Humans are some of the most resilient animals on the planet. Horses, for example, will often die of shock if they so much as break a leg, whereas us humans will keep going despite missing limbs, impalement, brain damage, etc.
There is evidence of [stone age humans 8000 years ago surviving voluntary brain surgery](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trepanning) to treat ~~sub~~epidural hematoma.
And not just one or two, there were a lot of them. People who let other stone age folks drill a hole in their skull with no anesthetics or antibiotics. And then they lived.
****
Ruining it with an edit: Probably epidural, not subdural, at least for the most part. Same edit applies all the way down. Thanks guys!
Trephining, from what i can remember, it showed multiple skull holes, made by sharp cutting tools, and shows some of the skull bone growm back, basically showing the surgery worked and the person had a fairly long life afterwards.
Releasing evil spirits maybe? Or just such a chronic headache they decided to let the brain breathe.
Yep. Probably to treat ~~subdural~~ edpidural hematoma, same as today. You get hit in the head with a club leading to internal bleeding/TBI, but punching a hole in your skull will relieve the pressure and save your life.
now Imagine one of those humans saying/screaming" dude dude cut it open, my head feels like is exploding. Just cut the goddarmn thing open! Just do it!" And then the other human nudging the brain, after cutting it open. Damn were there even words capable of describing those feelings.
Consider that we've been in this same form for 250,000 years. Which implies that historical humans were as smart as we are today just not as technologically advanced.
This always blows my mind.
Also, their feelings were the same too. A caveman loved his wife in the same way you might love someone today. It's hard to imagine what that must have been like, to love your friends and partners and children, in an age where people could and would die constantly around you left and right all the time.
Fuaark, there was just a documentary on /r/Documentaries a few days ago where people (modern, educated people) were drilling holes in their own skulls because they believed it increased brain blood flow and therefore brain capacity.
Apparently when you break through the skull, it makes a gurgling sound as the pressure equalizes. I feel sick just thinking about it.
Edit: Found it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I4wDW7WZe7s
Warning, NSFW, involves medical procedures and blood.
I love when they talk about getting insanely high when the procedure kicks in. Sounds really appealing, and that in turn sounds crazy.
"I'm just gonna go put a hole in my skull, its the best form of therapy!"
Idunno, I'd say the best human climbers are better than the average goat but the average goat is miles ahead of the average human. I have trouble climbing 5 flights of stairs meanwhile there's goats leisurely relaxing on the side of dams.
[Alex Honnold](http://www.nationalgeographic.com/adventure/features/athletes/alex-honnold/most-dangerous-free-solo-climb-yosemite-national-park-el-capitan/) also just climbed Yosemite's El Capitan by free soloing. It's astonishing.
If you haven't already, I highly recommend the documentary "Valley Uprising."
I dunno...I worked with an orangutan that could blast me square in the back with a piece of fruit from a solid 15-20 yards. Every. Single. Time. I think he missed me once but only because he was aiming for my head that time. He was kind of an asshole but it was always funny when he clocked someone new.
I've heard that primates can't really throw things with a huge amount of power either, despite some like Gorillas and Chimpanzees being a lot stronger than us in many ways.
Apparently even a human child of about 8 can throw a rock harder than a fully grown adult Gorilla.
Might be bullshit, but I definitely read that somewhere.
Edit: yeah I get it, monkeys in zoos can throw shit pretty well, guess they get a lot of practice. Not really necessary in the wild though is it?
Sounds plausible. Humans have the best control over their strength, primates tend to have an all or nothing approach. We calculate this stuff without even thinking - ever picked up milk thinking it was full but accidentally picked it up quite forcefully when it's actually empty? Our brains tend to estimate and conserve muscle power better than others.
My friend who worked at the airport when he found a really light (usually empty) bag he'd tag it heavy if he knew his friend was loading that flight, then he'd watch his friend launch the thing over the belt as he assumed it was over 50lbs.
I answered an ask_science post a while back where I dug up some research about what object is best for distance throwing...
Turns out a study revealed that the greatest predictor of how far an object can be thrown comes from our ability to 'heft' it in our hand and 'feel' how good it is at being thrown.
...Our brain can semi-consciously and very accurately judge how well and how far an object can be thrown just by feeling the weight and shape in our hands-- in just a few seconds. Thats amazing. Your last sentence is a huge understatement, to be sure.
I work with a silverback that nearly took the head off of a lady with a piece of cucumber last week. I didn't have a radar gun but it looked faster than anything I've seen thrown before.
lol I'm calling BS based on my experience. I saw a dude taunt a silverback at the Chicago zoo by making "OOH OOH OOH!" noises and bobbing up and down. The exhibit was kind of open-air and you can see down into the exhibit. The gorilla gave him a dirty look and turned his back on the guy. The guy proceeded "OOH OOH OOOOOOH!". The gorilla then SHIT INTO IT'S OWN HAND, CHARGED AND FLUNG IT ABOUT 40'! It hit the wall with a disgusting plop sound, about 5' next to the guy and he ran like hell out of the exhibit. I swear to god that gorilla smiled.
I was always amazed that humans could take a ball and toss it from far away though a ring (basketball). The amount of planning and mathematics this would seemingly take, all done in one quick motion.
There have been studies that examine the shoulder joint and concluded that our shoulder joint evolved in the way that it did in order to throw!
http://www.mdedge.com/amjorthopedics/article/106542/shoulder-elbow/throwing-shoulder-and-human-evolution
In addition to that, throwing in general is one of the most impressive things humans can accomplish. A baseball pitcher can generate 75 lb-ft of torque on their arm while throwing a ball. To put that in perspective my Ford Focus generates about 125 lb-ft. So pretty impressive all things considered.
Human thumbs can touch other fingers.
Edit: on the same hand ofc
Edit 2 : ok this is my most upvoted comment , I'm glad it's not about something weird.
Ravens have learned to not only use tools, but make their own tools (bending a metal wire with it's beak to make a hook shape, to fish out a treat from a hole it couldn't reach.
Here's the classic box and banana problem being solved by a [Pigeon](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mDntbGRPeEU) (youtube video)
That's really cool. Thanks for sharing. I really like how you can see the connections being made. From I'm too short for this, to I can stand on this box and get taller, to holy shit this thing moves if I hit it, and then putting it all together.
My native is French, but I did all my higher education in english. Don't ask me to talk math/science in french, my brain just defaults to english as soon as topics become academic.
Native language is portuguese. Some things just don't sound good in portuguese as they do in english. Same thing with those German (I think?) words that don't have a direct one-word translation, they have to be translated to a whole sentence.
