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Comment by wombatmobile | Hacker News Reader

As a human being, I find these feats of navigation and stamina astounding.

Human beings cannot do anything like this.

These birds are awesome.

Still, I find it peculiar and somehow off the mark to contextualise one bird's flight as a "world record".

In the bird's world, these are ordinary events. The only standout feature of that flight is that no human had witnessed and recorded anything more superlative.

It's OK that humans enjoy measuring things and celebrating the longest X or the biggest Y or the fastest Z. As I human, I get that.

What's less OK, and somewhat diminishing of the bird's natural majesty, is that if another bird were to fly 2% slower or less far, humans might shrug their shoulders and ask, so what?

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Our ancestors would jog for hours to chase down prey. The prey had to stop to pant to cool down which it couldn't do while running. I don't know how long it would have taken but at least a few hours seems like a reasonable assumption to wear down the animal prey. Although I don't think even our ancestors could jog for 239 hours straight.

I don't recall the title, but I remember a documentary where an African tribe member would slow jog after an animal for about 24 hours before the animal would get exhausted, so a few hours seems on the lower end of the jogging requirements for our ancestors, but am happy to be proven wrong

There's Cliff Young's win in the 875km Westfield Sydney to Melbourne Ultramarathon.

> While the other competitors stopped to sleep for six hours, Young kept running. He ran continuously for five days, taking the lead during the first night and eventually winning by 10 hours

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cliff_Young_(athlete)

This is the one that I remember watching https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=826HMLoiE_o. Not exactly 24 hours though.

There are regularly 24 hour races and I've done a few myself. 100 miles in 24 hours isn't that hard. The record was just recently set at 192.25 miles (309.4 km):

https://www.runnersworld.com/news/a37465691/sania-sorokin-24...

There are also 48 hr and 7 day races. Sleep is necessary somewhere between those two points, though two guys just went 85 hours with basically no sleep:

https://www.bigsbackyardultra.com/

That's a race where every hour on the hour you have to complete 4.166 miles. You get as much rest as the balance of your time after you complete a lap till the next hour begins. Most competitors complete a lap in around 48-52 minutes. The race continues until there is only one runner left to complete a lap.

Then we have Cliff Young who ran 875 km in 5 days - at the age of 61.

https://www.farmprogress.com/blog/cliff-young-farmer-who-out...

Humans can effectively run forever if it weren't for needing sleep, or eventually, needing to replace fat stores.

> Previous estimates, when accounting for glycogen depletion, suggest that a human could run at about a 10 minute per mile pace, which allows existing fat stores to be converted to glycogen, forever. The only limit to our eventual mileage, therefore, is our need for sleep. https://nikomccarty.medium.com/how-far-can-humans-run-d5c97f...

Maybe they invented relay too.

You might be thinking of this documentary: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0262452/

Reminds me of the man vs horse races (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_versus_Horse_Marathon). Man rarely wins unless the weather is hot.

To be fair, though, horses are uniquely good at endurance compared to almost all other non-primate mammals. They have sweat glands all over their body just like humans do.

what about dogs? They can cover nearly 1,000 miles of rough winter terrain in under 2 weeks, as seen in the iditarod. Or if we're looking at long distance travel in hot environments what about camels? I think this "humans can run down any animal with our endurance" stuff is vastly overblown. We're above average, but hardly the best on earth.

Dogs can't do endurance running in the heat like we can. Cooling is a limitation for most mammals.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endurance_running_hypothesis

Humans vs horses: https://slate.com/culture/2012/06/long-distance-running-and-...

Cheetahs, wolves : https://www.businessinsider.com/how-humans-evolved-to-be-bes...

We're really good at running.

Pretty interesting that all the counter-examples named so far are those that have been domesticated by humans

A human can run down any animal on earth because we're smart, not just because we have amazing endurance.

Animals don't realize that if they just ran 10 miles away they would escape easily. They'll just run far enough away that they can't really see us anymore. Then we find them and chase them again. Eventually they get tired because they sprint away and we conserve our energy.

A horse may be physically capable of running farther than a human, but actually getting them to do that is another thing.

Also the times are relatively close.

The book Born to Run by Christopher McDougall should probably also be mentioned here. It has this theory as one of it's central premises.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6289283-born-to-run

> Human beings cannot do anything like this

We're quite good when trained, but the average diet/lifestyle doesn't allow us to come anywhere close to our potential

> Human beings cannot do anything like this.

Yes, and birds are lousy coders. We all have our strengths.

They may be lousy coders, but they're quite good at carrying data as per RFC 1149.

> Human beings cannot do anything like this.

Well, I've flown that far in a day, carrying a couple of suitcases, but it took that bird a week and a half with no luggage.

Also it was not carrying any liquids.

So we're not so different after all.

the breatharian bird

> Well, I've flown that far in a day

To be the nitpick: You have been flown that far in a day. On a species-level perhaps an equally impressive feat, but on an individual level I’m more impressed by the birdie..

If we're going to do accounting on an individual level then a tiny fraction of individuals are responsible for flying everyone else (and their luggage and their mail and...) which is super impressive again.

A human can fly on their own lift provided you accelerate the human fast enough (bricks fly too after all). Not very comfortable though.

Human beings cannot do anything like this.

The most comparable feat of navigation and stamina that humans can do is sailing around the world alone. Some sailors will sleep for no more than 20 minutes at a time scattered throughout the day.

Humans are pretty mind blowing animals too.

About the closest thing I can think of are the Polynesian canoeists who first crossed the vast distances of the Pacific to reach isolated island chains and they must have done that more than once too.

Those guys were some very special people if you ask me.

Human beings the best long distance runners on the planet. I think that's awesome as well ;)

They aren't though, unless you start adding specifically tailored constraints like the run should happen in a very hot place.

A trained horse can cover 100+ miles per day with a rider, a husky can run 100+ miles in a sledge, and they will probably outpace humans. Not to mention that only a tiny fraction of humans can even finish a marathon, which is no big deal for most wolves or horses.

And camels and maybe ostriches will probably outrun us in hot climate as well (but that I didn't check).

A trained human can also run 100+ miles per day. The world record is 309.399 km (191.879 miles) for men [1].

[1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/24-hour_run

> Not to mention that only a tiny fraction of humans can even finish a marathon

Depends on the time constraints - I think a large percentage people can finish a marathon within 12 hours, even more if you allow up to 16 hours.

That's walking pace though. Humans probably compare even less favourably to other animals if you open it up to the ability to walk marathon distance.

However, horses are uniquely good at endurance because they have sweat glands all over their body, just like primates do. (And that's of course one of the reasons we domesticated them.) Almost all other mammals fare much worse.

Hmmm that's fair. Well none of these animals have internet and until they do, I'll continue to find humans just as impressive

Unless you let the human have a bicycle.

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