Why are humans designed to run?

paky

Whay do you think humans are designed to run?

JBnaglfar

I saw in interesting TED talk which discussed the evolutionary benefits of running. Of course this is all theoretical, but the basic idea seems at least reasonable. Essentially, if you consider pre civilisation humans without tools etc. we must have had some natural advantage that allowed us to survive and prosper, catch animals for food etc.
Now humans are not the strongest animals, or the fastest over a short distance. What we can do really well though is run long distances. Our method of sweating helps keep us cool while running, and offers an advantage over other animals who use their tongue to cool down (and must stop running). This means our advantage may have been running, we may have caught prey by literally running it to death.
I'll try and find a link to the talk later, don't quite have the time right now.

grizzly

There's a tribe in Australia who still hunt this way. Chasing their pray to exhaustion by tracking it in a group and sending their strongest runners in for the kill. Animals have even developed a technique to counter this by mixing back in with a tight group and have another animal of similar build jump out in it's place — hoping that the hunters will chase the fresher animal instead!

cruizer101

Here is a talk by Christopher McDougall author of Born to Run it kinda deals with teh question you've asked, I'm sure you'll enjoy it anyway.

http://www.ted.com/talks/christopher_mcdougall_are_we_born_to_run.html

JBnaglfar

cruizer101 wrote: »

Here is a talk by Christopher McDougall author of Born to Run it kinda deals with teh question you've asked, I'm sure you'll enjoy it anyway.

http://www.ted.com/talks/christopher_mcdougall_are_we_born_to_run.html

Yeah, that's the TED talk I was going to link here. Its an interesting talk over all.

Fremen

grizzly wrote: »

There's a tribe in Australia who still hunt this way. Chasing their pray to exhaustion by tracking it in a group and sending their strongest runners in for the kill. Animals have even developed a technique to counter this by mixing back in with a tight group and have another animal of similar build jump out in it's place — hoping that the hunters will chase the fresher animal instead!

That's really interesting. I signed in just to thank it!

The persistence hunt is (I think) the oldest known form of hunting. One of the older Attenborough documentaries showed one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fUpo_mA5RP8

maxextz

run?..........wouldnt you run?

Wild_Dogger

I believe it is much more related to the fact that we were prey rather than predator !

On a side note , I believe this is one main reason why dogs and humans became compaitable compaions .
We both played the same game .

What kind of small animal do you think we could out-pace ?
Do you think we could even catch a wild rabbit , a hare , a bird ?

steddyeddy

Well a lot of animals run I suppose the difference being we are an ape and run as oppossed to knucklewalk like chimps or orangutangs. We could have moved out of the forest into the steppe, lost mass and assumed an upright posture enabling long distance travel via running.

skregs

Wild_Dogger wrote: »

I believe it is much more related to the fact that we were prey rather than predator !

We haven't really been prey since we generally became humans. We did however hunt the crap out of everything that moved

grizzly

Interesting question – when did we transition from prey to predators? I asked Prof. John Hawks, which he kindly answered...

I consider Homo synonymous with "human", and early Homo was already hunting and butchering small and medium-sized antelopes. But Homo erectus was a frequent victim of predation. We have sabretooth, leopard, hyena and croc predation on fossil Homo. So we were both hunter and hunted for a long time.

Wibbs

Bit late to the fray . I dunno about early Homo actively hunting. OK I suppose it depends what you mean by early. Habilis? Dunno, it's a real stretch on a few points. Early erectus? Later on maybe. There's still conjecture about that AFAIR. Butchering yes. Stone tools design and marks on bone attest to that.

You could also argue for a scavenging lifestyle selecting for running. That also requires speed over large areas. Other predators take down a large animal, we come in and by force of numbers scare them off, or just come in after most of the main meat is gone and extract the marrow with our stone cleavers. Prey sites are going to be far apart, so we'd have to be quick to take advantage of them. High speed bipedal vultures basically.

If you look at the bones and stones that might explain more readily the evidence than hunting. Built to run(erectus would be olympic fast, look at Turkana boy) to get to sites fast, predation on us by competitors as much as predators.

Another thing that might show this lifestyle is the Erectus female who shows extensive bone damage from fatal levels of vitamin A. Most likely cause of that is eating the livers of predators. To my mind it would be more likely that we scavenged kills as our main tactic or one or two would have been carnivores. You would imagine that active hunters of herbivores would very rarely encounter carnivore meat. That's the case today. It's very rare that carnivores hunt other carnivores and would likely avoid livers of same(as most do). Scavengers on the other hand...

This tactic then translated into more active hunting strategies later on. Another thing to add it that maybe? Erectus is more "built for speed" than later humans. Neanderthals weren't. We're kinda between them and Erectus. *EDIT* it's probably down to bigger infant brains = bigger pelvis, but agin that the Georgian Erectus fossils seem to show either a wide variability or pretty large sexual dimorphism. If being really fast as a predator was selected for you would imagine that this dimorphism would increase? Though maybe it has? Modern women are better runners if they follow the male layout of narrow hips. Meh its late I'm rambling as per usual.

Wibbs

PS I love yer mans blog grizzly. Always great reading and always food for thought. even if my daft head finds it hard to digest...