Born to Run?

© ired (sxc.hu)

 

If humans really were ”born to run”, we’d have four legs. And they’d probably call us dogs.

Them bipeds to be more precise (in case you were wondering). Those who’d rule the world instead of us, now.

I’m not questioning at all whether humans have the needed capacity to run miles on end if a task at hand would require such endeavors.

All I’m saying is that making generalizations from a bunch of Tarahumara indians who for some reason like to run a lot, tells us exactly squat.

More likely scenario is as follows.

Apes came down from the trees (because food was more plentiful there). They learned to walk. And when heard animals, who just so happen to be primates as well, start to walk independently, they get to develop into pretty strategic hunters as a whole.

You don’t have to be a nuclear physicist to realize that running after prey is pretty inefficient way to get food. There simply are too many variables involved.

The prey is faster than you or simply has more stamina. Or you could hurt yourself in the process – or simply get killed.

There’s no E.R. in the savannah. You don’t even have to break anything, all it takes is a spring ankle, and you just made yourself useless, yet another mouth that has to be fed.

You can consider yourself lucky they don’t just leave you to the lions then and there. Or just kill you themselves. Less baggage, less mouths to feed. That’s a logical solution, too.

 You work as a team. If there’s not enough of you to simply surround the prey until it can’t escape, you try to ambush is.

From the ambush you try to inflict as much injury to the prey before it manages to limp back to safety. Temporary safety that is.

This is when you start to follow the prey.  You run when you are close enough, but you walk and try your best to track the prey down if you aren’t.

My educated guess is that you rarely get to be at a running distance to your prey. And even if you did, they’d still have that advantage of distance. If they are as healthy as you are, your chances are still 50/50.

Only sure fire way of getting a chance to be at a running distance to your prey is when they’ve been harmed first.

When you’ve first harmed them. 

Ambushing prey takes time. It could take days before you even get a glimpse of your prey. And even then they could just as easily decide to go the other way instead. Further away from you, not closer.

You need something, tools, a sharp rock, poisoned stick, anything you can throw at a distance with fair accuracy.

If, and that’s a big if, you manage to actually hit your prey with something that looks like it did at least something to hindrance it’s escape, you can consider running that fucker down.

We weren’t born to run. We we born to use our fucking heads. Then arms and only after that our legs.

Running miles on end after potential prey was almost certainly never our preferred method of getting our food. We ran when it was absolutely necessary. Because running takes much more energy and we’re in the business of preserving and getting energy – not wasting it.

That’s why we never run like Tarahumaras. Tarahumaras probably run because to them running is the same as us needing to have the fastest, biggest, baddest car on the block.

We do it because of prestige, not because it’d be so darn easy way to obtain food.

Nice theory, though. Probably didn’t have anything to do with the fact that the author is what most of us would call a running freak.