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December 19th, 2006, 07:30 AM
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Re: Will Vanheim Ever Become Spayed?
This thread moves to fast
To address the question of a human outwalking a horse or a dog: The Zulu in their heyday could RUN 50 miles, fight a full scale battle, and then RUN back. That's not just one Zulu, that was a whole Zulu division. At the battle of Marathon, a Greek soldier ran something like 26 miles in full armor (he delivered the message of victory and then promptly dropped dead, but still). 20 miles is no problem for a typical healthy human being. The problem isn't the distance, it's motivation. I myself am fat, I've got flat feet, and painful arthritis, and I can walk 12 miles at a stretch. Mind you, there are painful consequences, and it takes me about 3 days to recover, but I have done such a thing before and could again if I found it necessary. Humans get a bad rep compared to the rest of the animal kingdom, but we can wear anything out, eventually, and we can survive in more extreme conditions than just about anything, too, atleast among the "higher" forms of life. We're also able to eat more different types of food than most, and store that food as fat (not a bad survival trick), we have, as far as I know, the finest sense of taste (not smell, mind you) in the whole animal kingdom, and we can deal with both land and-to a limited degree-water environments.
We're not firmly on top of the food-chain by mistake, friends and relatives, and it wasn't just our brains and opposable thumbs that put us here.
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December 19th, 2006, 06:39 PM
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Re: Will Vanheim Ever Become Spayed?
Of course athletes can run 26 miles, they do it all the time, but I don't think the "original" marathon was done in full armor. I'd certainly leave MY armor behind.
I'm squarely in the middle of the food chain 
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December 19th, 2006, 07:17 PM
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Re: Will Vanheim Ever Become Spayed?
When I walked to Santiago de Compostela (1000 miles) we met a guy on a horse that made the same journey. We met him for a couple of days before he advanced ahead of us. I think he traveled slightly faster then a human, but for a shorter time each day not to exhaust his mount. By the time we met him he had been traveling for several weeks IIRC. It was just before we crossed the pyrenées and he was a bit worried that his horse 'Pedro' (strange that I don't remember the name of the man, but his horse) would become worse in its hind leg that was a bit exhausted and shaky (or whatever happens to tired horses). So my impression is that hoses are able to travel faster, but are less durable and might need some rest or so once in a while. Not that we didn't rest :-)
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December 19th, 2006, 07:50 PM
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Re: Will Vanheim Ever Become Spayed?
He definitely did it in armor as far as I know, he was afraid of running into the enemy along the way, so he carried weapons and armor. And that's the thing about humans vs horses-humans can travel steadily and wear down a horse if the horse has to keep moving. Stopping and starting is fine for a horse, but a human hunter might not give the horse the option. That's also why wolves hunt in packs, because an individual wolf quickly gets tired, while a pack can relay off and give it's members time to recover in a long hunt.
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December 19th, 2006, 08:38 PM
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Re: Will Vanheim Ever Become Spayed?
Quote:
HoneyBadger said:
He definitely did it in armor as far as I know, he was afraid of running into the enemy along the way, so he carried weapons and armor. And that's the thing about humans vs horses-humans can travel steadily and wear down a horse if the horse has to keep moving. Stopping and starting is fine for a horse, but a human hunter might not give the horse the option. That's also why wolves hunt in packs, because an individual wolf quickly gets tired, while a pack can relay off and give it's members time to recover in a long hunt.
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I disagree. I happen to have some experience with riding and horses.
The young healthy and strong horse with a rider who knows how to take good care of his horse, and with enough good food (not the grass type of food that horse may be able to find during the breaks, but the real horse food) will cover much longer daily distance then human, and will be able to do it consistently over more or less unlimited period of time, as long as the rider is taking good care of the horse.
Also biologically humans are quite weak comparable to many animals. The reason why we got on the top of the food chain are not our fragile bodies, small teeth and lack of claws, lack of fur to protect against cold, very weak (by animal standards) hearing and sense of smell, lack of night vision, extremely slow and inefficient reproduction system, et cetera, et cetera...
The reason we got to the top of the food chain and become dominant lifeform on this palnet, despite being rather weak race, is our brain, which helped us to overcome all these weaknesses. One might argue that humans developed intelligence exactly because they were so weak, and they needed it to survive competing against better prepared species and hostile enviroment.
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December 19th, 2006, 09:38 PM
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Re: Will Vanheim Ever Become Spayed?
That may be the case, but it would be circumstantial. You're postulating a certain horse supplied with certain food traveling over certain ground against a certain opponent. I don't disagree with the assessment in theory, but you're talking about a horse PLUS a human VS a human, that throws the experiment off. Animal vs animal is a whole other deal since one of the reasons humans perform so well is by using our brains. We're talking a flat stretch of more or less constant motion. Again, in your experiment, the horse would be stopping and starting at the discretion of it's rider, not motivated by it's own fear. Don't forget also that some humans can travel 50 miles at a stretch, day after day. That's a good run even for a horse. I know horses might be able to go 70 miles or more, but they also tend to take more wear and tear than a human does and tend to recover from injury more slowly if at all.
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December 19th, 2006, 09:48 PM
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Re: Will Vanheim Ever Become Spayed?
Well, I won't disagree that humans are weaker than a bear, have worse vision than an eagle, breed more slowly than a rat, etc. But my point is that in some ways, we can compete against animals, and even are superior in a few areas besides our brains. Ofcourse, our brains are our greatest advantage but not our only one, and one might also argue that our brains are just another area for sexual competition that happen to have given us a few short-term advantages. 8,000 years isn't a long time, and that's pretty much the limit that we've been on top of the food chain. Brains aren't the perfect tool for survival anyhow. Einstein had what's considered to be one of the finest brains in history, and he paved the way for the atomic bomb.
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December 21st, 2006, 02:43 PM
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Re: Will Vanheim Ever Become Spayed?
Quote:
Corwin said:The reason we got to the top of the food chain and become dominant lifeform on this palnet, despite being rather weak race, is our brain, which helped us to overcome all these weaknesses. One might argue that humans developed intelligence exactly because they were so weak, and they needed it to survive competing against better prepared species and hostile enviroment.
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Wow, we're way off topic.
Anyway, you have it backwards. We became so physically weak because, thanks to a larger brain, we discovered we no longer needed claws, fur, etc. "Devolution" in action, a trait which is not needed atrophies. In 1000 years I predict most people will be nearly blind.
But there are a few human physical traits which still exceed those of most animals... vision is an obvious one, and endurance is a big one too. (What use is having a disciplined brain capable of focusing on tracking the same animal for several days if your body can't keep up?)
In the tortise vs. hare race, humans are the tortise, and we win every time.
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December 19th, 2006, 10:41 PM
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Sergeant
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Re: Will Vanheim Ever Become Spayed?
Quote:
HoneyBadger said:He definitely did it in armor as far as I know,
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He probably didn't do it at all. Check
Pheidippides in Wikipedia
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December 19th, 2006, 10:43 PM
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Re: Will Vanheim Ever Become Spayed?
I have also heard how people in africa would hunt deer with a spear by chasing down the deer until it fell from exhaustion. Now that's real hunting.
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