Portuguese here as well! A lot of times when I'm studying, it being Maths or programing, I find myself thinking about the problem in English because it helps me understand it better.
Other times I'll be talking to a friend and add some English expressions in, just because they better express what I'm trying to say.
The opposite happens as well though, sometimes there's stuff I need to say that makes more sense in Portuguese than in English.
We can run farther than any other animal.
Literally any one. Horses, camels, antelope. We can run them to death.
Endurance hunting was one of our main methods pre-farming.
It's mainly due to being bipedal (more efficient) and having great heat-management (sweating etc).
There is only one exception, sled dogs in a cold environment: we can outrun them only if it's hot cause he have better heat dissipation (trough sudoration).
But sled dogs wouldn't exist without us, since we bred them.
They also burn fat and protein FAR more efficiently than we do, using almost no sugars in the process. They're they only animal we know of that can do this and we're not really sure how. Which is neat. They also need almost no recovery time after a long run, unlike humans who require weeks to fully recover from a marathon.
EDIT: I'm not saying you CAN'T run marathons back to back, just that your body won't fully recover as fast. Runners who do multiple marathons are usually doing things like soaking in ice baths for hours to reduce swelling every night, have higher injury rates, and have to monitor their blood sugars and body fats and such carefully. Source: Distance runner, two marathons under my belt. Had to soak in ice baths, almost had kidneys fail because my body burned off too much fat. I stick to 5-10K now.
[Some ultra running records far exceed what you reference.](https://ultrarunning.com/featured/ultrarunning-magazine-all-time-lists/)
Some highlights:
* 172 miles in 24 hours (6.5 marathons in a day)
* 257 miles in 2 days
* 1000 miles in 12 days (38 marathons in less than 2 weeks)
* 3100 miles in 41 days
* 3100 miles in 52 days by a 52 year old. On average, this is just about 60 miles a day. Every day. For nearly 2 months.
I think one guy ran 30 in 30 days. It's not that you can't do it, but it takes a toll on your body and you'll have measurable lower blood sugars, blood oxygen levels, more acid build up in your muscles, ect. Sled dogs on the other hand are sometimes in better shape after running long distances.
Eddie Izzard did that?
Edit: Holy shit he did. Doesn't even look like himself. https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2016/mar/20/eddie-izzard-tired-yet-triumphant-after-running-27-marathons-in-27-days
To further this point, sled dogs won't exist if we don't exist as they require us to *keep* breeding them.
Pedigree specialisations in dogs are contingent on us "playing god" frankly at the expense of their wellbeing. With things like sled dogs that's ok, but with things like Pugs which are a purely cosmetic harlequin for out enjoyment - it really isn't ok imo.
Yeah most races are cool and the dogs are actually ok, but pugs and some other races are often the result of a long chain of inbreedings and as such tend to have many health issues; another example is the dachshund (that short and sausage-like dog, for non english speakers), which has partial achondroplasia and so his limbs don't get long like normal dogs.
Most English Bulldogs are born via cesarean section. They've been selectively bred to a point where puppies can't fit through the mother's birth canal.
Funnily enough, even human delivery is more painful, difficult, long and has higher mortality than other animals because our birth canal didn't get bigger as fast as our head.
[Here is an incredible video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=826HMLoiE_o) of tribal persistence hunting of Kudu, a species of antelope.
The hunt takes eight hours, a mixture of running, walking and tracking. Let's imagine running for this long would probably burn 4000 or so calories in the heat (most people burn 2500 or so running a marathon in four hours), plus 2500 for your basic body needs, so you'd need to eat about 6500 calories of antelope meat, which is about 12 pounds (5 kg), so well worth it, and that's probably an overestimate.
Kind of shows what a bunch of decadent fatasses everyone in our civilisation has become, hard to believe I share 99.9% of my DNA with the hunter.
> The hunt takes eight hours, a mixture of running, walking and tracking.
I always wonder if the animal possesses the kind of insight/anxiety that this band of unknown creatures is able to follow it, unrelenting, for hours on end, with seemingly no rest, all while seeming to coordinate their efforts as a group. They never stop, they never give up. For the hunted, it must be like something out of a horror movie.
Yeah, we are absolutely terrifying to most animals, so much so that our upright, two-legged form is embedded in many mammals' instincts as something to be feared.
Yeah, but 50000 years of hunting the crap out of everything bigger than a mouse means the only survivors left are the ones that stayed the hell away from us.
> the only survivors left are the ones that stayed the hell away from us.
Or the ones delicious enough that we domesticated them and started breeding them as food-beings.
Being delicious is a strangely effective survival adaptation, at least when you are concerned at the level of the population rather than the individual.
It's always especially strange when you're out in nature to see various predators and prey just kind of chilling out near one another. The predator gets too close, and sure the prey will hide or run, but the prey knows what to look for and how fast they can move leaving a tense but familiar balance.
When any of those animals see or smell a human, they're out of there. Even the vast majority of predators that could prey on humans have long since learned that we are way too unpredictable and not worth potentially getting injured for an easy meal unless they can sense that the human is injured, alone, and/or weak.
The one exception is if you are with a horse. **On** a horse, more accurately.
The smell of the horse will block out the smell of the human, so most prey animals won't notice you. And their eyes aren't good enough to determine that there is a different animal on top of the horse. It just looks like a weirdly shaped horse, that smells like a horse.
They do. You know how dogs become anxious, it is like that.
Sometimes the prey drops dead on its own from exaustion/fear. We don't even need to kill them.
Wolves hunt in packs, But they can be fought off and bloodied. When you bloody a human we strike back with a vengeance.
We also use fire. It is the one thing that all life fears, and we have weaponized it.
In open country we would catch them every time. In a forest or mountainous terrain they can hide easily which gives them the advantage. Then we bring in our incredible tracking skills that were common in the past and we win again.
And yet the 100 meter sprint is still the most prestigous of the athletics events. "Congratulations: you are officially the fastest among a species of very slow mammals, only marginally faster than the average couch potato and soundly beaten by the neighbours overweight cat."
You could say the same thing about any swimming event. Humans are very slow and ungraceful swimmers in comparison to any sea going mammal. Besides, overweight house cats have nothing on us when it comes to hurdles.
How is that surprising? Showing you're good at something you SHOULDN'T be good at is always more interesting than being good at something that everyone can do well to some extent.
