of diabetes!
    - iamacyborg 4y ago
      You don't need to be obese to not be capable of running very far.
robinduckett 4y ago
No but we can chase them into traps we dug earlier and hunt them at our leisure
lenlorijn 4y ago
Basically we can. Not everyone, but you can imagine someone that relied on it for their survival definitely could. In these races the horse gets to subtract hold time. Take a look at this interview for example where one of the racers explains this, and won over a horse by an hour and 15 minutes: https://www.irunfar.com/catching-up-with-nick-coury https://www.irunfar.com/catching-up-with-nick-coury . It's also covered in this very nice episode of Radio Lab: https://radiolab.org/episodes/man-against-horse https://radiolab.org/episodes/man-against-horse
PurpleRamen 4y ago
In that race, Humans won 3 times, and in several other races the margin was in the low minutes. So I wouldn't say "generally" is true. And overall, it seems Humans benefit is to have more endurance than horses, so the longer the race, the more likely will they win. If we take a look at the numbers of humans doing a 24-hour-run[1], and compare it with Endurance-Riding[2], then humans seem to be able to run far longer, at peak even significant longer. Though, to be fair, it's possible that the numbers are skewed for the horse's safety, and riders are not going all out till the possible mile. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/24-hour_run https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/24-hour_run [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endurance_riding https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endurance_riding

ChuckNorris89 4y ago

>Primates can not run for several hours and outrun a horse But can you?

t344344 4y ago
I have to pay rent.
- HPsquared 4y ago
  Most horses have it even worse.
  - t344344 4y ago
    Yeah, finding a horse for this stunt would be hard.
    - ben_w 4y ago
      Surely the point of the exercise is to find a horse, and the biggest difficulty is what you do with it when you actually catch up. And now consider this from the perspective of a wild horse: a strange being approaches, your instinctual neophobia tells you to flee. At a safe distance, you stop, only for the being to arrive again and the cycle to continue. You sleep, only to be awoken by its approach. Finally, too exhausted to run any further, you wait for the inevitable… only for the being to feed you a carrot, brush you mane, and wander off.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      - t344344 4y ago
        I do not think horse would just "wander off" after that. It would need veterinary treatment and a long time for recovery. Look up details for horse marathon. Horses need several breaks and veterinary supervision. And that is just a few miles!

Narretz 4y ago

Primates, especially our close relatives, can sweat, just not as much as humans. https://www.kamilarlab.org/single-post/2018/02/22/sweaty-primates-give-clues-about-the-evolution-of-human-sweating https://www.kamilarlab.org/single-post/2018/02/22/sweaty-pri... Sounds like humans' sweat capability is also scaled up.

kriro 4y ago

I think on a higher level, the ability to fast might be the most important trait here (combined with the capability to innovate). At least, Robinson Crusoe type economics has me believe that one of the important things for a civilization to advance is the ability to save and invest. So (simplified) the human can catch some fish, take some time off from the day-to-day grind of catching fish and try to build some device to catch even more fish (so basically investing the initial fish). With the ability to fast, this process can be sort of forced more (you can still gamble on building a better net even if you don't catch enough fish in the first place). Rinse and repeat in other areas, and slowly "wealth" is built up. The longer you can go "save" without being forced to do something else, the more you can advance, and that's exponential gains. I'd be very curious if there are any studies on time sensibility across species. Obviously, it varies even among humans (cue children with candy experiment here). My hypothesis would be that the ability to delay satisfaction is quite vital for the development of a species. On a completely tangential note, I'd also be curious how it relates to "procrastination". Anecdotally, I fell like people who need everything "right now" struggle a lot less with procrastination. Edit: spelling

t344344 4y ago
Squirrels, ants and bees can build wealth as well. Humans can build complex societies and use weapons in organized way.
- chii 4y ago
  > Squirrels, ants and bees can build wealth as well. investing isn't just storing "wealth" (ala, a storage of foods). Investing is using the time that such wealth affords you to invent new tools, to make more efficient methods/machines for making wealth! Animals are, currently, missing this part.
  - HPsquared 4y ago
    Animals do learn techniques and pass knowledge to their offspring. The only thing is, they don't make tools.

theonlybutlet 4y ago

Just a small correction. Humans are primates.