wtf

"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 just want you to know, I know what you're referencing

Dogs do love a good jog though. Give that good boi a bit of kibble and then see how he feels.

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.
- It's why the trope of an enemy that never stops/is endless is so terrifying, and thus common in media.
- Yes, very true! I almost added that when writing my comment, but didn't want to blather on too long in a comment about a meme haha
- I guess the Energizer Bunny was an evolution that came about, due to humanity's hunting style...
No, no I didn’t need that rabbit hole…
(spends the next hour reading about it)

Jogging is practice for how humans killed pretty much all the megafauna in the world: exhaustion hunting.

Also fire probably. Lots and lots of fire
- Pointy sticks.
- I think scaring them over Cliff sides came into okay as well, though you aren't wrong.

Other animals get zoomies too.

Jogging from the perspective of non-human animals

FTFY

🤓☝️
- Yeah, some humans also wonder why jogging is a thing.

So this is pretty neat:

https://www.science.org/content/article/born-run-early-endurance-running--may-have-evolved-help-humans-chase-down-prey

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?

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.)
- I mean, them being walking corpses might also have something to do with it...
- I remember reading that
- That is scarier to me than the fast zombies.
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.
- humans can beat a horse in a marathon!
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_versus_Horse_Marathon
  https://www.managainsthorse.net/result.html
- Horses sweat? Huh.
It’s a consequence of bipedalism, less energy consumption to run but also slower
- It's a few things that stem from bipedalism:
  We can run and breathe entirely separately. Most quadrupeds lack the ability to run and take breaths independently of the pace of each step. Watching cheetahs sprint, for example, show that they have no choice but to exhale every time their legs come together and inhale every time their legs push apart.
  Running on our hind legs only frees up our hands to be able to use tools and weapons, maybe even water containers for drinking on the go.
  We can see further by standing up, and can make tactical decisions based on terrain, while still running pretty much full speed.
  Combined with our unusual ability to cool ourselves by sweating, this gives us an advantage over pretty much any animal in the heat. Wolves and horses can still outrun humans in the cold, but lack the cooling mechanisms to maintain pace in the same heat that we can.
- Yea but also tools
  We don’t have to stop for water, we can bring some
  Same for food
  Our preys didn’t have such luck

“I don’t know why they’re running, but let’s chase them!”

Maybe the hairless ape will throw a stick!

Whoever made this has never met a dog

Yeah, this post shows a tragic lack of familiarity with the concept of zoomies.

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.

One time, I was in the arctic doing some research. On a snowmobile, in winter, we crest a hill and see a couple of wolves pigging out on a caribou. I'm riding in the toboggan, and I start telling at the driver: "go go go!" They proceeded to chase our snowmobile for like a mile, with no hope at all of catching us, but running anyway. Like dogs chasing tires, I think they had no choice. Instincts are strong.

I know it's a joke. But would a wolf consider a human an apex predator? What about bears? Do these animals fear humans? I can't say I'm familiar with them. I figured they wouldn't, in most circumstances. I would think their default stance towards us is that we're their prey

We are certainly not their prey and without modern urban sprawl forcing animals into urbanized areas they would avoid humans as much as possible and this has been true for thousands of years.
Humans are the ones wielding fire after all.
The bears and coyotes around here hide from me! Even if I try and creep on 'em, they still usually sense me and run.
- Maybe put your dick away then
- "ah shit, it's that weird human again. Better hide or it will get awkward"
Bears usually avoid humans, unless very hungry, because those who didn't avoid us, didn't tend to live very long.
Most animals know humans are too much trouble to mess with.
Sure, you can kill one human. But next thing you know your whole species has gone extinct, or worse, has been domesticated into pocket yappy dogs that can't breathe properly.
In places where we've been around long enough staying away from humans has practically been bred into every surviving predator's instincts by now (which is what makes polar bears so terrifying, they're about the only dangerous predator that doesn't have this instinct yet, and probably never will, now that murdering whole species has become a bit of a bad look); anything that considered us prey and didn't learn not to simply doesn't exist anymore.
Wolves in particular (in the few places where they survive) definitely know not to mess with us, except maybe in the frozen depths of Canada, and so do most bears (again, with possible exceptions in the least populated bits of North America) except polar ones.

I say this to myself when I see people jogging and I really just want to yell "what are you running from!?"

If an apex predator is running, maybe keep up.

I cannot stop laughing 😂

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
It's because we grew out of having to do physical work 8-12 hours every day just to stay alive.
- I actually love physical work! I just hate running 😆

Conserving energy is not really our thing.

The thing is, humans are astonishingly good at conserving energy when running. We can literally run prey to death by just keeping on going when most animals run out of energy.
- Sweat offers cooling bonuses.
  Something about being upright too but I don't recall.
If I need more energy I'll just set something on fire

Animals understand play. Although not sure where the ball is.

You know where the balls are (⁠ ͡⁠°⁠ ͜⁠ʖ⁠ ͡⁠°⁠)

They are running from existential dread.

So we are the prey?
- Always have been.

Let's say it's part of a mating ritual. I know this is not true, but I believe it gets the point across.

Here's to ya' blacksmith 🥃

I can't see why anyone would down vote

I also get confused when I see people jogging, don't they know lounging around eating snacks is way more fun?

My favorite is to shout out, 'What are you running from!' when people jog by.

"Therapy was also an option"
- No !
  cries
- I tried and even the shrink told me to exercise and eat better. It's so over bros
My answer would be "You!"

Human zoomies feel great :)

Stelthi

Depends on the animal, I suppose. A lion or a wolf would be too edgy and have rapey vibes, but a house cat or derpy good boy would be funny to me.
An octopus with Apex Predator under it while it is unscrewing a jar would own.
Would look creepy on a T-shirt and even more creepy as a tattoo.
Maybe it could work on like an ironic t-shirt or something, but it would heavily depend on if there is anything else on the t-shirt.

They are animals and cant understand cause and effect. With nothing to chase or hunt you expire as a blob of fat

No !