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The human superpowers are basically throwing fastballs and jogging in hot weather. The ancestral hunting strategy is basically to throw stuff at the animals to get them to run, then jog after them. Repeat until the animal is too tired to move.
There are still humans who do this to this day, the most notable being the tarahumara tribes of South America. They will literally run down the local deer barefoot for their food.
Humans are insanely adapted to be endurance runners compared with the rest of the animal kingdom which, if you think about it, kind of makes sense. It takes a LOT less energy for a cheetah to sprint down an antelope in 3 minutes than to chase it for 3 hours, so they adapted to be great sprinters. Likewise, the antelope only has to outrun the cheetah for 3 minutes so they, too, became great sprinters. For small mammals it makes more sense to be able to run very fast and hide from predators than to run long distances in potentially dangerous territory.
Since there was no evolutionary incentive for animals to run marathons they never developed the biology to do so, and we see this not just in mammals, but in reptiles, too. Horses are an exception to this though as they, too, are well adapted to distance running although iirc their adaptations are more in the way of making it mechanically easy (long, strong legs, huge hearts, etc.) to run long distances rather than the cooling systems humans developed.
Humans just kind of lucked out or perhaps ended up filling an evolutionary niche due to our need to cover long ranges with scarce food sources in our early evolutionary development.
And here I am, a couch potato that can barely jog for over 90 seconds before feeling like i’m going to die.
The humans running down animals for hours also feel like that after a bit fyi. They are just hungry enough to keep running.
I have some friends who are into serious long distance running and they are constantly in a state of suffering while running. It’s the feeling of stopping running that makes them keep wanting to go running, not the feeling of the actual running.
I’m a distance runner, and I don’t know if you’ve captured running all that well tbh. I certainly don’t go out for my Sunday long run looking forward to the finish. It’s pretty enjoyable when you’re training, but I concede that racing is difficult and can turn into prolonged suffering.
That’s not true though. I used to run long distance all the time because I enjoyed running. It was really meditatitive. Plus if you run long enough you get a runners high, which is exactly what it sounds like.
Yet if you were to start walking today, and kept walking every day, in 6 months you’ll be able to jog half a mile, or a kilometer. There are literally humans out there that have gone from 600+ lbs, or about 275 Kg, to running and completing their first marathon in just over 18 months. That’s dangerously fast by the way.
Your body wants to move and stretch that’s why stretching feels so good. Master Sin Thé taught his Shaolin classes that if you get a good workout going as a youth, and you keep making it harder so you keep growing, that will keep you young and in shape till you are around 80, and will slow the decline of age after it finally starts.
Our endurance isn’t just for running. We are also one of the longest lived species on the planet, and we are about to use medical tech to become the longest living animals, I doubt we will be beating trees, sponges, and jellyfish for age any time soon
Edited to add: it’s pronounced like Sin Tay
"are you tired yet? you can rest you know. " human probably
Hey its me ur huntr. Jus checking to see if ur feeling tired yet.
But that’s not it. We’ve also got the social aspect that brought us, as a species, to the apex to be able to hunt animals that could kill us easily individually, some of us have the balls to dominate those animals even alone, and the intelligence to develop novel tools to increase our capabilities and effective cross-generational communication to enable iterating these tools over many lifespans.
Through this, humans or our descendants might one day hunt apex predators on other planets that maybe are better joggers and throwers than we are.
Fuck that, seems like too much work. I’ll just order a pizza… /s
And finding reasons why that important thing can wait until tomorrow, even though that thing is pretty easy to do
I think the only reason we can keep running in hot weather (better than other animals) is because we’re resourceful enough to carry water
Actually it’s because we have sweat glands all over our bodies, which I think is unique among animals. Dog, for example, can only dump excess heat by heavier panting, whereas humans will just sweat more.
Some of us have more and more puissant sweat glands than others.
Additionally being bipedal means that as we run our breathing rate is separate from our gait. As four legged animals gallop the motion of their running expands and contracts their diaphragm, forcing them to breath at the same rate they run at.
Since they can’t sweat like us, or breath like us, they have to stop running and start panting in order to cool down.
While humans can just keep going, relentlessly, like the It Follows monster.
We are the Michael Meyers of the animal kingdom.
I’m more of a Cenobite, myself. Why run if I can just track you?
Because the point was to wear the animal down not just to follow it.
You just taught me a new word! Puissant!
The word was so fun I decided to make a new community where people can share fun words they just learned. Thank you!
So what’s the community? Don’t leave us hanging…
Haha, sorry! I didn’t share because as of now there is only the one post (about this word). Plus, I’m honestly unsure the best way to link a community so people can easily access it.
That said, it is ILearnedAWord
https://ttrpg.network/c/ilearnedaword
for people who just learned a neat word and might want to share it. Truthfully, I don’t super expect it to grow to be more than just me posting in there, but I think it would be a fun way to keep track of fun words I learn and a better way to learn words than a word of the day calendar. The lack of seeing words in use on those drives me nuts, cause the sample sentences are usually boring af.