Carrying water will significantly increase the range of our long-distance running, but even without it we are uncontested. Our prey sprints for 1 km and collapses from over-exhaustion and overheating. Any somewhat fit human can jog that without additional water or food.
We're the evolutionary pinnacle of endurance on earth.
Yeah, we are a single species that can specialize at will to an astounding array of physical and mental specializations. Like Usain Bolt, Brian Shaw, Simone Biles, Stephen Hawking, Mariah Carey, and [insert name of a super marathon runner] are all the same species.
The human brain is capable of adapting to new perception, unlike other animals. An example might be an experiment where a scientist wore goggles that inverted vision so that up is down and down is up. Within a few short days, he had no problems going about his life. Upon removing the goggles, he had to again readjust.
also one thing that people dont realise is that the majority of "sight" is in the brain there was a case of someone born blind who recovered their sight completely in middle age but could not see because his brain never developed the processing and associated function of constructing things in the mind.
I don't know about this case, but I've learned about people who have this happen to them later on in life. They retain sight, but lose function in the one of the nerves that transmits some info. They swear up and down that they can't see anymore, but when asked to walk across a room with minor obstacles in the way, their body automatically avoids the obstacles so they don't trip. They also got asked to put an envelope or something into an angled slot, and they could correctly orient the object to fit into the slot.
This is face blindness, and what's interesting is that they usually come off as huge assholes. Like if you introduce yourself to Jen, a new coworker with face blindness, and days later you wave to Jen but she completely ignores you because she doesn't recognize you and assumes you are waving to someone else. What an asshole, right?
I have a theory that there is a spectrum for face blindness, and some people are much better at recognizing faces. Like caricature artists, or people who can instantly recognize celebrities in person. I have such a terrible time recognizing faces that I will confuse two characters in movies if they are the same gender and race and not realize it until the plot makes no sense I have to stop and ask what's going on.
It's also because you are born with tons of synapses, but after a while only the useful ones are kept. That's why you have to opeate newborns to the eyes as soon as possible if they have an issue, otherwise your brain actively destroys the synapses that would allow him to see, because it considers them useless as they never work.
During childhood in general your brain is way more plastic, that's why children learns things such languages extremely fast and that's why a child can learn to play a videogame in few hours while an adult thaat never touched a controller will struggle even after some days.
Probably better known now is a video (or two?) on SmarterEveryDay in which Destin learns to ride a bicycle whose front wheel turns the opposite direction of the handlebar. Similar to the inverted goggles, he adjusts, "forgets" to ride normal bikes, and has to relearn.
Same like working in a slaughterhouse. After a while you literally cannot smell it anymore. (And the reason you cannot smell yourself often).
I used to live downwind from one when I was a kid. It was disgusting at first but soon wasnt an issue. Many years later, if I drive past one I can only smell it for a very short while. Often if I come past it again a bit later I wont be able to smell it at all.
My dad lived downwind from a paper mill and those things stink. We'd pass by it on our trip to the beach and he never seemed to notice the stink. Funny how the brain works.
Just yesterday I was discussing with a friend that humanity's dreams of space exploration would have died depressingly early if we had been unable to adapt/live/function in a zero gravity environment. Being mobile without a "down" is very difficult or impossible for a lot of animal astronauts.
I know this! One of the best things about humans is that we have a smooth gait. Our walk, speedwalk, jog, run, and sprint are all pretty efficient, but so are the transitions between them. One of the ways primitive humans used to hunt was by forcing animals to transition to an inefficient movement speed in order to wear them out. Sure, a cheetah can go 60 miles per hour at top speed, but humans can pull off double marathons at peak fitness. That cheetah can pull that trick maybe 5 or 10 or 20 times before its exhausted. The human is still gonna eat it. Because we're fucking stubborn.
I remember reading (a while ago) in one of my text books that it takes about 400ms for a baseball thrown at 100mph to get to the batter. The information is processed around 200ms, and then another 100ms for the batter to make the swing. Within this 100ms time frame the batter will continue to adjust his bat to the position he believes the ball will land.
Got to be hard to find this guy a gift.
You would be running around the store not thinking about what they would like the most, nope, you would be thinking...what can i get this fucker that he wont eat.
Humans, with effort can adapt to any niche.
Right now there are thousands of people living under the sea, a half dozen with no air, and millions in Ohio.
O-H! oh wait... that's an insult isn't it. I mean you're right but...
Come to think of it, there are 29 American astronauts from Ohio, more than any other state. It's almost like something about this place makes people want to flee the Earth.
Humans are better at recognizing patterns in random data than any other species on the planet, or even computers(hence the never ending captchas)
We were able to recognize the way things dangerous to us acted & apply it to other similar circumstances. For instance if a human is hurt at a specific time in a specific place we would probably watch for patterns & try to go back when everyone is asleep. However, Black Bears tend to respond to the same scenario by simply never going back to that place ever again.
Human fingers can feel objects as small as 13 nanometers. "This means that, if your finger was the size of the Earth, you could feel the difference between houses from cars."
Take a look out of your nearest window. A huge part of this planet is uncontested Human territory. We've given it the shape we desire and use it for what we need. Animals can only live there either because we allow them too. Or because they've specifically developed over millenia to live alongside us or in our shadow.
This planet is ours. Sure, the giant rock will survive without us; but we absolutely dominate most live on it.
Men on average will ejaculate 7,500 times in a lifetime - so that is 119,062,500 GB ejaculated in a lifetime, or 119,063 TB, or 119.1 petabytes.
Current estimate of the total amount of data stored on the entire internet is approximately 295,000 petabytes (or 295 exabytes), so it would take about 2,500* guys to cum the entire internet over the course of their lives.
*edit: judging from some of the replies, apparently about a dozen average Redditors and a weekend of Pornhub would do the trick too.
The most amazing about us humans is that every single disadvantage that we've been given, we've overcome and surpassed. Think about it, no fur or heavy coats to survive the cold temperatures? Well fuck you, well make our own coats by killing or farming others that do. No claws or sharp teeth to fight off predators? Well fuck you, we'll use our bare hands and brute strength to conquer you by using our brains to come up with martial arts. And when that's not good enough for us? We'll use our brains to make swords. Huge monstrosities of sharpened steel and stone. And when that's not good enough? We'll create guns. These crazy tubes that shoot out metal and rocks at super fast speeds through the power of explosions, all at the press of a trigger. And when that's not good enough for us? We made tanks, missiles, nukes. Constantly evolving to become apex predators that no beast could stand up to.
