Jogging is practice for how humans killed pretty much all the megafauna in the world: exhaustion hunting.
I cannot stop laughing ๐
Personally I think humans run because they are a species with enough cognitive abilities to be masochists
As someone who started running last year because it's supposedly "good for you", I'm inclined to agree lol
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.
I mean yes, literally... We were able to completely supplant the natural order. For better or worse.
So apex that even hunters need firearms because they're not fit enough to hunt without them nowadays, and unable to improvise and use self made weapons like the og hunters did.
I guess people that drive a forklift are "apex powerlifters" too.
Smart apex hunters always conserve as much energy as they can during a hunt. Because you don't know when your next meal might show up. And firearms do make hunting a more sure thing. Hunting game, of any kind, is high risk-- higher reward effort. Most hunters go home empty handed or with little to show for the effort. But, if you do get it right, the effort can be handsomely rewarded.
So if you are smart enough to develop ranged weapons, you eagerly use them to hunt supper.
But could the average hunter still hunt without the help of modern technology? Those who are entirely unable to do so are obviously not apex predators.
A lion can hunt any day without relying on a rifle, the vast majority of hunters could not.
So if you are smart enough to develop ranged weapons
Hunters that can build their own bows or spears and are able to hunt with them are genuine apex predators, that's fair.
Those who are completely reliant on industrially produced high tech firearms bought in a store, and would be outcompeted by any house cat without them, are not.
Other animals get zoomies too.
They are running from existential dread.
So we are the prey?
Always have been.
"He's running so slow...."
1 hour later
"How can he still be running like that?"
I mean, if animals engage in pretend fights and other forms of play, it seems that they can on some level grasp the idea of practicing or doing something for fun.
Run...for FUN? What the hell kind of fun is that?
I mean, the ability to run long distances without tiring is kind of what makes humans an apex predator. We can out-endurance just about every other creature. Most ancient human hunting techniques involved just wounding an animal, and then literally chasing it until it got too tired to keep going.
Wolves are very similar, which is what made us such natural hunting companions. The co-evolution of humans and dogs is an extremely interesting rabbit hole, if anyone is looking for one.
All that to say, the wolf would understand the need to run more than just about any other animal. A bear would work better here. A wolf would just see us running and think 'game recognizes game', just like they already did eons ago :3
I love this. Thank you
involved just wounding an animal
not even wounding. Just persistent tracking and following. Most prey animals can run away quickly, but need lots of rest.
Humans can just keep going. And going. And going. Until the prey just is too exhausted to run.
Got it.
I am prey.
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.
Horses sweat? Huh.
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 house 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 Western States trail in the California Sierras used to be where a 100-mile horse race took place that horse and rider had to complete in 24 hours. At some point in the 1970s one of the riders decided not to take a horse, and he finished in 23 hours on foot. Now it's an annual footrace that the winner finishes in about 14 hours.
The horses also all had humans on their backs. To my knowledge, none of the humans had horses on their backs.
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.)
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!?"
They're running from health problems
And other problems
Only to be tackled by a car crash at 47 yo.
tackled by a car crash
Not sure I've ever seen it phrased that way...
Dogs do love a good jog though. Give that good boi a bit of kibble and then see how he feels.
Jogging from the perspective of non-human animals
FTFY
๐คโ๏ธ
Yeah, some humans also wonder why jogging is a thing.
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