Subscribed!
It should be a community devoted to high-brow Yo Mama jokes, e.g., “Yo mama has puissant sweat glands!”
We invented the flame thrower. I know George Carlin did the bit best but… Imagine explaining that to a group of aliens.
“You… you throw what now?”
“Flames, bro.”
“For what purpose…?”
“Well, We had these people called Nazis and they liked to hide in concrete fortifications so we figured the best way to make them not be in there would be to fill it with fire.”
“Does that not harm these ‘nazis’?”
“Oh yeah, it harms them. That was like, a bonus.”
“Well, It was nice meeting you. Goodbye forever.”
But wait! Let us tell you about the mustard gas!
Or white phosphorus! Wait, wait… how about the inquisition? Or the rape of south america or the roman catholic church…
Damn, why does everybody leave?
King Leopold and the Belgian Congo.
“So we created these chemicals for wars…”
“Ah, killing the enemy efficiently!”
“Well, no.”
“So they knock them out temporarily?”
“Haha, not exactly…”
“Then they’re useless?”
“No. They just really mess them up. It goes into their body really easily and it’s super carcinogenic, permanently fucks their DNA up, basically eats their skin, probably causes them to go blind, and will make them mentally fucked up. But it takes hours for them to notice the effect.”
“…What the hell is wrong with you guys?”
And remember, somebody thought that wasn’t good enough. As evidence I present the existence of Sarin Gas
… however, flamethrowers were fielded by the Germans first, and already in the previous World War.
Uh, you ought to read about what the British did in that war. They hid a bunch of massive, buried pop-up flame throwers in no-man’s land and used them to cook a bunch of Germans.
“Laughs in greek fire” - Greek sailors in 1200s
That’s so metal.
Monkeys have both force and accuracy when pelting humans with feces.
This is just inaccurate.
It’s just a good rule of thumb to write off science memes as bullshit.
they do not
Seems like while on average a human can be expected to “naturally” throw better than a monkey, most monkeys are perfectly capable of learning to throw with skill comparable to a human.
Sources:
did you read your sources? “The researchers found no evidence for “aimed throwing.”
I’m not sure how you’re getting that impression. The quote you put there doesn’t show up in the paper even once, and in fact if you search for “aimed throwing” you’ll see several instances where they discuss the aimed throwing accuracy of the monkeys. Even in just the abstract there’s a few places where they make it clear the monkeys are aiming (and additionally that’s what they were measuring).
For both species we found positive correlations between target distances for throwing accuracy, direction and strength of hand preference, percentage of bipedal vs tripedal throws, and percentage of overarm vs underarm throws.
In fact, they go so far as to clearly state that the monkey throwing is a suitable model of human throwing, meaning that the way they throw is similar enough to us that we can actually learn about ourselves from it.
We believe that the capuchin monkey is an informative nonhuman primate model of aimed throwing in humans and that research examining the throwing behavior of capuchins provides insight into the neurological and behavioral characteristics that underlie coordinated multi-joint movements across the primate order.
Anyway, that’s all the time I’m gonna spend on this mythbusting lol.
I made a humourous claim that seemed logical, and when some goof decided to claim I’m wrong, you swooped in with facts.
You’re my favourite.
I copy and pasted the quote. It’s from the second source
I wanna see Curious George lining up under center for an NFL team now.
I’ve seen enough videos of chimps and gorillas throwing shit at people that I don’t want to test this claim.
Yeah, most species take FOREVER to get the hang of projectile weapons and us big brained humans only took like 5.5 million years to perfect it! That’s practically no time at all!
The first wars were thought to be a bunch of people facing off and throwing rocks and sticks at each other. We’ve been throwing shit for as long as we could walk
I did read somewhere that our brains are really good at calculating where to throw to hit something in motion.
Granted you need practice to get good, but supposedly we are wired for it.
There’s a correlation between eyesight and intelligence (in species, not individuals) - interpreting visual inputs takes a lot of brain power, and might be one of the factors pushing for greater intelligence. So, there’s at least a decent chance that intelligent aliens would have good eyesight.
Also, they’d need hands, or something equivalent.
Once you have hand(equivalent)s, decent eyes, and intelligence, hand-eye-coordination isn’t far off.
If elephants can figure out how to throw rocks with enough force to kill a child, then so can E.T.
Apes can’t yell “Kobe” because they can’t speak. Apes also can’t throw with accuracy. Coincidence? I think not.
Some great apes can learn sign language tho, would be awesome if a group somewhere managed to become best bros with gorillas
pretty much all of our sports
The rest of the post is fine*, but this is simply not true
- apart from some fundamental misunderstanding about certain evolutionary concepts.
Soccer includes accurate throwing from the goalie. I’d posit that hitting a projectile with a stick accurately is a close cousin of throwing.
That’s all the big ones in US and EU that I can think of.