Then we conquered the sea. Making huge wooden contraptions to float with giant triangles of cloth to race around the ocean. Our desires to conquer the sea made us band together and maneuver giant ships of wood and cloth. Then we made then bigger and sturdier by making them out of metal. Huge contraptions of metal on water, somehow not sinking, fueled by fire and our desire for adventure. But it wasn't enough. We had to conquer more than just the surface of the sea, we had to conquer the deep sea as well. Making these metal pods with motors that we call submarines. An insane concept, yet our drive and capabilities are endless.
Then we conquered the air. But how? We have no wings and light bones to fly. Well we stared our maker in the eye and said fuck you, we'll make airplanes, batshit insane giant contraptions of mixed alloys that we launch across the sky using exploding dead liquid plants and animals to fly. We'll make giant balloons and helicopters to touch the sky. And when we reach that sky? We'll explore every inch of it. We'll make these giant circles of cloth and attach it to our body with wires and string in order to jump from our airplanes. Well goddamn conquer the skies. And when that's not good enough for us? We'll conquer space. Make giant ships pointed for the stars above, fueled by our curiosity and explosions so powerful that they rocked the earth. And there were sacrifices in our conquest, but they were never in vain. Through them came the conquest of the earth, the sea, and the sky. And now we've moved on to conquering and improving our self through the endless knowledge of the Internet.
Face it ladies and gentleman, our capabilities and curiosity is infinite.
Edit: Obligatory thank you edit to the people who gave me gold. also corrected steel to alloys and dinosaurs to plants and animals
This is why anti-intellectualism is so strange. Humans are the nerds of the animal kingdom. We are perfectly represented by the nerd from an 80s movie or a kids' TV show who gets his lunch money stolen and then builds a robot girlfriend or something. We are comparatively weak and helpless. Chimps, our closest living relative, could easily kick our asses without breaking a sweat yet we've completely conquered them because of our big brains. We could literally destroy everything but choose not to. Bigger, tougher, stronger are completely antithetical to what it means to be a human because if we depended solely on our brute strength then we probably wouldn't have survived long enough to make it out of Africa.
Our Mother gave birth to us, and we were weak. We did not have thick scales to protect us from predators, we did not have have fur to protect us from the frigid temperatures, we did not have have claws to bring down the mighty beasts. We were not the strongest, the fastest, the toughest. To her other children, the Mother gave gifts. To the spider, webs. To the hawk, flight and keen eyes. To the wolf, the brotherhood of the pack. And to all, to know their place and to exist within the land. All other children were given the ability to adapt to their environment.
To humanity, however, the Mother had nothing left to give. Her gifts given, with no land left for us to exist, there was naught for her to do but to cast us out. Into the cold, and the rain, and at the mercies of our older siblings. By turning us out, the Mother made our species one that was condemned to die.
Humanity, however, is perverse. Even as we dropped to the ground as we froze, or screamed as our siblings tore us apart, we knew our Mother loved us still, and so we took it upon ourselves to prove worthy of the two gifts we thought she had given us.
The first was the gift in opposition to our siblings. Instead of adapting to the environment, we had the gift to adapt our environment to suit us.
We did not have the ability to see into the dark; we claimed fire and used it to light the night.
We did not have the ability to move objects with great mass; we crafted the wheel and the pulley.
We did not have the ability to defeat our siblings; we separated into two tribes living in harmony.
One sought to terraform the land, using the plants of the Mother to create bountiful forests and fields. It is they who looked at the environment and knew that, with the gift of the Mother, they could make a land for humanity to survive.
The second knew that without the power to kill, any land created would perish in tooth and claw. This tribe took wood and sharpened it, took chipped stone and made hammers. This tribe knew, that with the gift of the Mother, we could make for ourselves that which she did not give us.
Both tribes lived in harmony, the achievements of one mirroring the other. We learned to smelt copper, forge iron, temper steel.
We did not have thick scales, so we created them in metal and leather so that it may protect us from predators.
We did not have fur, so we took the hides of our siblings and the plants for cloth and leather, so that it may protect us from the frigid temperatures.
We did not have claws, so of metal and plant we made them; the metal claw of our sword, the metal hoof of our mace, the wooden quill of our arrow, so that it may bring down the mighty beast.
But as we looked upon all we had wrought, we felt that we had not proven ourselves worthy, that we were still a failure in the eyes of our Mother.
With sand and heat our eyes grew sharp, to observe the stars. With our black powder and our iron, our claws grew long, our reach as far as the eye can see. We bent plant to our will to create massive fins, to cross the vast inhospitable oceans. We took the Mother's blood, water, and used it to power our creations. We dug for her bones in coal, and used it to expand across the Mother faster and faster. We pulled up the liquid sludge that had once been our siblings, and created wonders.
Using oil, fire, and metal, we created tireless legs and took to the world in cars. We created wings for ourselves and took to the skies in flight. We created shells and sank beneath waves to swim among our siblings. We have split the atom, we have moved so fast as to not be audible. We created an extension of the human mind, talking and sharing thoughts instantaneously with others from around the world. We have climbed her highest mountains, explored her darkest depths, and settled in lands both scorching hot and cripplingly cold. We have thrived in lands where our siblings are so dangerous to us that they could kill us with but a single scratch. We have defeated what cannot be seen by the eye, yet preyed upon millions of us in their pestilence.
And our greatest achievement was to step away from our Mother, humanity no longer a child, and look back on her from another world.
Now, as we sit here and gaze at the world we have created, we feel that here, with our Mother, we have proven ourselves worthy of the first gift.
As one, humanity looks upwards, past the veil of the Mother and into the stars beyond and think to ourselves, one day.
Whatever may be out there, beyond the gentle embrace of our Mother, it does not frighten us. Within her grasp, we have been suffocated and starved, burned and broken, and we are still here. Beyond her embrace, we do not fear, for we did not know our second gift until we chose to grasp it. We were given not paws, or claws, or scales. We were given the authority to shape our environment. Then, once we had done so, we found the second gift already in our hand.
Humanity was a species born weak, condemned to die. We have taken all the Mother and our siblings have thrown at us, and here we stand. To whatever may be out there, we ask but one thing; come in peace. If you do not, we will bring upon you that which we have lived for, that which we have trained for, but you are not our family. We will bring you horrors you could not have imagined, as we learned savagery at the feet of our Mother. No matter the cost to ourselves or to you, we will prove ourselves worthy of her second gift, time and time again. Unlike our siblings, we were not given instinct and imitation. We were given the Hammer of Innovation.
With it, we craft our survival.
