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First panel: [blank white space with black text] Jogging from the perspective of animals
Second panel: Wolf by a tree looking at a man jogging. "What are you running from, apex predator"
Third panel: Wolf: "Are you chasing prey?" "You need to conserve energy"
Last panel: [second wolf peeking in] "The hell is that guy doing" [first wolf] "I don't know. I don't understand"
(alt text by @cypnk@mastodon.social)
Conserving energy is for nerds.
Humans can run all day long.
Remaining still to conserve energy < Running just to deplete excess energy
What is this excess energy you speak of?
Run, Forrest, run!
Conservation in general isn't a human strong suit.
https://www.cbc.ca/radio/quirks/study-space-junk-pollution-1.7010373
We are quite talented at the opposite, in fact.
We've become so successful at getting food, we don't have to move much to do it any more. So we have to go out of our way to be active to stay healthy since evolution takes so long to catch up.
I used to refer to going to the gym as the "farm work simulator". It always amazed me that society progressed to the point where physical labor isn't necessary, but we chose to pay money, so that we can pretend to do it, in order to live longer
Ngl, if they make gym work as some kind of "heavy work" simulator games like Farming or Mining, with tracking progress, achievements, and competitive ranking, I would be at the gym way more.
VR games already make me work out way more than I thought I would.
Add a leveling system in there and make it an mmo
Honestly just tie it to some repetitie game. Think Skilling in RuneScape. All they really need is a number that goes up, and the occasional firework.
Throw in skins for your pickaxe or whatever and you're golden. People will get so buff, going for the sparkly anime-girl skin, you have no idea.
I had a room mate who would drive a 5 mile round trip to the gym and back to walk five miles on the treadmill. I didn't have a car at the time and was always pointing out the nonsense of it. She said she just preferred the atmosphere of the gym to the side of the road or any of the many beautiful nature trails near by. 🤷♀️
To be fair, I can close my eyes and just sort of flail on an elliptical in a way that would absolutely hurt me if I tried it on the ground. It's also a lot lower impact and when I'm done I can just stop.
It's kinda like burning dollar bills in the fireplace to make the place look cozy.
It's kind of the ultimate symbol of excess evolutionary wealth to be able to go for a run just because we want to burn off excess energy.
we want to burn off excess energy.
A step further even, a lot of us need to burn off excess energy, because we're so well off (evolutionarily speaking) that we practically can't help but take in more energy than we burn naturally
Hell, food comes to us now.
I've got my money on that not happening until after an apocalyptic event sends us back to the iron age. And the adaptations we're gonna get aren't gonna be pretty.
Unless we get fucked spectacularly we probably wont devolve back to the iron age. At worst maybe the age of sails but even then it'd be rather scattershot on what tech would survive. You might have a scenario where most tech is at 1700s level but with radio and modern firearms or atleast ww1-gulf war level.
Yeah it'll definitely be a mish mash of technology but a very large part of humanity will be left alone to their own devices having to find any way to survive
With the level of technical knowledge we've achieved, there's no way we're going back to doing things exactly the way they used to. One example that jumps out at me is the method this primitive technology guy on youtube uses to stoke his furnace. He's basically made a little manual turbine out of leaves and vines to push his air rather than one of those little squeeze box things.
Obviously I'm not a blacksmith or historian so I don't actually know how common something like that might have been, but I'm guessing it's not super old. In any case, I'm sure there are other ways that we'd apply our more advanced knowledge to tackling the sorts of problems we'd be looking at with a collapse of manufacturing and shipping infrastructure.
Honestly, a technologically adept but non-industrial society of artisans sounds kind of cool.
If you consider the greater evolutionary history, up until very recently humans have been kind of like the monster in It Follows. They're not very fast runners, but they are relentless. No other animal can run for such a long time. They'll keep going and going for hours on end, and they will eventually catch up with their victim. For an injured prey with explosive strength but relatively low endurance it must be absolutely terrifying.
Dogs joined the dark side, so they probably feel all cool and mighty next to their running master. In their head they go "yeah bitches you can run, but you can never hide from my human".
Lol at a tldr being a fucking wiki article, the opposite of short
Maybe it is "do read"
Today, learn and do read.
Canine are also persistence hunters, bears can be as well. I still like the comic though.
Do wolves not chase each other while playing? It’s not exactly doing it for exercise, but they should understand the concept… maybe.
Yeah, and border collies or huskies would also be like: "Running! Yeah!"
OP: of course an animal would find a human running with neither predator nor prey to be simply ludicrous!
Dog: I like running
Wolves who are "pets*" are also absolutely manic in comparison to normal dogs. Our lifestyle just drives everything to mindless activity to get it out.
(*: A wolf is not a pet even when they are very cute)
If any animal understands running just for the hell of it, it's the dog.
The chad humans, chasing prey beyond the brink of exhaustion
It can't be bargained with, it can't be reasoned with. It doesn't feel pity! Or remorse or fear and it absolutely will not stop!... ever... until you are dead!
How animals feel about humans
Meanwhile, my dog when the walls creak due to temperature changes and every other living thing in the house is asleep and doesn't care:
HOLY FUCK! HOLY FUCK! HOLY FUCK! ZOOM ZOOM ZOOM JUMP SCRATCH HOLY FUCK!
Also, animals: I don't know what they're running after/from, but let's chase them!
"You're running from me, now"
That's why I prefer cycling. I become bigger, faster and conserve energy.
Run in circles, then target the... target.