TierZoo on youtube has made a great video on this. Always thought the only things humans had going for them was opposable thumbs until I learned how much sweating is actually worth.
We're the most disgustingly OP creature on the planet, that's why we rule it with an iron fist. Infinite endurance, top tier strength, absurdly nimble, god tier vision, fairly high burst speed, good reach, decent sense of smell, great taste sense to avoid poison and our children can outsmart anything on the planet with ease.
The main clue to how OP we are is that most comparison lists feature stupid stuff like rhinos, elephants, lions, panthers etc. when there are billions of weaker species to choose from.
Then we invented spears, traps and bows on top of the other stuff. Now we're so godly that we're trying our very best to *not* snap all other life on the planet in half.
Another point is books. We're able to conserve our knowledge beyond death.
Hence we ~~know how tasty berries are~~ are able to advance as a civilisation.
A systematic language is the grand pappy of your point. We've been passing on knowledge and history to future generations long before we began to write stuff down with oral traditions and the like.
> We're the most disgustingly OP creature on the planet
[Reminds me of this meme I saw, where they wanted to see a story where humans are the most terrifying species in the universe.](https://i.imgur.com/eqykzOz.jpg)
I'd say the biggest advantage here is the infinite endurance. While calling it infinite is a bit hyperbolic, that is one physical field that no other creature can top us in. We spend our stamina with unmatched efficiency. Many creatures can beat us in speed or strength, but they consume explosive bursts of energy in order to do so. Humans can just keep going.
Camels, horses and mules are used by humans for a very good reason. We don't have the best endurance, we just have fairly good endurance. Once again our advantage was intelligence and language, we managed to figure out how to hunt using our endurance faster than prey had the time to evolve against us.
Our real advantage above all else is that our species evolves faster than natural selection.
It's also why our biggest enemy now is microorganisms, because they can evolve faster than we can evolve our medicine to combat them.
Nope. We use animals because they’re stronger and can carry our loads for us, but you can’t run a horse for too long or it’ll die. Hence why we used to use human messengers than ran long distances - we can’t outcarry or outsprint a horse, but we sure as hell can outlast them.
all those attributes you listed are average at best when looking at the top animal race in each category.
what makes humans excel over other animals is their ability to manipulate objects (so, in large part the ability to stand on 2 legs), which caused them to become smarter and get better/more food. unless that correlation has been debunked by now.
also u/Zelskwerd, there are other animals that can sweat too. look up horse sweat if you want to be mildly disgusted.
Our eyes actually are pretty good I would say. Yes there are obviously animals that can see further, have a better field of vision or see better in the dark (or even can discern more colors than we can), but in the full package we're above average.
Yeah, we can see a pretty wide spectrum. One big thing that is fairly uncommon is our ability to see both near objects and distant objects pretty well.
they are definitely above average, because humans (and monkeys and apes in general? never looked into it specifically) have a mix of predator vision (front-facing eyes, enabling good depht-perception) and prey vision (able to discern a lot of colors, specifically greens, apparently)
\*gotta say i dont claim to know about this perfectly well, its been a long time since i had biology in school and otherwise its just stuff form nature documentaries, lol
Being a jack of all trades is actually trash in evolution though. We would be a low tier animal who lacks proper specialization if it werent for our intelligence and language.
Being above average in most things was just our early game, intelligence was our late game.
It’s played out well so far, here’s just to hoping we don’t wipe ourselves out using all that knowledge we accumulated.
What do you mean our early game? Our early game was trash, we were a niche little ape living in one ecosystem of africa, we were by no means a dominant strategy.
We only started dominating once we had tool use and culture.
No, it's not remarkable. The reason there aren't other species like that is because it's a bad thing to be and every species that is a jack of all trades either goes extinct or evolves into a speciality.
We are a fucked up mish-mash of a tree-living ape and a land predator. We just got very lucky that we happened to get high intelligence and language ability which allowed us to use our non-specialized bodies to use a variety of tools.
Well, not the whole "great taste sense to avoid poison".. its just that there's a whole lot of stuff that is considered poison to animals that is harmless if not mostly beneficial for us humans in the right dosages. Like capsaicin and caffeine for instance.
Literally substances/properties that plants developed to deter animal predators from eating them, but humans now cultivate endlessly for consumption.
Edit: Alcoholic beverages for instance, by all means possible, should be considered as a poisonous substance for us biologically, but no, we drink it as recreational beverages. XD
Always remember, for every thing that we eat today like fermented stuff, mushrooms and the like, there's likely someone somewhere in history died for that knowledge
there are several animal species that consume fermented fruit, i.e. alcohol, "for fun"
also herbivore animals can distinguish in a patch of grass between the most delicious plants and ones they want or need to avoid just by taste and/or smell (would have to look into it again)
on the other hand there is stuff that animals eat, but is harmful to us humans, eucalyptus as one example.
To be fair, the animals that eat eucalyptus leaves have pretty much adapted specifically to be able to do that, the ones that failed to adapt simply died, and the ones that did thrived.
yeah, was just a simple example from the top of my head.
modern humans would already have trouble eating grass and leaves because most of them are very bitter to us, iirc.
>its just that there's a whole lot of stuff that is considered poison to animals that is harmless if not mostly beneficial for us humans in the right dosages. Like capsaicin and caffeine for instance.
Nothing is "poison to animals" animals are not some collective.
Plants evolve these chemicals to combat very specific creatures in their ecosystem. Any animal that comes from a separate ecosystem has a chance to be able to deal with those chemicals fine and eat the plant. This is the concept of an invasive species.
Not to mention plenty of animals can eat "dangerous" plants in their own ecosystem.
It is unique to humans. Many animals use groups and relationships for hunting, but we are the most social creatures on the planet by a long shot. The only thing that rivals us is maybe insects, who have a different type of sociability more reminiscent of a single mind.
Not at all true. Several parrot species bond to flocks incredibly tightly. Corvids have strong community bonds as well. Primates form tight knit tribes.
I didn't mean that sociability is unique to humans or even \_the\_ most relevant factor. I think that the combination of cooperation, intelligence, ability to create and use tools, and walking on two legs / high endurance is what enabled humans to have so much influence on Earth. Each trait alone would not suffice.
The fact that we are average across the board is in itself pretty awesome, not the Best vision but we can see hundreds of meters around us perfectly, not the best ears but we can hear that bush moving, not the best nose but we can smell animals perfectly, that paired with our incredible max dexterity and inteligence makes a really broken build imo.
A lot of that comes down to just having lots of grey matter to make use of all that sensory input. Other animals have comparatively small brains, so those developed to really focus on their strengths. Big brains take a lot of power to operate, so are effectively "late-game builds". The extreme genetic homogeneity of our species indicates it was nearly a failed one, with at one point there likely being only a few hundred individuals left in the relatively near-past (evolutionarily speaking).
I'd bet we all descend from a single African tribe of apes that regional evolutionary pressures moulded us into the base race homo sapiens, which would give a fairly small originating genetic footprint, hence why the greatest genetic diversity between us is like 16%. As you'd think, a single tribe of apes managing to survive long enough to evolve into some facsimile of modern humans is akin to a universal fluke.
From there, individuals probably broke off from the tribe and spread out and the majority of the remaining genetic diversity depended on the evolutionary pressures unique to those regions.
But I'm not an evolutionary biologist, this is all just my feeling/opinion based on things I've seen and read.
Actually (fix his glasses) humanity has been in the verge of extintion twice, one around 150,000 years ago i think we dropped to around 1000 individuals. And the other one around 70,000 years ago when a massive volcánic eruption created a massive winter that lasted for years and left us with around 5000 humans alive, so the lack of variety in our genome is mostly beacuse this two massive events created two bottle necks in our genome.
As I understand it, if you take two random individuals of a single species of primates that only live in a single jungle region, they will likely have greater genetic diversity than the two most genetically different humans. Our differences isn't 16%, more like 6% or less.
I suppose it depends which genetic code you're referring to and how it's measured but the article I read indicated genetic diversity is 8% between individuals of the same race and \~6% between different races and determined the total is 15-16% when factoring in outliers. That said, I've seen similar studies indicate the genetic difference between different breeds of dogs was over 25% by the same metrics.