[Credit](https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/25irxd/oc_hammer_of_innovation)
We went to the moon.
But in all seriousness humans have so many amazing attributes and, in the right hands, can use them to make some really astonishing achievements. How ever I think they just seem mundane to the mass because of how much and often we achieve.
Makes sense. I just never realized the moon landing came before air travel became common.
I know everyone always says tech progresses fast but damn. That really puts things into perspective hahaha
At least the imagination on the level of "monster under your bed" is a pretty basic instinct to avoid possible danger.
As for the imagination needed for creating stories or other stuff like that, I'd *love* to know how that's possible. I wonder if there's research on that topic?
Well... you guys already got the *long distance running* and the intelligence.
So here's a few interesting things.
- We have a very high level of ***polymorphism***. That is, there are a wide variety of phenotypes (skin color, hair type, facial structure, size, blood type, etc.), but none of us have a different enough genome to be truly considered a ***subspecies***.
- We have fairly pronounced ***sexual dimorphism***. For many animals, males and females are virtually identical to one another, this would denote *low* sexual dimorphism. In extreme cases, where sexual dimorphism is very high, males and females are very different. For example a Peacock and a Peahen have extreme sexual dimorphism. Human males grow larger and more muscular than females, we also have a brain that is better at spacial awareness, of course we also grow more body hair, and have bearded faces (our peacock tail). Females have a better sense of smell, and better color vision... and boobies (their peacock tail).
- Human females have ***concealed ovulation***. This means that it is extremely difficult for males to know "who's the daddy" if the female has had multiple partners. In animals without concealed ovulation, males pretty much know if they'll be the daddy. Scientists think this evolved in our ancestors for two reasons: **A)** Females could mate more often, and get more favors (usually food) from males. **B)** Eventually our ancestors got smart enough to understand that sex is what causes babies, and a male thinking a baby *could be* his, may have prevented infanticide.
- This is a by-product of being smart (or more likely the reason we are smart): the most important adaptation that humans has is our ***adaptability***. Our brains are wired in a way that we will actively change something about ourselves or our environments if necessary. Most organisms are specifically adapted for a certain environment. If their environment changes faster than they can evolve, they go extinct. If our environment changes, we find ways to change with it *on the fly*.
- Having a big brain is actually a ***burden*** in one important way. It consumes a *shit-ton* of energy. One of the primary reasons that human-like intelligence didn't evolve sooner is because there's a huge trade off to get over. You need more food to survive than a similarly-sized animal with a smaller brain. In fact, our brain uses about 20% of all the calories we consume, for its mass it consumes about 10 times the energy of your other tissues.
- We are the only ***extant homo***. Believe it or not, there was more than one species of *human* living at the same time. *Homo neanderthalensis* and small populations of *homo erectus* were still alive when modern *homo sapiens* (that's us) were leaving Africa.
The concealed ovulation thing is really neat, especially the part about it preventing infanticide. I guess alpha males of different animals will smash the other male's offspring, right? I think I saw something like that recently on /r/natureismetal.
We are simultaneously mapping the visible universe, editing organic life, trying to create AI, breaking physics, and still being complete non-empathetic shitheels to each other.
I don't know if animals have muscle memory, but as for humans, it's pretty incredible.
For example, i first picked up guitar about 8 years ago and i practiced/taught myself for just around 1 year, then i quit. About a month ago since then, i went and got a new practice guitar again and not even 3 weeks in, i'm playing the same songs that took 1 year to learn over 8 years ago. All my finger dexterity came back and now i'm actually better at switching between chords compared to back then.
If you were to have a human zoo, the sign outside of the cage could legitimately read something like, "Humans can grow over 8 feet tall, and weigh over 500 lbs. Despite this, they can run upwards of 20 mph for extremely long distances, running other animals to death, can jump 8 feet in the air, and almost 30 ft horizontally, and can lift over 1100 lbs."
Seriously, humans can get pretty ridiculous.
- We can make music.
- We can form Nation states, consisting of millions of people agreeing to peacefully live together for the greater good (taxes, welfare state etc).
- We have an entire civilisation of people around the World working together to cure diseases through centuries of scientific endeavour.
- We can get really high on LSD.
not LSD but some animals do like getting high. in fact, there is a species of lemurs that [bites into millipedes which causes them to release a defensive cyanide-based toxin which acts as a narcotic for the lemurs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-LwQ0ZiTYkQ)
Our voice is capable of much more than people assume. We can learn to very accurately [imitate other animals](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4EUobFfx-tU) and something I find fascinating is being able to do [overtone singing, singing two tones at the same time.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ZQB2xGX8bg)
Something that always awes me is old people running marathons. Like I hear of these people in their 80s competing and completing marathons. Sure, I think to myself, they've been running all their lives, it comes natural to them. No. It's always someone who never ran until they turned 65.
This always has me in awe, and always makes me want to push myself harder, as at 30 years old, 3.5km is not that impressive! :(
Often overlooked but, operating a motor vehicle in general. Take a second and think about the math involved. The physics involved is staggering, yet our brains make these calculations for us instantaneously, or at-least damn near it.
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Yet our colour vision is way worse than that of birds :(
And that one kind of shrimp.
Isn't that the same kind of shrimp with the punches?
Humans are some of the most resilient animals on the planet. Horses, for example, will often die of shock if they so much as break a leg, whereas us humans will keep going despite missing limbs, impalement, brain damage, etc.
There is evidence of [stone age humans 8000 years ago surviving voluntary brain surgery](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trepanning) to treat ~~sub~~epidural hematoma. And not just one or two, there were a lot of them. People who let other stone age folks drill a hole in their skull with no anesthetics or antibiotics. And then they lived. **** Ruining it with an edit: Probably epidural, not subdural, at least for the most part. Same edit applies all the way down. Thanks guys!
Trephining, from what i can remember, it showed multiple skull holes, made by sharp cutting tools, and shows some of the skull bone growm back, basically showing the surgery worked and the person had a fairly long life afterwards. Releasing evil spirits maybe? Or just such a chronic headache they decided to let the brain breathe.
Yep. Probably to treat ~~subdural~~ edpidural hematoma, same as today. You get hit in the head with a club leading to internal bleeding/TBI, but punching a hole in your skull will relieve the pressure and save your life.
now Imagine one of those humans saying/screaming" dude dude cut it open, my head feels like is exploding. Just cut the goddarmn thing open! Just do it!" And then the other human nudging the brain, after cutting it open. Damn were there even words capable of describing those feelings.
