I cannot stop laughing π
Personally I think humans run because they are a species with enough cognitive abilities to be masochists
this post was submitted on 22 Jun 2025
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Jogging is practice for how humans killed pretty much all the megafauna in the world: exhaustion hunting.
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(4 replies)
They are running from existential dread.
So we are the prey?
Always have been.
So apex that most of us outsource our hunting and farming, which makes us fat and slow unless we purposefully burn energy for no other purpose than to burn it.
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(14 replies)
Other animals get zoomies too.
Let's say it's part of a mating ritual. I know this is not true, but I believe it gets the point across.
I say this to myself when I see people jogging and I really just want to yell "what are you running from!?"
'Looking like you fatass'
They're running from health problems
And other problems
So this is pretty neat:
Humans aren't good at running fast, but we are good at running for a long time for long distances, so it's thought that we would just run after things until they got tired.
So like you know how people in horror movies would run and then look over their shoulder and Jason is somehow still there?
Funny enough there is another animal I know that can sweat, have more endurance than humans, and much faster than humans. Horses.
Imagine you fear getting caught by a horse or a human and then suddenly a human riding a horse shows up.
humans can beat a horse in a marathon!
Also in very short races (up to 100m) if the human is an olympic athlete, though mostly because momentum is a bitch and it takes time for the horse to accelerate all that mass, and by the time it's done the race is already over (it also probably helps that the athlete knows what they're doing while the horse is just along for the ride and wondering where it can get some grass).
That's pretty cool. However, no human has ever won by more than 15min, and every horse has a 15min delay built into their times. So even the biggest winning margin of nearly 11 minutes would have lost to the horse if they had started at the same time.
The horses also all had humans on their backs. To my knowledge, none of the humans had horses on their backs.
For it to be scientifically accurate of a comparison, the ratio of weight:human needs to be equal to that of rider:horse, not a direct flip.
In case my phrasing is confusing, to illustrate what I mean here is an example: a 200lb horse carrying a 100lb human is equivalent to a 100lb human carrying a 50lb weight.
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Itβs a consequence of bipedalism, less energy consumption to run but also slower
It's a few things that stem from bipedalism:
- We can run and breathe entirely separately. Most quadrupeds lack the ability to run and take breaths independently of the pace of each step. Watching cheetahs sprint, for example, show that they have no choice but to exhale every time their legs come together and inhale every time their legs push apart.
- Running on our hind legs only frees up our hands to be able to use tools and weapons, maybe even water containers for drinking on the go.
- We can see further by standing up, and can make tactical decisions based on terrain, while still running pretty much full speed.
Combined with our unusual ability to cool ourselves by sweating, this gives us an advantage over pretty much any animal in the heat. Wolves and horses can still outrun humans in the cold, but lack the cooling mechanisms to maintain pace in the same heat that we can.
Running on our hind legs only frees up our hands to be able to use tools and weapons, maybe even water containers for drinking on the go.
And for wanking, although that may just be an adaptation to compensate for our inability to lick our own dicks.
We also have by far the best throwing game in the world. Some animals can spit with reasonable accuracy, some apes can kind of lob shit in a general direction, and there's that one lizard that can spray blood from its eye, but nothing in the animal kingdom past or present has a human's innate ability for ranged attack. The average man can throw a fist sized rock hard and accurate enough to crack a skull from 20 yards with his bare hand. And we've spent the last 10,000 years inventing newer and more impressive ways of throwing stuff.
lizard that can spray blood from its eye, but nothing in the animal kingdom past or present has a human's innate ability for ranged attack
I don't know, a hawk plummeting from the sky at 190km/h onto something the size of a small rodent is kind of impressive, too, if you count the bird throwing itself as throwing...
Humans domesticated dogs for their ability to hunt by scent. Dogs domesticated humans for their ability to throw a tennis ball.
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Yea but also tools
We donβt have to stop for water, we can bring some
Same for food
Our preys didnβt have such luck
Back in my reddit days I wrote a long comment about the fact that zombies are scary because they are the ultimate persistence hunters.
Zombies aren't scary. They're popular movie monsters because, while looking vaguely human, they're sufficiently "othered" that you can kill them without remorse (thus acting as a convenient stand-in for other groups that the audience wishes they could do that to) and because they represent an apocalypse that kills most of the people but leaves the stuff behind, meaning that you don't have to deal with society anymore but you'll still easily have a roof over your head and food on your table (albeit mostly canned food.)
Huh, never thought about it that way. Great metaphor, tbh.
I remember reading that
I mean, them being walking corpses might also have something to do with it...
That is scarier to me than the fast zombies.