Baseball, basketball, soccer, football, cricket, rugby, hockey, what am I missing?
I’d posit that hitting a projectile with a stick accurately is a close cousin of throwing.
That’s just throwing with extra steps.
The post says “based around the concept of throwing”, including soccer in that list is a stretch - soccer is entirely based on our great control over our legs and feet, the goalie throwing the ball is an afterthought.
You’re literally punished for hitting the ball with your hand in football. Have to agree with you here, bar the terminology.
That’s because we are too good at throwing balls with our hands. That’s the exception that proves the rule.
the goalie throwing the ball is an afterthought.
Games have been lost for less.
hard disagree; “concept of throwing”, imo, is accurately predicting some complicated physics and then making the split second adjustments to fling an object from your body elsewhere with enough force to be useful; that it’s kicking rather than hand based doesn’t seem relevant imo, it’s still about accuracy and weird spin and dexterity.
Football hooliganism is also based around accurate throwing of objects.
Lacrosse, European Handball
Good catches. They both fall under throwing, too.
Ditto kicking.
“pretty much all” is a stretch, but it’s hard to disagree with that throwing things accurately is an aspect of a lot of our sports. And definitely the extreme dominant trait in American sports.
Yes - humans can throw things so some sports feature throwing.
Humans can kick, so some sports have kicking. Humans can punch, guess what, sports have punching. Humans can think logically, would you be surprised to hear about mind games?
I’d be more shocked if we had sports based around flying naked or extracting energy from sulphuric salts.
You’re kinda intentionally missing the point.
If you had to pick one uniquely human aspect to group together as many sports as possible, what would you pick?
Teamwork is out because wolves hunt in packs and lions hunt in prides. Logic is arguable, everything we do is based in either emotion or logic, so it’s not a good answer imo.
So what do you have left? Kicking and throwing are probably your best bets.
what would you pick?
If I want to create a set with the largest amount of sports? They’re team based. Humans are particularly good at forming teams, recognizing team members, allocating mental tasks to others and deep communications. In fact, these characteristics are a very large reason behind our taste for sports and cheering.
team work is out
Huh… if team work is out because wolves can do it, throwing objects is out because several animals can do it.
You might say they can’t do it as well as us… but wolves can’t do team play as well as us, so the argument is the same.
futbol has entered the chat
Just the good ones
You can throw things at any sports.
If you’re not a coward.
English hooligans checking in.
Chess referees hate this!
Inverse Kinematics is really cool. Whenever you move your hand to a position, you’re only thinking of your hand moving to that position, but there’s an order of operations you dont even think about. For your hand to be in the right spot your forearm has to be in the right spot, and for your forearm to be in the right spot your upper arm has to be in the right spot. Your brain subconsciously calculates those movements. This enables very accurate motions, your hand can follow a smooth, deliberate arc towards your target
If only my 3d printer was so easy to control.
Clearly, you should drop it for a resin printer
Oh I’m planning on getting a resin printer in the future. It’s just I’m renting right now, and have a toddler, so it’s difficult to properly ventilate the fumes outside currently. Once I buy a house, that’s going to be one of the first things I buy. Do you have any recommendations for something hassle free that I won’t have to tweak for 6 months before it prints well?
And most people actually suck at it. Source: I do martial arts. Also, my Grandma taught me knitting same principle applies: If you start doing it with your fine motor skills, letting those influence your gross motor posture, you’re going to cramp up in no time. Easy and relaxed does the job, move from the shoulders (or even belly), don’t even move your fingers just keep them static knitting doesn’t really require you to move them. Doesn’t matter when all you’re doing is opening a door or such but for repeated movements, or forceful ones, or ones that need to be stabilised against adverse forces (like a block) it becomes crucial.
If true, it’s probably because humans have mostly slow twitch muscle fibers (e.g., great for endurance and manual dexterity) while great apes are mostly fast twitch muscle fibers (good for raw strength). That’s why a chimpanzee, who is much smaller than a person, can perform feats pf strength that would embarrass most strong-man competitors. OTOH, humans evolved to run; the kind of long-distance running that some people do for fun would kill other primates.
Well, the kind of long distance running that some people do for fun would definitely kill me
Especially long distance running. Imagine a gazelle in prehistoric Africa running away from this weird ape until it is completely exhausted, just to turn around and see the weird ape still coming after it in the distance. We were the horror villains of prehistoric animals.
Elephants can throw stuff fairly accurately. Not very far though.
I just spent several seconds trying to figure out if “kobe” is some imaginary alien word I’m supposed to know from Star Trek or something.
You shout Yeet for power and Kobe (RIP) for accuracy
I always shout “Klaatu!” Instead of “Kobe!” because I do not understand what a Japanese city has to do with throwing
Necktie!
humans are space orc themes in tumblr are really neat
Oooh, a doodle
Thanks for the thread, I’ve always been fond of the space orcs interpretation.
This ability is what made us weaker apes the “apex predator” of the planet.