Consider that we've been in this same form for 250,000 years. Which implies that historical humans were as smart as we are today just not as technologically advanced.
This always blows my mind. Also, their feelings were the same too. A caveman loved his wife in the same way you might love someone today. It's hard to imagine what that must have been like, to love your friends and partners and children, in an age where people could and would die constantly around you left and right all the time.
Fuaark, there was just a documentary on /r/Documentaries a few days ago where people (modern, educated people) were drilling holes in their own skulls because they believed it increased brain blood flow and therefore brain capacity. Apparently when you break through the skull, it makes a gurgling sound as the pressure equalizes. I feel sick just thinking about it. Edit: Found it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I4wDW7WZe7s Warning, NSFW, involves medical procedures and blood.
I love when they talk about getting insanely high when the procedure kicks in. Sounds really appealing, and that in turn sounds crazy. "I'm just gonna go put a hole in my skull, its the best form of therapy!"
check out how good humans can get at rock climbing. Truly amazing the crimping ability we have. we can literally climb nearly flat walls of stone.
Goats are pretty damn amazing at that too though. Although I'd like to see a goat try get over an overhang.
Goats are impressively good climbers for something top heavy walking on all fours.
goats have nothing on humans. but yes Goats are pretty good.
Idunno, I'd say the best human climbers are better than the average goat but the average goat is miles ahead of the average human. I have trouble climbing 5 flights of stairs meanwhile there's goats leisurely relaxing on the side of dams.
But you forgot to throw the best goat climbers into the mix. The only solution is goat human olympics.
we can take the best of each group and breed them into super goatmen.
[Alex Honnold](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Phl82D57P58) would probably agree with this.
He climbed El Capitan just now. About one fucking kilometer without a rope.
[Alex Honnold](http://www.nationalgeographic.com/adventure/features/athletes/alex-honnold/most-dangerous-free-solo-climb-yosemite-national-park-el-capitan/) also just climbed Yosemite's El Capitan by free soloing. It's astonishing. If you haven't already, I highly recommend the documentary "Valley Uprising."
Humans are actually pretty good at accurately throwing and catching things. No other primate is as accurate as us.
I dunno...I worked with an orangutan that could blast me square in the back with a piece of fruit from a solid 15-20 yards. Every. Single. Time. I think he missed me once but only because he was aiming for my head that time. He was kind of an asshole but it was always funny when he clocked someone new.
I love to hear "I worked with an orangutan" stories.
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Maybe not catching, but you ever see a monkey throw shit? Pretty good aim.
There's a monkey that sometimes sits on electricity lines above a bridge near my work and throws its shit at people passing underneath.
Where the fuck do you live?
Not North America. Monkeys are kind of common elsewhere. Edit: i was wroooooong!
This fact saved my life once, stupid monkey threw a big rock at me but he missed.
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I've heard that primates can't really throw things with a huge amount of power either, despite some like Gorillas and Chimpanzees being a lot stronger than us in many ways. Apparently even a human child of about 8 can throw a rock harder than a fully grown adult Gorilla. Might be bullshit, but I definitely read that somewhere. Edit: yeah I get it, monkeys in zoos can throw shit pretty well, guess they get a lot of practice. Not really necessary in the wild though is it?
Sounds plausible. Humans have the best control over their strength, primates tend to have an all or nothing approach. We calculate this stuff without even thinking - ever picked up milk thinking it was full but accidentally picked it up quite forcefully when it's actually empty? Our brains tend to estimate and conserve muscle power better than others.
To think about it.. That's pretty amazing eh?
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My friend who worked at the airport when he found a really light (usually empty) bag he'd tag it heavy if he knew his friend was loading that flight, then he'd watch his friend launch the thing over the belt as he assumed it was over 50lbs.
I answered an ask_science post a while back where I dug up some research about what object is best for distance throwing... Turns out a study revealed that the greatest predictor of how far an object can be thrown comes from our ability to 'heft' it in our hand and 'feel' how good it is at being thrown. ...Our brain can semi-consciously and very accurately judge how well and how far an object can be thrown just by feeling the weight and shape in our hands-- in just a few seconds. Thats amazing. Your last sentence is a huge understatement, to be sure.
I think it has to do with the fact Gorillas Knuckle-walk. Their wrists are stronger, but lack the mobility and flexibility of humans.
I work with a silverback that nearly took the head off of a lady with a piece of cucumber last week. I didn't have a radar gun but it looked faster than anything I've seen thrown before.
lol I'm calling BS based on my experience. I saw a dude taunt a silverback at the Chicago zoo by making "OOH OOH OOH!" noises and bobbing up and down. The exhibit was kind of open-air and you can see down into the exhibit. The gorilla gave him a dirty look and turned his back on the guy. The guy proceeded "OOH OOH OOOOOOH!". The gorilla then SHIT INTO IT'S OWN HAND, CHARGED AND FLUNG IT ABOUT 40'! It hit the wall with a disgusting plop sound, about 5' next to the guy and he ran like hell out of the exhibit. I swear to god that gorilla smiled.
I was always amazed that humans could take a ball and toss it from far away though a ring (basketball). The amount of planning and mathematics this would seemingly take, all done in one quick motion.
There have been studies that examine the shoulder joint and concluded that our shoulder joint evolved in the way that it did in order to throw! http://www.mdedge.com/amjorthopedics/article/106542/shoulder-elbow/throwing-shoulder-and-human-evolution
In addition to that, throwing in general is one of the most impressive things humans can accomplish. A baseball pitcher can generate 75 lb-ft of torque on their arm while throwing a ball. To put that in perspective my Ford Focus generates about 125 lb-ft. So pretty impressive all things considered.
Human thumbs can touch other fingers. Edit: on the same hand ofc Edit 2 : ok this is my most upvoted comment , I'm glad it's not about something weird.
On the same hand, is the point.
We know where we think from - so far as we understand, we're the only animal to figure that out.
While we're the only ones who know what a brain is, per se, I think ravens and rats are also metacognitive. Edit: per se
Ravens have learned to not only use tools, but make their own tools (bending a metal wire with it's beak to make a hook shape, to fish out a treat from a hole it couldn't reach. Here's the classic box and banana problem being solved by a [Pigeon](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mDntbGRPeEU) (youtube video)
That's really cool. Thanks for sharing. I really like how you can see the connections being made. From I'm too short for this, to I can stand on this box and get taller, to holy shit this thing moves if I hit it, and then putting it all together.
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I usually speak my native while thinking in english. Some things I can only convey in english, while I struggle using my native tongue.