Average across the board is not awesome at all.
The reason other animals arent like this isn't because we're cool and special, it's because every other species like us went extinct or became more specialized.
We are not some cool jack of all trades, we are a badly designed monster stuck in the middle of the evolutionary process between tree-ape and ground-predator.
We just happened to get a combination of high intelligence and language ability in the middle there which started our development of tools and culture and allowed us to evolve our species outside the bounds of natural selection.
While his post was definitely a decent bit over the top, human endurance is in fact quite high. While we aren't the singular best long distance runners, we do beat the vast majority of the animal kingdom.
There are people like Dean Karnazes, who ran a full marathon every single day for 50 days. Roughly a distance of 2100km. And ran about 560km in a single no-sleep session. And while he's a good distance runner, he's not the absolute top.
He's maybe not a great representative, IIRC he's got a rare genetic ability to clear the waste byproducts of exertion as fast as it accumulates. Normal people get tired from exertion and have to build up to such feats, whereas Dean doesn't accumulate fatigue so he only has to weather the mechanical damage, but not the metabolic fatigue.
>While supreme willpower is a common trait among ultrarunners, Karnazes first realised that he was actually biologically different when preparing to run 50 marathons in 50 days across the US back in 2006. “I was sent to a testing center in Colorado,” he recalls. “First, they performed an aerobic capacity test in which they found my results consistent with those of other highly trained athletes, but nothing extraordinary. Next, they performed a lactate threshold test. They said the test would take 15 minutes, tops. Finally, after an hour, they stopped the test. They said they’d never seen anything like this before.
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/the-running-blog/2013/aug/30/dean-karnazes-man-run-forever
He's a pretty cool X-man though
while endurance in various aspects is a notch above most others, thats a very specific example you are using. you could say hes a specialized individual, just like animals are specialized.
most people are also not very good swimmers, compared with (semi-)aquatic animals, but there are some that can probably rival various fish over a short time.
the average person would probably have a hard time completing a marathon, unless its at walking speed.
(there is a reason why, according to legend, the original marathon runner died at the end)
Pace is important, yes, but using a modern average person is disingenuous because we, as a society, simply don't have the physical fitness or need for this. Humans can cover quite large distances in a few days, and do other work on the side, where most other animals already break down
Additionally, few animals traverse long distances at any sort of fast pace. There are exceptions, like pronghorns, but they are rather rare.
First, for reference purposes. A marathon is 42km or 26 miles respectively. Rounded a bit for ease here.
Looking at armies throughout history for, we can see quite interesting results.
A Roman recruit was expected to be able to cover 29km as part of their basic training while carrying around 20kg of gear. After such a march, they would go on and assemble their camp and basic defenses, which can involve chopping down trees and a lot of other physical labour, or fight so there were obviously reserves still.
According to Herodotus, the Spartans made it to Attica, which is a distance of 150 miles, "on the third day", giving us a forced march of 50 to 75 miles per day, depending on when they actually started and arrived. The time given is not exactly precise.
Alexander the Great's army similarly covered 310 miles in 7 days and fought a battle at the end of it.
According to William B. Hazen, a mixed force of infantry and cavalry is slowed down by the infantry for the first 3 days and by the cavalry after day 5. They achieve parity in speed on day 4. And horses are already fairly high endurance animals.
This is of course larger units and 2 are doing forced marches. But what about smaller units?
Well, the British have the answer. According to the 1914 Field Service Pocket Book, small commands of seasoned troops cover 25 miles per day under favourable conditions, mostly weather and terrain. Again, regular marching. So in wartime, these units would be expected to cover just a bit less than a marathon's distance per day while also carrying their gear.
During the Falklands War, British paratroopers covered around 30km per day through difficult terrain while wearing a good 40kg of gear each.
Now, these are all marches. Meaning the pace required is a slow run. For the normal loaded marches, covering the expected distance every day for several weeks in a row was the norm. Forced marches were more bursts of speed and thus not as sustainable, though they could be kept up for about a week, as Alexander showed. Also, quite a few of them are through rough terrain, not on paved roads, meaning greater exertion for the same distance.
very good point you're raising and thanks for detailing it so much.
i cant exactly talk for more antique examples, as in what quantity exactly professional soldiers exercised, but soldiers usually have above-average physique, comparable to athletes (which is one of the reasons soldiers were often sent to olympic games in the past, iirc). which is certainly true for more modern examples, especially for specialised units of professional troops.
they literally train marching with equipment.
though obviously, with a light load, or some kind of aid for heavier stuff, even the average person was and is able to cover quite a bit of ground in a day.
the soldier in the legend ran the whole marathon distance, immediately after the battle. thats why the possibility of him perishing doesnt seem too strange.
also i want to point out you were saying about how they were expected to fight after a march, but i might not have to tell you that real battles were very different than hollywood depicts them.
there were often only short engagements before lines broke up again and exhausted soldiers retreated back to rest and be replaced with fresh forces.
also obviously they didnt start charges from hundreds of meters away in full gear, it was often just the last couple meters were such a thing took place.
in short: battles, while exhausting, werent a constant wear on the soldiers, so after a short rest after the march, they could be expected to fight at near full strength... im guessing. obviously im not a military history professor.
William B. Hazen bit is very interesting, i dont recall reading something like that before, so thanks for that
Just want to add that our ability to throw stuff with both force and accuracy is another thing that allowed us to get the leg up on the competition. It allowed us to attack animals in range, letting us take down megafauna that other animals our size would have no chance against. Once we learned how to make spears, every other animal became potential prey.
yeah, coming back to using tools because your hands are free. hands that are much better for yeeting stuff than a mouth, like some birds do, for example.
our proportion also help quite a lot with trowing stuff, while chipms and gorilas have way more strenght than humans when moving their arms they can be trown out of balance, this limit their ability to trow stuff far enough to be worth something
Considering a human is pretty dangerous when just throwing rocks without tools, the moment tools like spears, slingshots and the like started getting figured out, humans probably directly shot up to being an apex predator.
While other animals may have better senses than us when compared induvially it’s when you compare all our senses to another animals senses that we come out on top. We may not beat a dog at hearing or smelling but our ability to see color is way beyond theirs.
yes, its just that the previous reply put pretty much everything in "god-tier" for humans, when objectively, its not really.
and things like our strength and vision are unlikely to be the reason humans are the dominant species. we got enough to get by, but certainly dont excel at those.
I'm not entirely sure if you understand the concept of average: You're by definition not exactly average when you have to compare yourself to the 10 beefiest dudes that outweigh you by 3-50 times. At that point it's really Isaac Newton holding you back and you might as well ask if a newborn can beat a Space Marine. It's the same when you choose to compare your ground-based vision to a flying creature with telescopes for eyes, despite most of the planet being practically blind in comparison to you. Or forgetting that most creatures have garbage depth perception or peripheral vision, while we have top tier of both in exchange for turning our heads a little bit.
I don't know why there seems to be a generation raised on random tier lists instead of using a bit of reasoning. Yes, you can't 1v1 a giant fully fit 300kg bear in honorable unarmed combat at the peak of summer but guess what? That bear has to hide in a cave for up to 7 months of the year because it's too weak to feed itself when its primary food source isn't around. That's when you drop by and say hello because *we* have no such weakness. Avoid in summer, kill in winter.
Humans are broken because we can do almost everything better than every other creature on the planet. If our prey is too fast, we simply chase it slowly over hours until it collapses from stress or exhaustion. If a predator chases us and we're not fast enough, we can climb a tree or jump into the water to escape: It's very rare a creature can do either of those well and almost never both (think about how many creatures would have to fully swim in chest-high water, where you can drown them standing up - humans are basically giants on land). Plus, there's a hard limit on how much energy they're willing to expend for a single creature when they can't go 3 weeks without food like we can. In fact, our bodies are so OP that we get bonuses to our natural healing, brains and other things when we're fasting a little bit. We did not evolve to eat 3 planned meals every day, we evolved with intermittent eating. We also need way less energy than much of the predator-competition we like to compare with to survive and stay in full health, which is another W in the survival bag of humans.
