I was watching a bit of the Olympics with a friend. He was awed by the 400m runners. I pointed out that a family’s golden retriever could probably beat them all. He disputed this suggestion so I searched the Web for reference and found that the average dog running speed for all activities is 19 mph, about the same as what the humans do for 43 seconds. Greyhounds are going 40 mph and faster (515m in 28 seconds for a greyhound versus 400m in 43 seconds for the fastest human). I posted this anecdote on Facebook and my friends took a break from their The-Sky-Will-Fall-if-Trump-is-Elected notes to say that perhaps dogs can sprint faster for short distances but humans plainly have more endurance. Most of these folks have seen a family Labrador retriever running around like a demon and/or being unsuccessfully pursued by a group of humans trying to recapture the dog. These are all folks who have seen or heard of the Iditarod, in which a team of dogs will run 1000 miles in 8.5 days… while pulling a sled. Yet somehow in their minds humans have superior endurance to dogs and all other animals as well. “Dogs Versus Humans in the Olympic Games” (Psychology Today) points out, using sled dog numbers, that “in the marathon, after crossing the finish line the dog would have time for a half hour long nap before it’s world record holding human competitor would complete his run.”
There are a bunch of things that we do better than other animals. Why do we insist on seeing ourselves as more athletic?
[I did learn something from watching NBC’s coverage of the Olympics. Sometimes the #1 and #2 competitors in a sport are worthy of attention and comment. However, if they are from China or Russia then nothing that they do is very interesting.]
Such as…? Name some (athletic) examples that do not involve us having evolved[sic!] opposable thumbs? In terms of physical stamina, force. and endurance, Homo Sapiens represents a retrograde (d)evolution vs. same-size fauna, while advancing in other fields (e.g. adaptability to new conditions).
Ianf: In addition to anything to do with extreme dexterity, humans are the best distance runners on the planet. http://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2012/06/long_distance_running_and_evolution_why_humans_can_outrun_horses_but_can_t_jump_higher_than_cats_.html
Joe: I think the Slate article is a good example of human overestimation. Humans are the best distance runners on the planet? Can a human, with or without sled to pull, run 1000 miles in 8-10 days like an Iditarod dog? If not, what’s the definition of “best”?
Joe, dexterity? Have you seen a gibbon, or any other ape of human size, swing from the trees? A biologist once said that even the best parcour- or alpinists couldn’t survive more than 2 minutes of like “exercises”.
I should have been more specific about dexterity – fine motor control, how about that? Accuracy with projectiles, perhaps?
For long-distance running, the limitation for animals is largely thermal; humans could easily outrun these dogs in a warm climate, but perhaps not cold.
Joe, you’re right about susceptibility to overheating, which indeed abets furry animals in cold climates, and lets the bipedal/ i.e. smaller “solar heat footprint”/ humans run for longer stretches in hot climate. Indeed, one of the prevailing theories of what made our ancestors abandon quadrupedalism(?) for bipedalism (which used to be explained with the need to carry tools/ weapons) now is the noticeably lower temperature as little as 1m above a sun-scorched African ground, which prevented our brains from overheating. Also the quadrupedal locomotion must use more energy than bipedal: 4 legs bad, 2 legs good.
(I asked for examples that specifically excluded dividends of opposable thumbs and thus better evolved motor skills).
Example of what joe was talking about
Very nice indeed, a staged dramatization, nothing wrong with that (must’ve seen it previously), but Attenborough glosses over the occasions when the hunt was unsuccessful, or when it was the hunter that keeled over from exhaustion or dehydration… possibly a sizable portion of all such hunts. There’s also a matter of distance and time… an 8 hour hunt @ 10km/h speed average = 80 km away from home, which meant that they had to guard the fallen prey and defend themselves overnight from lions, wild dogs, and hyenas, before companions could catch up to abet with cutting up and transporting the catch.
