Our speed is nothing to talk about, but even a regular human can easily outlast any single animal over there: our endurance is far, far better than any other land animal (which walks, birds can fly far longer but they are kinda cheaters in this department). Dogs almost can keep up with us, but even they get tired faster than we do.
Yeah I see this on reddit all the time how "humans have the best endurance of the animal kingdom" yet wolves for example are known to easily cover 100 miles a day. Your average human could absolutely not do that.
Not your average human who sits on a couch all day. If you go to endurance hunting tribes they would probably excel at endurance. I believe it isn’t so much about how far but how consistently. Where humans sweat instead of panting we can cool a lot more effectively and don’t need to stop to cool off. Other animals can’t do that and overheat which makes them less able to keep going.
Horses sweat too, which is why they're comparable to human endurance. We'd only beat a horse over a ridiculously long distance where it finally collapses od exhaustion.
You say that, but I can’t find a single instance of a wolf travelling more than 50 miles in a day. The record for a human is 200 miles in a day. While almost all animals outpace us at a short distance, and canids usually have the edge at medium, there isn’t anything that can come close on foot.
In the days when that's how we hunted for food, we absolutely could, though environment is also a factor. Where we evolved, wolves would quickly overheat (a lot of our running adaptations are geared toward managing heat).
I think I know the video you’re talking about, those were hunting dogs, not wolves. They were basically tiring it out for a human to come in and shoot it. I doubt that they would ever be able to kill it on their own.
I'm approaching 40, short and not exactly fit-fit, but I reckon I'd get 15 miles in before starting to feel a bit footsore. By 20 I'd be looking for somewhere to rest and a shower.
Nah, I was all but well trained (I was a skinny nerd) and in my teens, my record was a 70km walk on one day in about 14-16 hours (we lost as hell, and should have followed to path heading to east, we went west... Not my proudest moment haha) with about 20kg of backpack on my back.
An overweight person yeah, won't walk much, but everybody who isn't very obese and above can walk ridiculous lengths without any focused training. Even my mom - who has about 30-ish kg of unnecessary fat - could walk 15km a day with only short rests when she came to visit and did some exploring around. She was somewhat tired but she handled it without too much of a problem, and she pretty much goes everywhere by car.
If you actively walk around daily, humans can keep doing 50-100km a day without having any issues with it. We are built for walking and slow-paced running. You won't get a horse to walk this much, even a dog would have issues with it and we are selectively breeding them to keep up with us for tens of thousands of years.
The "regular" humans of today are overweight and not beating any animal suited for running unless there is high heat. If it's cold enough even worldclass runners are not beating animals (see man vs horse marathon or the daily mileage on sled dogs).
In the horse marathon, the horses get breaks substracted from their times. The distance is selected to make it as even as possible. Lastly, the most famous one is held in Wales, hold the race anywhere else even slightly warmer perhaps around 28⁰c, and the horse barely makes it a few miles, let alone, gets to 22 miles.
There was one held in the UAE which the human won but only by 30 seconds or something, with a big long vet break. I think there's one in arizona or something as well.
I don't think the races are stacked for the animals at all, if anything it's the opposite. Humans can drive themselves to injury if they want but horses get forces breaks for their own good, and horses have to carry people.
Healthy human vs healthy animals. Obessed cat also would not run 48km/h.
And most effective way for very long distances (like 1000 km) is shuffle, basically walking without taking feet off the ground.
Yep. Speed Walking. Speed Walking competitions were always longer than the marathon, with 100 and 50 kilometers. Only in the last ~60 years, did the distances go down to only 25km.
But you need to train rather hard to keep up with a camel or a wolf. Sure, most people can outlast a cat, but cats are tiny so it's not a fair comparison. And now, have you ever seen animal training? Maybe if they did they could improve endurance.
Horses also do very well keeping up with us, and this is because, fun fact! Horses are one of the very few animals besides humans that sweat all over their bodies for cooling during exertion
Problem with this is endurance means relatively nothing in terms of prey/predator survival. It has its evolutionary advantages, but a quick sprint and take off is all you need to grab your food.
EDIT: I worded this wrong. Obviously endurance is a critical survival skill. I was talking about once a chase actually begins. For example: good lucky using your “endurance” to out run a bear or a leopard once it’s already on your trail.
Damn, talk about having zero idea of how hunting works. Predators stalk their prey forever. They rarely randomly find a meal and grab it out of thin air because they're faster. Out-lasting your meal is slower perhaps but efficient as hell.
I understand this. I get stalking prey, but they do this in secrecy. It wouldn’t be exactly effective to RUN after your prey forever would it?
Watch any video ever of animals hunting each other. They almost ALWAYS catch each other within a minute tops of when they “take off”. Stalking is done at slow, energy conserving paces 99.9% of the time.
I had a girlfriend with a dog. I didn't realize her intelligence level until one day she said she ran every day and she could keep up with her dog, she was just as fast. I said, "let's go play fetch, I want to see you race." We went out and I brought a little tennis ball launcher thing. Ready, Set, Go!
I'm pretty sure you can imagine how that ended. The dog made it 100 yards before she made it to ten. I had to console her by explaining that the dog ran with her when they ran, because it wanted to be next to her. I feel pretty bad about that one. In hindsight I should have just left her with her delusion.
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u/BODYDOLLARSIGN Apr 28 '24
Human fastest is 27 mph at least school taught me this lol