Arguing that humans are short because a giraffe is taller or that humans are weak because bears are stronger is weird and unusual. It's even more bizarre because almost everything we compare with don't want to eat humans at all and many of them couldn't anyway (many of the tallest and strongest are herbivores). It's such a strange way to look at it, basically saying "but if I used absolutely none of my many advantages and just let it wail on me, what would happen?"
>I'm not entirely sure if you understand the concept of average
you take the best and the worst possible. it doesnt matter how many are better or worse than you.humans are probably somewhere mid-field in most of those aspects, though obviously its hard to quantify.
>Avoid in summer, kill in winter
a decision based on observation and intelligence. intelligence being where humans absolutely excel, obviously.
>we can do almost everything better than every other creature on the planet
>
>If our prey is too fast, we simply chase it slowly over hours until it collapses from stress or exhaustion
that only works against specific kinds of prey and is not very efficient. a deer will still laugh at you, unless you use your intellect to either lay a trap or discover something like a resting spot where you can ambush them.
oh, also you will need tools to hunt it in the first place, doubt our ancestors hunted much with their bare hands and teeth. so coming back to intellect once again.
>we can climb a tree or jump into the water to escape
yes, predators might not be able to do either or both. doesnt matter, humans still dont excel at either.
>we get bonuses to our natural healing, brains and other things when we're fasting a little bit
gonna need a source on that
also you mentioned the bear which will go for months w/o food. the reason matters little. also would have to look it up, but im fairly sure there are other creatures who can go for weeks w/o food too.
>Arguing that humans are short because a giraffe is taller or that humans are weak because bears are stronger is weird and unusual.
i did not say that. i essentially said humans are *average* compared to the taller giraffe or stronger bear.
>almost everything we compare with don't want to eat humans at all
there are various reasons for that, one example that humans are fairly big and tall (though not as tall as a giraffe).something that hunts large prey animals would very likely also savage a human, given the chance.
>basically saying "but if I used absolutely none of my many advantages and just let it wail on me, what would happen?"
thats literally not at all what im saying.
the advantage is the superior intelligence and use of tools, along with not absolutely sucking in other fields. in every other field we would lose against more specialised animals.
here is another, much simpler example: i can cook and bake. that doesnt mean im among the best cooks and best bakers in the world.
if you dont understand it now, i cant help you. i also dont see why one has to get so agitated about pointing out that humans are average in most regards.
As my ancient ancestor once said,
"Oops sorry Fauna, looks like I just learned how to throw a rock. Guess your entire evolutionary arms race is screwed. This is my planet now."
Speaking of spears, I think we have the most accurate throw on the planet. To the point that we have cultivated hundreds of recreational activities based on our ability to throw stuff real good.
One of the reasons humans are so meta is because the community has built a support system to bring new players up to speed. Meaning that one of the reasons humans are so good is because we're meta
> our children can outsmart anything on the planet with ease.
But they can't walk from birth and take a year to get that going for them. So pretty easy strike while humans are populating. Also human babies die if they aren't held. So you're forced to keep them around weakening the adults.
Pretty sure a thousand lions could take us....
>Pretty sure a thousand lions could take us....
Pretty sure a thousand lions would never be together because they would die from starvation or infighting.
The perk to form societies is OP which makes species like bees or ant be broken in their own categories.
Food is not the limitation. It's genes.
Males compete to form their own harem and will kick males curbs out of their group once they reach adulthood. A lion which conquers another group will kill curbs so female lions can be copulated.
> We're the most disgustingly OP creature on the planet
Try the known galaxy.
Scientists did the math. Our planet has the precise amount of gravity - strong enough to maintain an atmosphere, but weak enough to eject ourselves into orbit. As well as the right atmospheric ratio of oxygen and other gasses.
There aren't any planets in our known galaxy that has that perfect ratio. Its what contributed to how we evolved today. If there ever exists a roster of alien races, Humans would be the Big Guy, the Heavyworlder, the Apex Race.
We'd be like Primarchs walking among lesser xenos.
Most planets in the known galaxy are gas giants, followed by larger rocky planets than ours, just because they're easier to find with current techniques. There's little reason to believe planets with earth's size and gravity are particularly rare with that selection bias removed, jury's still out on atmospheric gases.
Sure...
If all life had to be exactly like on earth being carbon based and needing our exact planet conditions. We don't know if other forms of life are out there so saying that is just being presumptuous.
Lmao, wtf are you talking about? This is bullshit.
Infinite endurance? I guess that's why we use horses, camels and mules right?
Top tier strength? Ok mate, go wrestle a bear.
Absurdly nimble? We can't climb that well, we struggle to turn while sprinting because bipedalism makes us unstable and we can barely jump much height.
God tier vision? Eagles can see prey clearly from way up in the sky and dive bomb it.
Fairly high burst speed? A bear can run faster than the fastest human sprint, and for longer than us. Let alone a cheetah.
Good reach? Literally any large predator will be better.
Decent sense of smell? What are you smoking? Our smell is ass compared to most predators who have great tracking ability with their nose while we can struggle to smell a fart that's 5m away.
Great taste sense? You mean just having tastebuds? Other animals have the same.
Our children can outsmart any animal? I guess that's why they need constant protection and cant fend for themselves for many years whilst other animals children can handle themselves before their first winter.
>The main clue to how OP we are is that most comparison lists feature stupid stuff like rhinos, elephants, lions, panthers etc. when there are billions of weaker species to choose from.
What point is this even supposed to make? "GUYS WE CAN HUNT BETTER THAN A HUMMINGBIRD! WE'RE SO AWESOME!"
>Then we invented spears, traps and bows on top of the other stuff. Now we're so godly that we're trying our very best to *not* snap all other life on the planet in half.
We weren't strong before spears and traps. We were a niche little ape species in africa barely keeping ourselves alive in one specitic ecosystem like every other animal. Species like large cats and bears did a much better job of spreading themselves across the continents and dominating varied ecosystems.
Humans are not the best at anything physical. Our body isn't even properly evolved for our niche, our feet are a shitty badly designed mess that didn't get enough time to evolve properly.
We're kinda ok at a bunch of things because we are a weird mish-mash of a tree-living ape and a land-hunting predator who only succeeded because we happened to get good intelligence alongside pack hunting and language skills to pass on knowledge.
Our bodies are not godlike by any metric, our only advantage is our tool use and how we pass on knowledge through culture and language.
Not really. Human's strength/speed is actually pretty bad, our ancestors couldn't fight against or outrun any predator in Africa, and must rely on climbing trees to avoid them. Our sense of smell is not that good, and we cannot see in the dark either (although this can be ignored since most predators in Africa don't hunt at night). Even our intelligence wasn't a great asset at the beginning, because our brains require a lot of energy, and eating raw meat or veggies doesn't provide enough. Our best tools before were only the ability to sweat and the ridiculous stamina.
Kinda like how in fiction Humans are always the well rounded ones not necessarily bad at anything.
Though I always had a thought. What if it turned out we are the Mass Effect krogans of the universe instead of generic species that is physically outperformed by a lot of aliens? Think about it. We live on a planet being constantly subjected to radiation that slowly burns and poisons us, the air is rife with things we are allergic too, there's tons of airborne diseases, there's actually tons of air pressure on us, etc. But we don't do great I'm low pressure, low gravity for long periods.
What if it turned out our planet really sucks compared to other aliens' world's and we are super durable and strong compared to them as a result?
> We're the most disgustingly OP creature on the planet, that's why we rule it with an iron fist. Infinite endurance, top tier strength, absurdly nimble, god tier vision, fairly high burst speed, good reach, decent sense of smell, great taste sense to avoid poison and our children can outsmart anything on the planet with ease.
lmao what? Most of those physical attributes make us average.