Also, before there were water bottles, there were calabashes and other natural gourds/ water containers, but I do not think the hunters were as generous with their use as the sequence in the film leads us to believe… I almost expected the credit of “water courtesy of Winter Spring, Inc.” or something 😉
Ianf, most hunts were indeed unsuccessful, or only succeeded in catching small game. 80km are not necessarily in straight line, or indeed radially away from the band. If they were at all clever about it, they were probably trying to drive the prey towards the temporary base camp where their family was camping. But yes, the family would generally have to catch up (not always though, in some cases the carcass was gutted on the spot), choice bits consumed by the hunters, and other parts shlepped back to the camp.
In general most of the calories came from carbohydrates gathered (mostly) by the women of the band (which was a much more dependable food sources). The men provided most of the protein (which allowed the children to grow and the band to stay strong), and fat (which allowed their bodied to efficiently accumulate a buffer for hard times).
From BBC Earth comparison of Olympic athletes and animals.
http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/a-graphic-comparision-of-how-the-worlds-greatest-human-athletes-fare-against-average-animals
People in general overestimate themselves. Do you think that 50% of the population believe they have below average intelligence?
@ tekumse #11: a PERFECT infographic!
@ Andrea #7, 9, 10: all true on nutrition and general ancient mores (then again, there are now paleosociologists who maintain that men were sent out to hunt so that women could gossip in peace, and those theories are gaining traction).
As regards the film, however, let us agree that it doesn’t tell us much about human vs. animal endurance. What David Attenborough had shown us was a perfect visualization of the concept of a prehistorical persistence hunt—or whatever it was called. It didn’t necessarily happen that way, because even a super strong Kudzu antelope would need lots of rests and watering holes along such a route. And the savanna wasn’t exactly empty of game and other prey animals. In a recent nature documentary of capture-hunts for breeding animals for the zoos that I’ve seen, it showed that the animal stamina was short-lived, and the crews had to abandon many attempts because the sprinting animal showed clear signs of near-death-inducing stress… like a giraffe keeling over after what could have been half-a-kilometer’s pursuit. Endurance goes not in hand with speed or versa-vice.
Not sure about early hominids on the African savannas, but Neanderthals used human list, plus clubs with fire—an element any animal fears—to hunt mammoths by herding a single bull towards a a precipice or a ravine. It seems unlikely, that they would have been the inventors of such a hunting method, it must’ve arisen and been deployed much, much earlier. So I do not give much credence to this scenario of a sole-hunter-with-spear alone on the hot plains tracking down a specific animal all day long. But of course the film was visually effective.
That it was scripted to the nines can best be seen in the scene/ the clip/ where the hunter is running in his brand new shoes. I wasn’t there, but I bet that the producers tried all they could to persuade the hired actor to run barefoot, as in olde times – only he was way too proud of his new footwear to give in… the ladies in his household would have taunted him relentlessly for being such a shoeless beggar. The producers could have used a “bare foot model” to cut that scene in, but that would’ve been ever worse, as the actor, whose confidence they valued, could then never explain to the ladies that in one particular sequence the feet weren’t his – so what was wrong with them/ him?. They shot several takes, so I presume at least 2 filming days plus the one with the trucked-in Kudzu to be shown dying of exhaustion.
ObMovieAnalogies: “Man to Man,” – how Victorian British scientists went about gathering samples of “African apes” to study whether they might, after all, be human;
to be seen in tandem with “Le voyage de Lomama,” (also 2005), a documentary of its main Pygmy actor during the film’s promotional tour in Europe – includes a sequence of Lomama Boseki gathering all the shoes he can get (his hands[sic] on), because they are the true gold in Kongo Kinshasa, not the not inconsiderable acting fee that his African agent largely swindled him out of (and then she up sticks and disappeared into the sea of migrant EU). Heartbreaking.
Probably no other land mammal beats a walking human for caloric efficiency at covering ground. If comparing humans and land mammals is your thing, a three day race for distance over the horizon could have regular people winning. The people would just need to keep up a brisk walking pace.