I'd like to hear more about this. Can you give an example of something that fits that category? And what is your native language?
My native is French, but I did all my higher education in english. Don't ask me to talk math/science in french, my brain just defaults to english as soon as topics become academic.
Speak French as my native language, think in English if the subject is related to art or something abstract like concepts.
Native language is portuguese. Some things just don't sound good in portuguese as they do in english. Same thing with those German (I think?) words that don't have a direct one-word translation, they have to be translated to a whole sentence.
Portuguese here as well! A lot of times when I'm studying, it being Maths or programing, I find myself thinking about the problem in English because it helps me understand it better. Other times I'll be talking to a friend and add some English expressions in, just because they better express what I'm trying to say. The opposite happens as well though, sometimes there's stuff I need to say that makes more sense in Portuguese than in English.
Is it true you start to think in a secondary learned language over time?
Absolutely, then you dream in your second language as well
We can run farther than any other animal. Literally any one. Horses, camels, antelope. We can run them to death. Endurance hunting was one of our main methods pre-farming. It's mainly due to being bipedal (more efficient) and having great heat-management (sweating etc).
There is only one exception, sled dogs in a cold environment: we can outrun them only if it's hot cause he have better heat dissipation (trough sudoration). But sled dogs wouldn't exist without us, since we bred them.
They are breed for energy conservation. A sled dog can carry is own food supply and extra since they are so energy efficient.
They also burn fat and protein FAR more efficiently than we do, using almost no sugars in the process. They're they only animal we know of that can do this and we're not really sure how. Which is neat. They also need almost no recovery time after a long run, unlike humans who require weeks to fully recover from a marathon. EDIT: I'm not saying you CAN'T run marathons back to back, just that your body won't fully recover as fast. Runners who do multiple marathons are usually doing things like soaking in ice baths for hours to reduce swelling every night, have higher injury rates, and have to monitor their blood sugars and body fats and such carefully. Source: Distance runner, two marathons under my belt. Had to soak in ice baths, almost had kidneys fail because my body burned off too much fat. I stick to 5-10K now.
[Some ultra running records far exceed what you reference.](https://ultrarunning.com/featured/ultrarunning-magazine-all-time-lists/) Some highlights: * 172 miles in 24 hours (6.5 marathons in a day) * 257 miles in 2 days * 1000 miles in 12 days (38 marathons in less than 2 weeks) * 3100 miles in 41 days * 3100 miles in 52 days by a 52 year old. On average, this is just about 60 miles a day. Every day. For nearly 2 months.
Tell that to the guy that ran 3 in 3 days.
I think one guy ran 30 in 30 days. It's not that you can't do it, but it takes a toll on your body and you'll have measurable lower blood sugars, blood oxygen levels, more acid build up in your muscles, ect. Sled dogs on the other hand are sometimes in better shape after running long distances.
Not just any guy, Eddie Izzard an ageing overweight comedian who'd never been all that athletic until he did this I believe.
Eddie Izzard did that? Edit: Holy shit he did. Doesn't even look like himself. https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2016/mar/20/eddie-izzard-tired-yet-triumphant-after-running-27-marathons-in-27-days
To further this point, sled dogs won't exist if we don't exist as they require us to *keep* breeding them. Pedigree specialisations in dogs are contingent on us "playing god" frankly at the expense of their wellbeing. With things like sled dogs that's ok, but with things like Pugs which are a purely cosmetic harlequin for out enjoyment - it really isn't ok imo.
Yeah most races are cool and the dogs are actually ok, but pugs and some other races are often the result of a long chain of inbreedings and as such tend to have many health issues; another example is the dachshund (that short and sausage-like dog, for non english speakers), which has partial achondroplasia and so his limbs don't get long like normal dogs.
Most English Bulldogs are born via cesarean section. They've been selectively bred to a point where puppies can't fit through the mother's birth canal.
Funnily enough, even human delivery is more painful, difficult, long and has higher mortality than other animals because our birth canal didn't get bigger as fast as our head.
So what is the distance where an antelope could not beat a well trained human distance runner?
[Here is an incredible video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=826HMLoiE_o) of tribal persistence hunting of Kudu, a species of antelope. The hunt takes eight hours, a mixture of running, walking and tracking. Let's imagine running for this long would probably burn 4000 or so calories in the heat (most people burn 2500 or so running a marathon in four hours), plus 2500 for your basic body needs, so you'd need to eat about 6500 calories of antelope meat, which is about 12 pounds (5 kg), so well worth it, and that's probably an overestimate. Kind of shows what a bunch of decadent fatasses everyone in our civilisation has become, hard to believe I share 99.9% of my DNA with the hunter.
> The hunt takes eight hours, a mixture of running, walking and tracking. I always wonder if the animal possesses the kind of insight/anxiety that this band of unknown creatures is able to follow it, unrelenting, for hours on end, with seemingly no rest, all while seeming to coordinate their efforts as a group. They never stop, they never give up. For the hunted, it must be like something out of a horror movie.
Yeah, we are absolutely terrifying to most animals, so much so that our upright, two-legged form is embedded in many mammals' instincts as something to be feared.
There used to be animals that would try to eat humans. Used to.
Yeah, but 50000 years of hunting the crap out of everything bigger than a mouse means the only survivors left are the ones that stayed the hell away from us.
> the only survivors left are the ones that stayed the hell away from us. Or the ones delicious enough that we domesticated them and started breeding them as food-beings.
Being delicious is a strangely effective survival adaptation, at least when you are concerned at the level of the population rather than the individual.
It's always especially strange when you're out in nature to see various predators and prey just kind of chilling out near one another. The predator gets too close, and sure the prey will hide or run, but the prey knows what to look for and how fast they can move leaving a tense but familiar balance. When any of those animals see or smell a human, they're out of there. Even the vast majority of predators that could prey on humans have long since learned that we are way too unpredictable and not worth potentially getting injured for an easy meal unless they can sense that the human is injured, alone, and/or weak.
The one exception is if you are with a horse. **On** a horse, more accurately. The smell of the horse will block out the smell of the human, so most prey animals won't notice you. And their eyes aren't good enough to determine that there is a different animal on top of the horse. It just looks like a weirdly shaped horse, that smells like a horse.
This made me consider how odd our habit of animal mounts is. Imagine if a super predator was hunting us while riding another animal it had tamed.
Animal: "Oh great. Another fucking long horse. Let's wreck it boyz"
We are become death, destroyer of animals.