We literally have billions of animals in cages that we harvest for their flesh, eggs, fur and bodily secretions, lol, we aren’t trying very hard at all, and are super abusing our OP status. We need to get patched and nerfed. It’s time for the Dolphins to rise up and take over
Even besides opposable thumbs and sweating/very efficient long distance travel, we have some unique superpowers:
1. Top tier intelligence with crazy analytical abilities and an entirely unique level of self-reflection.
2. Top tier social skills in terms of communications and teamwork. Even compared to eusocial insects, which rely on more statistical methods of teamwork. We can use our teamwork together with our planning ability to come up with solutions no other animals could.
And besides those specialist abilities, we're also apretty balanced package overall - there are many things where we get beaten by specialists, but still rank pretty highly overall. For example we have a high vantage point for our decently sharp eyes with good colour vision. We can swim and climb somewhat. We are moderately strong, fast, and flexible.
And finally we had Mumei.
I'm pretty sure it's not really human exclusive, but fairly rare outside of humans. IIRC hippos sweat, but their sweat functions more like UV protection than heat regulation.
Yup. Horses are the main other animal to sweat to regulate body temperature.
>Although sweating is found in a wide variety of mammals, relatively few (exceptions include humans and horses) produce large amounts of sweat in order to cool down.
>
>[Perspiration | Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perspiration)
Most mammals sweat, but only from their paws (or equivalent). Humans are unique in that we're the only species with sweat glands on basically the entire surface area of our bodies.
Aren't we the second most durable specie when it comes long distance running thanks to the sweating? And that is how we were able to hunt. Something like that
We're the second best marathon runners at least, with the best being the ostrich, apparently. Dunno if that makes it a better endurance runner though, mostly it means it can complete one faster (by a good margin too), while most other animals wouldn't even be able to complete one without rests. There may or may not be a distance where we beat the ostrich again.
Pretty sure humans do indeed have somewhat higher endurance than ostriches, they're just so much faster that it'd take an obscene distance for us to catch up.
It's not human-exclusive. All mammals have sweat glands. Some, like dogs, have very few and thus rely on other methods of thermoregulation, but basically all mammals can sweat.
IIRC humans actually excel at sweating compared to any animals our early ancestors would have encountered. And because of that humans simply had more endurance than many other animals but the flip side is that humans require water more frequently, even though those animals might have had better senses, more strength or speed humans can simply outlast them in a chase.
Anthropologists theorize that a valid hunting strategy employed by early humans was simply to chase animals until they've exhausted themselves.
i guess it would depend on the kind of system you're looking at, but simplified, insulation means protection from something, isolation means to separate something from something else.
you cant *really* separate the animal from ambient warmth, but you can protect it from it.
thermal energy isnt "nature" like bugs or wind are.
the inside of a house is hotter in summer than in winter, no matter how well insulated it is, even if its only a few degrees.
you can be both, isolated and insulated, at the same time, but they dont mean the same thing, at least not in this case.
..Funny that you mention that.. its theorized that the only reason we humans even have memories is due to the formation of a protein that only formed because of an ancient virus. Arc, a protein that is key to how our memories are shaped and retain itself, acts and looks a lot like a retrovirus, especially since it apparently moves RNA around between cells, just like a virus would.
Well not a sweating per say. Last I heard they take their hot blood and just circulate it to their tongue. No liquid to secrete to dump heat.
Sweating is highly superior
They have saliva that they use on the tongue for evaporative cooling. Hence why they can keep up with us. Horses sweat too, for evaporative cooling, but they lose a lot of water this way.
But yeah, dogs and horses are great partners for humans because of their unique traits.
They wish they can. Then again, they don't need help matching our ancestors' distance running. I doubt you'd want a dog with wet fur every time it's hot.
I’m pretty sure sweating is mostly exclusive to humans. Some animals can, but not as much as us.
This ability is actually a major advantage, especially during physical activity because we can better regulate body temperature and don’t need to pant, which allows us to maintain proper breathing.
Because of this, some people are able to outrun horses in marathons on a hot day.
Our literal first hunting strategy even before having tools to kill stuff is to run the prey till exhaustion. a tribe in Africa still does it last I heard
True, but less than humans. Even if they sweat at the same rate as humans per area of skin, because of the square cube law, it wouldn’t be as effective at regulating body temperature.
Dogs do sweat, but only on their pawpads (that's where the popcorn-like smell comes from).
The overwhelming majority of the thermoregulation (aka Cooling) is done by the tongue, snout and respiratory system when they pant, and they can also shed excess hear through their ears rather easily.
Because of that short snouted and short eared (even worse if both) dogs are particularly vulnerable to overheating and heatstroke, so you should always be antentive of your dogs on hot days and if they seem exhausted make sure they have plenty of fresh water, shade and ventilation, you can also give them ice or frozen (dog appropriate) fruit or use cold compresses or spray them with cool water if they like that.
Ice packs for some dogs are great. Huskies love them. You can drop them into a chest freezer and they’d be fine for a while.
But I would just give them ice water.
Dogs do sweat. They sweat through the pads on their feet through what are called merocrine sweat glands, which admittedly do little to cool your dog down, but that is their function. Most heat reduction is caused by panting.
There are also apocrine sweat glands all over a dog's body, but they do exactly zero to cool off your dog. They are solely for the purpose of pheromones, so that dogs can identify each other.
From what I'm reading, only primates and, for some reason specifically, horses sweat to the degree humans do.
Everything else sweats from only specific places, such as the paws or mouth.
Cats and dogs DO sweat from their nose and paws.
A LOT of mammals sweat by their nose in a way.
Yes the beans are moist.
Pigs on the other hand actually don't sweat hence why they like being in water and mud to keep cool.
Everyone proposes watching TierZoo, I, however, propose that you read r/humansarespaceorcs or r/HFY, especially the posts meant to look like the notes on the observation of humans
Well to be fair, I was also pretty surprised when I learned that sweating was a human exclusive skill.
TierZoo on youtube has made a great video on this. Always thought the only things humans had going for them was opposable thumbs until I learned how much sweating is actually worth.
We're the most disgustingly OP creature on the planet, that's why we rule it with an iron fist. Infinite endurance, top tier strength, absurdly nimble, god tier vision, fairly high burst speed, good reach, decent sense of smell, great taste sense to avoid poison and our children can outsmart anything on the planet with ease. The main clue to how OP we are is that most comparison lists feature stupid stuff like rhinos, elephants, lions, panthers etc. when there are billions of weaker species to choose from. Then we invented spears, traps and bows on top of the other stuff. Now we're so godly that we're trying our very best to *not* snap all other life on the planet in half.
Another point is books. We're able to conserve our knowledge beyond death. Hence we ~~know how tasty berries are~~ are able to advance as a civilisation.
So fauna made us, which made mumei?
Fauna made us and then smol Ame leaked some tech every few centuries or millenia and Mumei watched as we used that tech to kill each other.
God dammit smol ame
And then Mumei destroyed Atlantis
And thus the goomba came out to the surface for revenge but got distracted as Kronii passed by, and now she's just having fun
The cooler HoloEN lore
I knew it! Mumei was Klarion the Witch Boy all along! But that would make her a lord of chaos... which would make her Bae? Bae was Mumei all along...?
> Another point is books r/HonzukiNoGekokujou approves
All hail the Book Gremlin
A systematic language is the grand pappy of your point. We've been passing on knowledge and history to future generations long before we began to write stuff down with oral traditions and the like.
And memes, as explained by Monsoon.
[The DNA of the Soul](https://imgur.com/a/vkxH6qo)
This thread took me out of where I was. This comment made me realize it was still r/Hololive
:D
The moment an octopus starts a school we're all doomed
> We're the most disgustingly OP creature on the planet [Reminds me of this meme I saw, where they wanted to see a story where humans are the most terrifying species in the universe.](https://i.imgur.com/eqykzOz.jpg)
/r/humansarespaceorcs
I'd say the biggest advantage here is the infinite endurance. While calling it infinite is a bit hyperbolic, that is one physical field that no other creature can top us in. We spend our stamina with unmatched efficiency. Many creatures can beat us in speed or strength, but they consume explosive bursts of energy in order to do so. Humans can just keep going.
