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Comment by cycomanic | Hacker News Reader

The theory is the other way around AFAIK. Humans can outrun essentially every land animal if they chase for long enough (most animals have much worse thermal management so they will have to stop after a while to cool down). That allowed early humans to bring down much faster and larger prey, essentially chasing them to exhaustion.

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Yes, it is called persistence hunting, and humans are very well adapted to this style of hunting because of our ability to shed heat and run/walk very efficiently. Wolves are another animal that has this behavior.

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

Also African painted dogs.

Yes, but not every land animal, some can outrun Homo on the long distances as well (wolves, horses, deer). Mammoth couldn't and died. Moose cannot as well, but survived somehow.

Average fit humans can run down horses and deer, and I would bet wolves too.

> Other animals, such as deer, bison and others, have bodies more suited to quick, short-distance running. The difference means that an average human being in running shape could catch a horse, deer or almost any other animal by pursuing it to exhaustion.

https://phys.org/news/2024-05-theory-humans-evolved-ability-...

What deer have going for them is the ability to blend in to a herd so that when chasing a deer, if it gets in with the herd, you may end up chasing a freshly rested deer instead of the one that you’ve worn out which gets a chance to rest and regroup. Christopher McDougall’s Born to Run has some interesting chapters about this (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0307279189/donhosek)

I actually highly doubt that a deer would fare better than a trained human on 50+km, but can't provide any sources

Actually a human and horses on long distances aren't that different. I don't know about wolves, but seems like they would overheat.

Indeed https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_versus_Horse_Marathon

Well, it's rider on a horse. Would be fair if the human runner also carried another human on their shoulders.

Besides, ancient horses were much smaller and couldn't carry a rider, hence chariots. I would like to speculate that smaller means better thermoregulation, so smaller horses fared better on long distances versus Homo genus.

That's still a pretty short distances. I think in Ultramarathon, humans would win.

with carbohydrate gels, fancy shoes and years of training on the asphalt and a bunch of servants throwing you motivational words and ice water bottles?

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