How humans evolved to become the best runners on the planet (2024)

FAQs

How did humans become good runners? ›

There is a growing consensus among the scientific community – evolutionary biologists, paleoanthropologists, neuroscientists and other dilettantes – that our bodies and brains evolved to run long distances so we could slowly hunt down animals on the African savannahs.

Humans are the best endurance runners out there. Some of you will instantly cry, “But what about horses!?” Horses may be faster than humans, but they can't outlast them. In a standard marathon (about 26 miles or 42 kilometers), humans regularly beat horses, although the horses tend to win most of the time.

Bramble and Lieberman argue that our genus, hom*o, evolved from more ape-like human ancestors, Australopithecus, 2 million or more years ago because natural selection favored the survival of australopithecines that could run and, over time, favored the perpetuation of human anatomical features that made long-distance ...

A pair of anthropologists, one with Trent University, in Canada, the other with the University of California, Davis, in the U.S., reports evidence in support of a theory that humans developed the ability to run long distances to capture fast-running animals.

Additional adaptations for endurance running in humans (compared to lower primates and quadriped mammals) include: long legs and stride length; relatively small feet with short toes (compared to other nonhuman primates) (Rolian et al., 2009); slow twitch muscle cells; large gluteus maximus muscle; structural ...

Researchers have discovered hundreds of historical accounts of humans hunting prey by chasing them down over long distances, which some believe is why we evolved our unique talent for endurance running.

Our tall, upright bodies create a lot of surface area for cooling, and the ability to breathe from both the nose and mouth helps dump heat as well. Humans are also one of the only species with the ability to sweat, and without thick fur, our sweat can easily evaporate from our skin, cooling us down.

When combined with the right training and a myriad of other environmental factors, carrying the right variants of certain genes can give some individuals an edge. The so-called speed gene, or ACTN3, is a gene that encodes for alpha-actinin-3, a protein expressed only in fast-twitch muscle fibres.

Sled dogs in the ididitrod regularly go 15 mph for 6 hours. That's faster than a human does a marathon, for several times the distance, while dragging a heavy object behind them. We're designed for running long distances, and do very well at it for a primate. But we are very, very far from being champions at it.

Narrator: Cheetahs are the fastest land animal in the world. But did you know that humans can leave them in the dust? At least, in the long run. That's right, when it comes to endurance, we can outrun wolves, cheetahs, and even horses.

What sport are humans built for? ›

While we are designed for endurance running, our ability to store only about 18 to 20 miles worth of glycogen (sugar), as well as our need to replenish water and electrolytes lost from sweating, suggest we did not evolve to run marathon-length (or greater) distances.

Instead, forensic anthropology suggests that anatomical features that directly contributed to endurance running capabilities were heavily selected for within the genus hom*o dating back to 1.9Ma. Consequently, selecting anatomical features that made endurance running possible radically transformed the hominid body.

Human evolution took place as new genetic variations in early ancestor populations favored new abilities to adapt to environmental change and so altered the human way of life. Dr. Rick Potts provides a video short introduction to some of the evidence for human evolution, in the form of fossils and artifacts.

Strength changes

While there is no proof that modern humans have become physically weaker than past generations of humans, inferences from such things as bone robusticity and long bone cortical thickness can be made as a representation of physical strength.

Ostrich is the answer:

Ostrich is an animal with the highest stamina in the world. Distance in a short time. Their legs allow them to run for about 40 miles an hour.

This is because the world's fastest runners aren't defined by their height, over which they have no control. Instead, some studies have shown that speed is to do with the force of their foot strike—the power in which their foot hits the ground, along with the stride length and cadence.

No, seriously we can run longer than any animals in the world. The fastest man in the world couldn't beat a cheetah in a dead sprint but a cheetah's blazing speed quickly exhausts their energy, needing to rest after a short sprint.

Conventional thinking is that early hominins like A. afarensis – the species to which the famous Lucy fossil belonged – learned to walk long before they could run. Lucy was an ape-like bipedal hominin sometimes seen as a likely direct ancestor of the earliest species… of human.

We evolved to walk with extreme efficiency. Chimps spend about twice as many calories to walk the same distance as humans. Therefore, it is hard to expend large amounts of calories quickly by walking. Our ancestors evolved to be endurance walkers, adds Lieberman, but only when necessary.

Dean Karnazes completed the longest non-stop run by a human being in 2005. He ran 350 miles (560 km) non-stop. It took him 80 hours and 44 minutes. There are plenty of runners who run for 24 hours or 48 hours without stopping too to break various world records…

Have humans ever had a natural predator? ›

Leptoptilos robustus might have preyed on both hom*o floresiensis and anatomically modern humans, and the Malagasy crowned eagle, teratorns, Woodward's eagle and Caracara major are similar in size to the Haast's eagle, implying that they similarly could pose a threat to a human being.

A critical factor is the fact that humans can keep their bodies cool by sweating while running. Another critical factor is the ability to track down an animal. Endurance running may have had adaptive value not only in scavenging but also in persistence hunting.

The thing that probably stops most predators from killing us, over the course of our evolutionary history, is that we see them before they see us and move or make lots of noise. Predators then have to exert more energy hunting us down and probably fight a whole group of humans.

The endurance running hypothesis is a series of conjectures which presume humans evolved anatomical and physiological adaptations to run long distances and, more strongly, that "running is the only known behavior that would account for the different body plans in hom*o as opposed to apes or australopithecines".

Humans started to jog around two million years ago, according to fossil evidence of some distinctive features of the modern human body. A new study suggests humans may have left their tree-swinging ancestors behind because they developed into endurance runners.

For most of human evolutionary history, runners were either barefoot or wore minimal footwear such as sandals or moccasins with smaller heels and little cushioning." For modern humans who have grown up wearing shoes, barefoot or minimal shoe running is something to be eased into, warns Lieberman.

Our secrets to endurance come from efficient cooling, which means we are good at sweating. And yes, other animals do sweat, but humans have the most sweat glands of any mammal. More importantly, we don't have all that fur trapping in heat which allows for easier cooling.