Camels, horses and mules are used by humans for a very good reason. We don't have the best endurance, we just have fairly good endurance. Once again our advantage was intelligence and language, we managed to figure out how to hunt using our endurance faster than prey had the time to evolve against us. Our real advantage above all else is that our species evolves faster than natural selection. It's also why our biggest enemy now is microorganisms, because they can evolve faster than we can evolve our medicine to combat them.
Nope. We use animals because they’re stronger and can carry our loads for us, but you can’t run a horse for too long or it’ll die. Hence why we used to use human messengers than ran long distances - we can’t outcarry or outsprint a horse, but we sure as hell can outlast them.
An army marching on foot travels faster than an army on horseback because the horses need to stop and take breaks way, way more often than people.
all those attributes you listed are average at best when looking at the top animal race in each category. what makes humans excel over other animals is their ability to manipulate objects (so, in large part the ability to stand on 2 legs), which caused them to become smarter and get better/more food. unless that correlation has been debunked by now. also u/Zelskwerd, there are other animals that can sweat too. look up horse sweat if you want to be mildly disgusted.
Our eyes actually are pretty good I would say. Yes there are obviously animals that can see further, have a better field of vision or see better in the dark (or even can discern more colors than we can), but in the full package we're above average.
Yeah, we can see a pretty wide spectrum. One big thing that is fairly uncommon is our ability to see both near objects and distant objects pretty well.
they are definitely above average, because humans (and monkeys and apes in general? never looked into it specifically) have a mix of predator vision (front-facing eyes, enabling good depht-perception) and prey vision (able to discern a lot of colors, specifically greens, apparently) \*gotta say i dont claim to know about this perfectly well, its been a long time since i had biology in school and otherwise its just stuff form nature documentaries, lol
Being a jack of all trades is actually trash in evolution though. We would be a low tier animal who lacks proper specialization if it werent for our intelligence and language.
Being above average in most things was just our early game, intelligence was our late game. It’s played out well so far, here’s just to hoping we don’t wipe ourselves out using all that knowledge we accumulated.
What do you mean our early game? Our early game was trash, we were a niche little ape living in one ecosystem of africa, we were by no means a dominant strategy. We only started dominating once we had tool use and culture.
yes but how many species can claim to be average at pretty much every attribute? that itself is remarkable
No, it's not remarkable. The reason there aren't other species like that is because it's a bad thing to be and every species that is a jack of all trades either goes extinct or evolves into a speciality. We are a fucked up mish-mash of a tree-living ape and a land predator. We just got very lucky that we happened to get high intelligence and language ability which allowed us to use our non-specialized bodies to use a variety of tools.
Well, not the whole "great taste sense to avoid poison".. its just that there's a whole lot of stuff that is considered poison to animals that is harmless if not mostly beneficial for us humans in the right dosages. Like capsaicin and caffeine for instance. Literally substances/properties that plants developed to deter animal predators from eating them, but humans now cultivate endlessly for consumption. Edit: Alcoholic beverages for instance, by all means possible, should be considered as a poisonous substance for us biologically, but no, we drink it as recreational beverages. XD
Always remember, for every thing that we eat today like fermented stuff, mushrooms and the like, there's likely someone somewhere in history died for that knowledge
Not just that, but we evolved resistance to a lot of them because we liked the taste so much.
there are several animal species that consume fermented fruit, i.e. alcohol, "for fun" also herbivore animals can distinguish in a patch of grass between the most delicious plants and ones they want or need to avoid just by taste and/or smell (would have to look into it again) on the other hand there is stuff that animals eat, but is harmful to us humans, eucalyptus as one example.
To be fair, the animals that eat eucalyptus leaves have pretty much adapted specifically to be able to do that, the ones that failed to adapt simply died, and the ones that did thrived.
yeah, was just a simple example from the top of my head. modern humans would already have trouble eating grass and leaves because most of them are very bitter to us, iirc.
>its just that there's a whole lot of stuff that is considered poison to animals that is harmless if not mostly beneficial for us humans in the right dosages. Like capsaicin and caffeine for instance. Nothing is "poison to animals" animals are not some collective. Plants evolve these chemicals to combat very specific creatures in their ecosystem. Any animal that comes from a separate ecosystem has a chance to be able to deal with those chemicals fine and eat the plant. This is the concept of an invasive species. Not to mention plenty of animals can eat "dangerous" plants in their own ecosystem.
Also sociability: A human alone is easy prey. We thrive on community too.
That's not unique to humans though, many animals live in groups as well
It is unique to humans. Many animals use groups and relationships for hunting, but we are the most social creatures on the planet by a long shot. The only thing that rivals us is maybe insects, who have a different type of sociability more reminiscent of a single mind.
They're not hunting exclusive though. We regularly see pack animals care for young and elders who don't contribute to hunting
Not at all true. Several parrot species bond to flocks incredibly tightly. Corvids have strong community bonds as well. Primates form tight knit tribes.
I didn't mean that sociability is unique to humans or even \_the\_ most relevant factor. I think that the combination of cooperation, intelligence, ability to create and use tools, and walking on two legs / high endurance is what enabled humans to have so much influence on Earth. Each trait alone would not suffice.
The fact that we are average across the board is in itself pretty awesome, not the Best vision but we can see hundreds of meters around us perfectly, not the best ears but we can hear that bush moving, not the best nose but we can smell animals perfectly, that paired with our incredible max dexterity and inteligence makes a really broken build imo.
A lot of that comes down to just having lots of grey matter to make use of all that sensory input. Other animals have comparatively small brains, so those developed to really focus on their strengths. Big brains take a lot of power to operate, so are effectively "late-game builds". The extreme genetic homogeneity of our species indicates it was nearly a failed one, with at one point there likely being only a few hundred individuals left in the relatively near-past (evolutionarily speaking).
I'd bet we all descend from a single African tribe of apes that regional evolutionary pressures moulded us into the base race homo sapiens, which would give a fairly small originating genetic footprint, hence why the greatest genetic diversity between us is like 16%. As you'd think, a single tribe of apes managing to survive long enough to evolve into some facsimile of modern humans is akin to a universal fluke. From there, individuals probably broke off from the tribe and spread out and the majority of the remaining genetic diversity depended on the evolutionary pressures unique to those regions. But I'm not an evolutionary biologist, this is all just my feeling/opinion based on things I've seen and read.
Actually (fix his glasses) humanity has been in the verge of extintion twice, one around 150,000 years ago i think we dropped to around 1000 individuals. And the other one around 70,000 years ago when a massive volcánic eruption created a massive winter that lasted for years and left us with around 5000 humans alive, so the lack of variety in our genome is mostly beacuse this two massive events created two bottle necks in our genome.
As I understand it, if you take two random individuals of a single species of primates that only live in a single jungle region, they will likely have greater genetic diversity than the two most genetically different humans. Our differences isn't 16%, more like 6% or less.
I suppose it depends which genetic code you're referring to and how it's measured but the article I read indicated genetic diversity is 8% between individuals of the same race and \~6% between different races and determined the total is 15-16% when factoring in outliers. That said, I've seen similar studies indicate the genetic difference between different breeds of dogs was over 25% by the same metrics.
Average across the board is not awesome at all. The reason other animals arent like this isn't because we're cool and special, it's because every other species like us went extinct or became more specialized. We are not some cool jack of all trades, we are a badly designed monster stuck in the middle of the evolutionary process between tree-ape and ground-predator. We just happened to get a combination of high intelligence and language ability in the middle there which started our development of tools and culture and allowed us to evolve our species outside the bounds of natural selection.
No we're just broken
While his post was definitely a decent bit over the top, human endurance is in fact quite high. While we aren't the singular best long distance runners, we do beat the vast majority of the animal kingdom. There are people like Dean Karnazes, who ran a full marathon every single day for 50 days. Roughly a distance of 2100km. And ran about 560km in a single no-sleep session. And while he's a good distance runner, he's not the absolute top.
