Saturday, April 25, 2009

Evolution of the Long Distance Runner





Humans' ability to run is unique among primates.

Why running? Because that's how we killed our food.





This explains why they don't run the Iditarod in August.


Here's how I understand this story.








1. Because my toes are too long.

[Image Credit (upper): Constantina Dita-Tomescu]




  1. As a former runner (now jogger...) the sentence you quoted "Humans, scientists say, are built for speed – or, at least, endurance" struck me as a contradiction. Most sprinters are hopeless at long distance and vice versa, with key differences being their muscle mass and fibre, and the type of cardiovascular training involved.

    (Reading past this, I realised he is talking about other aspects of anatomy and about long distance running.)

  2. The part about quadrupeds' insides sloshing around is what got to me. Where is he getting this idea of piston-like soft tissue movements in the majority of terrestrial mammals? Horses are the obvious counter-example, but I'm sure there are many, many others. In fact, I'd really like to see the study that demonstrates a single individual large-bodied mammalian quadruped with an internally-sloshing viscera and resulting overheating problems.


  4. "Bipedalism -- It is often stated that human locomotion was an adaptation to running on the open plains, which is illustrated by expressions such as 'Savannahstan', 'endurance running', 'born to run', 'le singe coureur' etc., even on the cover of the most influential scientific journals. Verhaegen et al. (2007) disproved in detail all endurance running arguments (Bramble & Lieberman, 2004) that our Homo ancestors during most of the Pleistocene were adapted to running over open plains. When we analyse human locomotion into more elementary components, the running 'explanation' appears to be a just-so interpre­tation (cherry-picking): Bramble & Lieberman (2004) interpret every locomotor trait in humans as having evolved 'for' running, without even considering possible wading or swimming scenarios. A comparative approach shows that, for each trait, semi-aquatic scenarios provide more parsimonious explanations (Table 4 in Verhaegen et al. 2007 google ‘econiche Homo’), and that extant human running is a secondary and conspicuously imperfect adaptation which evolved late in the human past, for instance, we run maximally 32 km/hr over short and 20 km/hr over long distances, about half as fast as typical open plain mammals." (Hum.Evol.28:237-266, 2013).

    Human Evolution soon publishes in 2 special editions the proceedings of the symposium on human waterside evolution 'Human Evolution: Past, Present & Future' in London 8-10 May 2013:
    SPECIAL EDITION PART 1 (end 2013)
    Introduction - Peter Rhys-Evans
    SPECIAL EDITION PART 2 (begin 2014) with 12 contributions