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Comment by Karsteski | Hacker News Reader

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).

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

> 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.

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

Unless you let the human have a bicycle.

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