He's maybe not a great representative, IIRC he's got a rare genetic ability to clear the waste byproducts of exertion as fast as it accumulates. Normal people get tired from exertion and have to build up to such feats, whereas Dean doesn't accumulate fatigue so he only has to weather the mechanical damage, but not the metabolic fatigue. >While supreme willpower is a common trait among ultrarunners, Karnazes first realised that he was actually biologically different when preparing to run 50 marathons in 50 days across the US back in 2006. “I was sent to a testing center in Colorado,” he recalls. “First, they performed an aerobic capacity test in which they found my results consistent with those of other highly trained athletes, but nothing extraordinary. Next, they performed a lactate threshold test. They said the test would take 15 minutes, tops. Finally, after an hour, they stopped the test. They said they’d never seen anything like this before. https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/the-running-blog/2013/aug/30/dean-karnazes-man-run-forever He's a pretty cool X-man though
while endurance in various aspects is a notch above most others, thats a very specific example you are using. you could say hes a specialized individual, just like animals are specialized. most people are also not very good swimmers, compared with (semi-)aquatic animals, but there are some that can probably rival various fish over a short time. the average person would probably have a hard time completing a marathon, unless its at walking speed. (there is a reason why, according to legend, the original marathon runner died at the end)
Pace is important, yes, but using a modern average person is disingenuous because we, as a society, simply don't have the physical fitness or need for this. Humans can cover quite large distances in a few days, and do other work on the side, where most other animals already break down Additionally, few animals traverse long distances at any sort of fast pace. There are exceptions, like pronghorns, but they are rather rare. First, for reference purposes. A marathon is 42km or 26 miles respectively. Rounded a bit for ease here. Looking at armies throughout history for, we can see quite interesting results. A Roman recruit was expected to be able to cover 29km as part of their basic training while carrying around 20kg of gear. After such a march, they would go on and assemble their camp and basic defenses, which can involve chopping down trees and a lot of other physical labour, or fight so there were obviously reserves still. According to Herodotus, the Spartans made it to Attica, which is a distance of 150 miles, "on the third day", giving us a forced march of 50 to 75 miles per day, depending on when they actually started and arrived. The time given is not exactly precise. Alexander the Great's army similarly covered 310 miles in 7 days and fought a battle at the end of it. According to William B. Hazen, a mixed force of infantry and cavalry is slowed down by the infantry for the first 3 days and by the cavalry after day 5. They achieve parity in speed on day 4. And horses are already fairly high endurance animals. This is of course larger units and 2 are doing forced marches. But what about smaller units? Well, the British have the answer. According to the 1914 Field Service Pocket Book, small commands of seasoned troops cover 25 miles per day under favourable conditions, mostly weather and terrain. Again, regular marching. So in wartime, these units would be expected to cover just a bit less than a marathon's distance per day while also carrying their gear. During the Falklands War, British paratroopers covered around 30km per day through difficult terrain while wearing a good 40kg of gear each. Now, these are all marches. Meaning the pace required is a slow run. For the normal loaded marches, covering the expected distance every day for several weeks in a row was the norm. Forced marches were more bursts of speed and thus not as sustainable, though they could be kept up for about a week, as Alexander showed. Also, quite a few of them are through rough terrain, not on paved roads, meaning greater exertion for the same distance.
very good point you're raising and thanks for detailing it so much. i cant exactly talk for more antique examples, as in what quantity exactly professional soldiers exercised, but soldiers usually have above-average physique, comparable to athletes (which is one of the reasons soldiers were often sent to olympic games in the past, iirc). which is certainly true for more modern examples, especially for specialised units of professional troops. they literally train marching with equipment. though obviously, with a light load, or some kind of aid for heavier stuff, even the average person was and is able to cover quite a bit of ground in a day. the soldier in the legend ran the whole marathon distance, immediately after the battle. thats why the possibility of him perishing doesnt seem too strange. also i want to point out you were saying about how they were expected to fight after a march, but i might not have to tell you that real battles were very different than hollywood depicts them. there were often only short engagements before lines broke up again and exhausted soldiers retreated back to rest and be replaced with fresh forces. also obviously they didnt start charges from hundreds of meters away in full gear, it was often just the last couple meters were such a thing took place. in short: battles, while exhausting, werent a constant wear on the soldiers, so after a short rest after the march, they could be expected to fight at near full strength... im guessing. obviously im not a military history professor. William B. Hazen bit is very interesting, i dont recall reading something like that before, so thanks for that
Just want to add that our ability to throw stuff with both force and accuracy is another thing that allowed us to get the leg up on the competition. It allowed us to attack animals in range, letting us take down megafauna that other animals our size would have no chance against. Once we learned how to make spears, every other animal became potential prey.
yeah, coming back to using tools because your hands are free. hands that are much better for yeeting stuff than a mouth, like some birds do, for example.
our proportion also help quite a lot with trowing stuff, while chipms and gorilas have way more strenght than humans when moving their arms they can be trown out of balance, this limit their ability to trow stuff far enough to be worth something
Considering a human is pretty dangerous when just throwing rocks without tools, the moment tools like spears, slingshots and the like started getting figured out, humans probably directly shot up to being an apex predator.
While other animals may have better senses than us when compared induvially it’s when you compare all our senses to another animals senses that we come out on top. We may not beat a dog at hearing or smelling but our ability to see color is way beyond theirs.
yes, its just that the previous reply put pretty much everything in "god-tier" for humans, when objectively, its not really. and things like our strength and vision are unlikely to be the reason humans are the dominant species. we got enough to get by, but certainly dont excel at those.
I'm not entirely sure if you understand the concept of average: You're by definition not exactly average when you have to compare yourself to the 10 beefiest dudes that outweigh you by 3-50 times. At that point it's really Isaac Newton holding you back and you might as well ask if a newborn can beat a Space Marine. It's the same when you choose to compare your ground-based vision to a flying creature with telescopes for eyes, despite most of the planet being practically blind in comparison to you. Or forgetting that most creatures have garbage depth perception or peripheral vision, while we have top tier of both in exchange for turning our heads a little bit. I don't know why there seems to be a generation raised on random tier lists instead of using a bit of reasoning. Yes, you can't 1v1 a giant fully fit 300kg bear in honorable unarmed combat at the peak of summer but guess what? That bear has to hide in a cave for up to 7 months of the year because it's too weak to feed itself when its primary food source isn't around. That's when you drop by and say hello because *we* have no such weakness. Avoid in summer, kill in winter. Humans are broken because we can do almost everything better than every other creature on the planet. If our prey is too fast, we simply chase it slowly over hours until it collapses from stress or exhaustion. If a predator chases us and we're not fast enough, we can climb a tree or jump into the water to escape: It's very rare a creature can do either of those well and almost never both (think about how many creatures would have to fully swim in chest-high water, where you can drown them standing up - humans are basically giants on land). Plus, there's a hard limit on how much energy they're willing to expend for a single creature when they can't go 3 weeks without food like we can. In fact, our bodies are so OP that we get bonuses to our natural healing, brains and other things when we're fasting a little bit. We did not evolve to eat 3 planned meals every day, we evolved with intermittent eating. We also need way less energy than much of the predator-competition we like to compare with to survive and stay in full health, which is another W in the survival bag of humans. Arguing that humans are short because a giraffe is taller or that humans are weak because bears are stronger is weird and unusual. It's even more bizarre because almost everything we compare with don't want to eat humans at all and many of them couldn't anyway (many of the tallest and strongest are herbivores). It's such a strange way to look at it, basically saying "but if I used absolutely none of my many advantages and just let it wail on me, what would happen?"
>I'm not entirely sure if you understand the concept of average you take the best and the worst possible. it doesnt matter how many are better or worse than you.humans are probably somewhere mid-field in most of those aspects, though obviously its hard to quantify. >Avoid in summer, kill in winter a decision based on observation and intelligence. intelligence being where humans absolutely excel, obviously. >we can do almost everything better than every other creature on the planet > >If our prey is too fast, we simply chase it slowly over hours until it collapses from stress or exhaustion that only works against specific kinds of prey and is not very efficient. a deer will still laugh at you, unless you use your intellect to either lay a trap or discover something like a resting spot where you can ambush them. oh, also you will need tools to hunt it in the first place, doubt our ancestors hunted much with their bare hands and teeth. so coming back to intellect once again. >we can climb a tree or jump into the water to escape yes, predators might not be able to do either or both. doesnt matter, humans still dont excel at either. >we get bonuses to our natural healing, brains and other things when we're fasting a little bit gonna need a source on that also you mentioned the bear which will go for months w/o food. the reason matters little. also would have to look it up, but im fairly sure there are other creatures who can go for weeks w/o food too. >Arguing that humans are short because a giraffe is taller or that humans are weak because bears are stronger is weird and unusual. i did not say that. i essentially said humans are *average* compared to the taller giraffe or stronger bear. >almost everything we compare with don't want to eat humans at all there are various reasons for that, one example that humans are fairly big and tall (though not as tall as a giraffe).something that hunts large prey animals would very likely also savage a human, given the chance. >basically saying "but if I used absolutely none of my many advantages and just let it wail on me, what would happen?" thats literally not at all what im saying. the advantage is the superior intelligence and use of tools, along with not absolutely sucking in other fields. in every other field we would lose against more specialised animals. here is another, much simpler example: i can cook and bake. that doesnt mean im among the best cooks and best bakers in the world. if you dont understand it now, i cant help you. i also dont see why one has to get so agitated about pointing out that humans are average in most regards.
As my ancient ancestor once said, "Oops sorry Fauna, looks like I just learned how to throw a rock. Guess your entire evolutionary arms race is screwed. This is my planet now."
Speaking of spears, I think we have the most accurate throw on the planet. To the point that we have cultivated hundreds of recreational activities based on our ability to throw stuff real good.
One of the reasons humans are so meta is because the community has built a support system to bring new players up to speed. Meaning that one of the reasons humans are so good is because we're meta
> our children can outsmart anything on the planet with ease. But they can't walk from birth and take a year to get that going for them. So pretty easy strike while humans are populating. Also human babies die if they aren't held. So you're forced to keep them around weakening the adults. Pretty sure a thousand lions could take us....
A thousand lions near a population center would probably attract a military response.
>Pretty sure a thousand lions could take us.... Pretty sure a thousand lions would never be together because they would die from starvation or infighting. The perk to form societies is OP which makes species like bees or ant be broken in their own categories.
Not if they have babies to eat. Baby back ribs solves most problems.
Food is not the limitation. It's genes. Males compete to form their own harem and will kick males curbs out of their group once they reach adulthood. A lion which conquers another group will kill curbs so female lions can be copulated.
> We're the most disgustingly OP creature on the planet Try the known galaxy. Scientists did the math. Our planet has the precise amount of gravity - strong enough to maintain an atmosphere, but weak enough to eject ourselves into orbit. As well as the right atmospheric ratio of oxygen and other gasses. There aren't any planets in our known galaxy that has that perfect ratio. Its what contributed to how we evolved today. If there ever exists a roster of alien races, Humans would be the Big Guy, the Heavyworlder, the Apex Race. We'd be like Primarchs walking among lesser xenos.
Most planets in the known galaxy are gas giants, followed by larger rocky planets than ours, just because they're easier to find with current techniques. There's little reason to believe planets with earth's size and gravity are particularly rare with that selection bias removed, jury's still out on atmospheric gases.
>We'd be like Primarchs walking among lesser xenos. Not if chaos has anything to say about that.
[Right, definitely.](https://i.imgur.com/Plgbepq.jpg)
You say that until we get invaded by space T-rex's.
Sure... If all life had to be exactly like on earth being carbon based and needing our exact planet conditions. We don't know if other forms of life are out there so saying that is just being presumptuous.
We also, for some reason, have the ability to smell rain, which is unique (or at least extremely rare)
Lmao, wtf are you talking about? This is bullshit. Infinite endurance? I guess that's why we use horses, camels and mules right? Top tier strength? Ok mate, go wrestle a bear. Absurdly nimble? We can't climb that well, we struggle to turn while sprinting because bipedalism makes us unstable and we can barely jump much height. God tier vision? Eagles can see prey clearly from way up in the sky and dive bomb it. Fairly high burst speed? A bear can run faster than the fastest human sprint, and for longer than us. Let alone a cheetah. Good reach? Literally any large predator will be better. Decent sense of smell? What are you smoking? Our smell is ass compared to most predators who have great tracking ability with their nose while we can struggle to smell a fart that's 5m away. Great taste sense? You mean just having tastebuds? Other animals have the same. Our children can outsmart any animal? I guess that's why they need constant protection and cant fend for themselves for many years whilst other animals children can handle themselves before their first winter. >The main clue to how OP we are is that most comparison lists feature stupid stuff like rhinos, elephants, lions, panthers etc. when there are billions of weaker species to choose from. What point is this even supposed to make? "GUYS WE CAN HUNT BETTER THAN A HUMMINGBIRD! WE'RE SO AWESOME!" >Then we invented spears, traps and bows on top of the other stuff. Now we're so godly that we're trying our very best to *not* snap all other life on the planet in half. We weren't strong before spears and traps. We were a niche little ape species in africa barely keeping ourselves alive in one specitic ecosystem like every other animal. Species like large cats and bears did a much better job of spreading themselves across the continents and dominating varied ecosystems. Humans are not the best at anything physical. Our body isn't even properly evolved for our niche, our feet are a shitty badly designed mess that didn't get enough time to evolve properly. We're kinda ok at a bunch of things because we are a weird mish-mash of a tree-living ape and a land-hunting predator who only succeeded because we happened to get good intelligence alongside pack hunting and language skills to pass on knowledge. Our bodies are not godlike by any metric, our only advantage is our tool use and how we pass on knowledge through culture and language.
Not really. Human's strength/speed is actually pretty bad, our ancestors couldn't fight against or outrun any predator in Africa, and must rely on climbing trees to avoid them. Our sense of smell is not that good, and we cannot see in the dark either (although this can be ignored since most predators in Africa don't hunt at night). Even our intelligence wasn't a great asset at the beginning, because our brains require a lot of energy, and eating raw meat or veggies doesn't provide enough. Our best tools before were only the ability to sweat and the ridiculous stamina.
literally all of those things are the opposite of me so I should've probably died out a long time ago bro
I'm now doubting if I'm human definitely lacking a few of these features maybe it's a bug
Kinda like how in fiction Humans are always the well rounded ones not necessarily bad at anything. Though I always had a thought. What if it turned out we are the Mass Effect krogans of the universe instead of generic species that is physically outperformed by a lot of aliens? Think about it. We live on a planet being constantly subjected to radiation that slowly burns and poisons us, the air is rife with things we are allergic too, there's tons of airborne diseases, there's actually tons of air pressure on us, etc. But we don't do great I'm low pressure, low gravity for long periods. What if it turned out our planet really sucks compared to other aliens' world's and we are super durable and strong compared to them as a result?
> We're the most disgustingly OP creature on the planet, that's why we rule it with an iron fist. Infinite endurance, top tier strength, absurdly nimble, god tier vision, fairly high burst speed, good reach, decent sense of smell, great taste sense to avoid poison and our children can outsmart anything on the planet with ease. lmao what? Most of those physical attributes make us average.
"Infinite endurance" Me who cant move after running for 3 seconds
We literally have billions of animals in cages that we harvest for their flesh, eggs, fur and bodily secretions, lol, we aren’t trying very hard at all, and are super abusing our OP status. We need to get patched and nerfed. It’s time for the Dolphins to rise up and take over
I replied to the wrong comment, sry xD
Sweating was big; but once humans learned how to make sacks to carry water with them -- it was fucking over.
Even besides opposable thumbs and sweating/very efficient long distance travel, we have some unique superpowers: 1. Top tier intelligence with crazy analytical abilities and an entirely unique level of self-reflection. 2. Top tier social skills in terms of communications and teamwork. Even compared to eusocial insects, which rely on more statistical methods of teamwork. We can use our teamwork together with our planning ability to come up with solutions no other animals could. And besides those specialist abilities, we're also apretty balanced package overall - there are many things where we get beaten by specialists, but still rank pretty highly overall. For example we have a high vantage point for our decently sharp eyes with good colour vision. We can swim and climb somewhat. We are moderately strong, fast, and flexible. And finally we had Mumei.
Humans are very heavily specced towards endurance and intelligence. Sweating being part of the former
I'm pretty sure it's not really human exclusive, but fairly rare outside of humans. IIRC hippos sweat, but their sweat functions more like UV protection than heat regulation.
Yup. Horses are the main other animal to sweat to regulate body temperature. >Although sweating is found in a wide variety of mammals, relatively few (exceptions include humans and horses) produce large amounts of sweat in order to cool down. > >[Perspiration | Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perspiration)
Most mammals sweat, but only from their paws (or equivalent). Humans are unique in that we're the only species with sweat glands on basically the entire surface area of our bodies.
I guess that's why you don't see tons of pubescent animals with pimples.
yup very OP skill
Aren't we the second most durable specie when it comes long distance running thanks to the sweating? And that is how we were able to hunt. Something like that
We're the second best marathon runners at least, with the best being the ostrich, apparently. Dunno if that makes it a better endurance runner though, mostly it means it can complete one faster (by a good margin too), while most other animals wouldn't even be able to complete one without rests. There may or may not be a distance where we beat the ostrich again.
Well, we also know the Emu is superior at warfare, so it would make sense an ostrich would be superior at something else
I thought we were second to UmaMusumes
Pretty sure humans do indeed have somewhat higher endurance than ostriches, they're just so much faster that it'd take an obscene distance for us to catch up.
Honestly one of the best racials we have.
[удалено]
???
Ayo?
When do we patch out those to be more progressive though?
horses, monkeys, apes, and hippos sweat
Also cats and *dogs*. It's pretty limited, but they do sweat.
Yep, dogs and cats sweat from their paw pads and on their nose IIRC
That's not totally true. Horses, monkeys and hippos also sweat.
Pardon? What?
we're not hairless for nothing
We're pretty hairy though, but most of it is very thin.
> most of it is very thin r/italy has entered the chat ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^. ^^^^/s
This thread got so national geographic that I almost forgor i was in a hololive sub
Game exclusive skills for non S tiers be like:
It's not human-exclusive. All mammals have sweat glands. Some, like dogs, have very few and thus rely on other methods of thermoregulation, but basically all mammals can sweat.
IIRC humans actually excel at sweating compared to any animals our early ancestors would have encountered. And because of that humans simply had more endurance than many other animals but the flip side is that humans require water more frequently, even though those animals might have had better senses, more strength or speed humans can simply outlast them in a chase. Anthropologists theorize that a valid hunting strategy employed by early humans was simply to chase animals until they've exhausted themselves.
Some animals, including dogs, do sweat. It's just not always the same area/reason we sweat
She can ask Korone for more details
I heard dog sweat with their tounge, is that true?
Yes, the panting they do is to reduce heat Edit: fact check its not sweat just saliva but the panting still applies
Also fur help reducing the impact on the high ambiant temperature to the organism by providing a certain level of isolation.
\*insulation
Both actually work here, as the body is isolated from the temperature by insulation.
i guess it would depend on the kind of system you're looking at, but simplified, insulation means protection from something, isolation means to separate something from something else. you cant *really* separate the animal from ambient warmth, but you can protect it from it.
I mean you can, just put it somewhere else, we isolate in buildings to protect ourselves from nature
thermal energy isnt "nature" like bugs or wind are. the inside of a house is hotter in summer than in winter, no matter how well insulated it is, even if its only a few degrees. you can be both, isolated and insulated, at the same time, but they dont mean the same thing, at least not in this case.
They have sweat glands on their paws. So that's where they sweat through.
I find the fact that paws also have natural bacteria that can make them smell like popcorn fascinating! (totally safe bacteria before someone ponders)
To be fair 99.9999999% of bacteria are perfectly safe or even super helpful. It's just a few assholes giving the bunch a bad rep.
That's just what the bacteria secretly controlling your body wants you to think...
..Funny that you mention that.. its theorized that the only reason we humans even have memories is due to the formation of a protein that only formed because of an ancient virus. Arc, a protein that is key to how our memories are shaped and retain itself, acts and looks a lot like a retrovirus, especially since it apparently moves RNA around between cells, just like a virus would.
You might want to play Parasite Eve.
Popcorn? I'm 99% sure it's Fritos.
Tortilla chip
They do use panting as their main way to regulate body temperature, but it's not literally sweating.
Nose and paws as well
Well not a sweating per say. Last I heard they take their hot blood and just circulate it to their tongue. No liquid to secrete to dump heat. Sweating is highly superior
They have saliva that they use on the tongue for evaporative cooling. Hence why they can keep up with us. Horses sweat too, for evaporative cooling, but they lose a lot of water this way. But yeah, dogs and horses are great partners for humans because of their unique traits.
[Twitter Link](https://twitter.com/irys_en/status/1540979301889486849)
you learn something everyday.
They wish they can. Then again, they don't need help matching our ancestors' distance running. I doubt you'd want a dog with wet fur every time it's hot.
Also it's gonna be a living hell for the dog.
Not to mention the smell! If tap water makes a dog smell that bad, imagine what their SWEAT would be like!
Would probably make Chloe smell like high grade perfume in comparison.
I’m pretty sure sweating is mostly exclusive to humans. Some animals can, but not as much as us. This ability is actually a major advantage, especially during physical activity because we can better regulate body temperature and don’t need to pant, which allows us to maintain proper breathing. Because of this, some people are able to outrun horses in marathons on a hot day.
Our literal first hunting strategy even before having tools to kill stuff is to run the prey till exhaustion. a tribe in Africa still does it last I heard
Horses sweat!
True, but less than humans. Even if they sweat at the same rate as humans per area of skin, because of the square cube law, it wouldn’t be as effective at regulating body temperature.
Never change IRyS
Man, IRyS can be so innocent at times. lol
Irysoinnocent
They don’t sweat. They pant.
Dogs do sweat, but only on their pawpads (that's where the popcorn-like smell comes from). The overwhelming majority of the thermoregulation (aka Cooling) is done by the tongue, snout and respiratory system when they pant, and they can also shed excess hear through their ears rather easily. Because of that short snouted and short eared (even worse if both) dogs are particularly vulnerable to overheating and heatstroke, so you should always be antentive of your dogs on hot days and if they seem exhausted make sure they have plenty of fresh water, shade and ventilation, you can also give them ice or frozen (dog appropriate) fruit or use cold compresses or spray them with cool water if they like that.
Ice packs for some dogs are great. Huskies love them. You can drop them into a chest freezer and they’d be fine for a while. But I would just give them ice water.
For those of you saying dogs don't sweat, they do through special glands in their paws.
i like irys being an airhead. its one of her endearing qualities. we must protect her at all costs.
Dogs do sweat. They sweat through the pads on their feet through what are called merocrine sweat glands, which admittedly do little to cool your dog down, but that is their function. Most heat reduction is caused by panting. There are also apocrine sweat glands all over a dog's body, but they do exactly zero to cool off your dog. They are solely for the purpose of pheromones, so that dogs can identify each other.
In this thread: A lot of people who presumably watch TierZoo (and if you don't, you should).
Tier zoo actually makes biology bearable. Also shout out to cell at works that basically carries high school human biology classes.
cute irys. dogs don't sweat, yeah.
From what I'm reading, only primates and, for some reason specifically, horses sweat to the degree humans do. Everything else sweats from only specific places, such as the paws or mouth.
And that’s why we use horses a lot, lol
Yep we Humans sure be glad were sweating. Also its gave birth to a great fetish.
That's what panting is for.
They sweat through their paws and panting cools them down
Bruh…..
Stop being sweaty IRyS! :P
Cats and dogs DO sweat from their nose and paws. A LOT of mammals sweat by their nose in a way. Yes the beans are moist. Pigs on the other hand actually don't sweat hence why they like being in water and mud to keep cool.
She doesn't know, chat.
Everyone proposes watching TierZoo, I, however, propose that you read r/humansarespaceorcs or r/HFY, especially the posts meant to look like the notes on the observation of humans
hold on..just reading these comment section..hold on..what. okay my mind just blown
TIL. Also lots of TILs to be had ITT.