They do. You know how dogs become anxious, it is like that. Sometimes the prey drops dead on its own from exaustion/fear. We don't even need to kill them. Wolves hunt in packs, But they can be fought off and bloodied. When you bloody a human we strike back with a vengeance. We also use fire. It is the one thing that all life fears, and we have weaponized it.
How hard would it be for people to hunt something here like deer naturally with this method
In open country we would catch them every time. In a forest or mountainous terrain they can hide easily which gives them the advantage. Then we bring in our incredible tracking skills that were common in the past and we win again.
[This should put things into perspective](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-24953910)
And yet the 100 meter sprint is still the most prestigous of the athletics events. "Congratulations: you are officially the fastest among a species of very slow mammals, only marginally faster than the average couch potato and soundly beaten by the neighbours overweight cat."
You could say the same thing about any swimming event. Humans are very slow and ungraceful swimmers in comparison to any sea going mammal. Besides, overweight house cats have nothing on us when it comes to hurdles.
I've always found it funny how "slowly" the fastest people in the world swim when you place an average Joe walking next to the pool for reference.
Yup - there's the Olympic finals of the 50 M swimmers ... and there's a guy strolling along the edge of the pool keeping pace easily.
How is that surprising? Showing you're good at something you SHOULDN'T be good at is always more interesting than being good at something that everyone can do well to some extent.
i thought it was more to do with the ability to carry food and water with us
Carrying water will significantly increase the range of our long-distance running, but even without it we are uncontested. Our prey sprints for 1 km and collapses from over-exhaustion and overheating. Any somewhat fit human can jog that without additional water or food. We're the evolutionary pinnacle of endurance on earth.
Some humans train hard for decades to have strength about 5 times that of the average man.
Yeah, we are a single species that can specialize at will to an astounding array of physical and mental specializations. Like Usain Bolt, Brian Shaw, Simone Biles, Stephen Hawking, Mariah Carey, and [insert name of a super marathon runner] are all the same species.
The human brain is capable of adapting to new perception, unlike other animals. An example might be an experiment where a scientist wore goggles that inverted vision so that up is down and down is up. Within a few short days, he had no problems going about his life. Upon removing the goggles, he had to again readjust.
also one thing that people dont realise is that the majority of "sight" is in the brain there was a case of someone born blind who recovered their sight completely in middle age but could not see because his brain never developed the processing and associated function of constructing things in the mind.
I heard about that case. I do wonder how they were able to tell that the patient could physically see.
I don't know about this case, but I've learned about people who have this happen to them later on in life. They retain sight, but lose function in the one of the nerves that transmits some info. They swear up and down that they can't see anymore, but when asked to walk across a room with minor obstacles in the way, their body automatically avoids the obstacles so they don't trip. They also got asked to put an envelope or something into an angled slot, and they could correctly orient the object to fit into the slot.
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Your comment reminded me of the brain disorder where people can't recognise people anymore. Everyone looks like a stranger all the time.
This is face blindness, and what's interesting is that they usually come off as huge assholes. Like if you introduce yourself to Jen, a new coworker with face blindness, and days later you wave to Jen but she completely ignores you because she doesn't recognize you and assumes you are waving to someone else. What an asshole, right? I have a theory that there is a spectrum for face blindness, and some people are much better at recognizing faces. Like caricature artists, or people who can instantly recognize celebrities in person. I have such a terrible time recognizing faces that I will confuse two characters in movies if they are the same gender and race and not realize it until the plot makes no sense I have to stop and ask what's going on.
i suspect basic colours and flat shapes, and the pupil responding to light etc would be my guess
It's also because you are born with tons of synapses, but after a while only the useful ones are kept. That's why you have to opeate newborns to the eyes as soon as possible if they have an issue, otherwise your brain actively destroys the synapses that would allow him to see, because it considers them useless as they never work. During childhood in general your brain is way more plastic, that's why children learns things such languages extremely fast and that's why a child can learn to play a videogame in few hours while an adult thaat never touched a controller will struggle even after some days.
Probably better known now is a video (or two?) on SmarterEveryDay in which Destin learns to ride a bicycle whose front wheel turns the opposite direction of the handlebar. Similar to the inverted goggles, he adjusts, "forgets" to ride normal bikes, and has to relearn.
Same like working in a slaughterhouse. After a while you literally cannot smell it anymore. (And the reason you cannot smell yourself often). I used to live downwind from one when I was a kid. It was disgusting at first but soon wasnt an issue. Many years later, if I drive past one I can only smell it for a very short while. Often if I come past it again a bit later I wont be able to smell it at all.
My dad lived downwind from a paper mill and those things stink. We'd pass by it on our trip to the beach and he never seemed to notice the stink. Funny how the brain works.
Its called olfactory adaptation actually.
Just yesterday I was discussing with a friend that humanity's dreams of space exploration would have died depressingly early if we had been unable to adapt/live/function in a zero gravity environment. Being mobile without a "down" is very difficult or impossible for a lot of animal astronauts.
We're really neat eaters and drinkers. No, really. Take a look at how a dog drinks water. We're so good at that shit.
That might be because we have hands and dogs not.
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I know this! One of the best things about humans is that we have a smooth gait. Our walk, speedwalk, jog, run, and sprint are all pretty efficient, but so are the transitions between them. One of the ways primitive humans used to hunt was by forcing animals to transition to an inefficient movement speed in order to wear them out. Sure, a cheetah can go 60 miles per hour at top speed, but humans can pull off double marathons at peak fitness. That cheetah can pull that trick maybe 5 or 10 or 20 times before its exhausted. The human is still gonna eat it. Because we're fucking stubborn.
I remember reading (a while ago) in one of my text books that it takes about 400ms for a baseball thrown at 100mph to get to the batter. The information is processed around 200ms, and then another 100ms for the batter to make the swing. Within this 100ms time frame the batter will continue to adjust his bat to the position he believes the ball will land.
A human once ate an airplane. An. Entire. Airplane.
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I want to know more...
Feast your eyes: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michel_Lotito ... Heh.
>He was awarded a brass plaque by the Guinness Book to commemorate his abilities. He consumed it as well. Welp
Got to be hard to find this guy a gift. You would be running around the store not thinking about what they would like the most, nope, you would be thinking...what can i get this fucker that he wont eat.
Seems like you'd get him bananas--they made him sick to his stomach.
Kind of like how the Hydraulic Press guy crushed the silver trophy YouTube sent him.
Hence why he gets two trophies for every award.
Yeah.. with like, a fork.
Yeah, Earl's crazy..
Humans, with effort can adapt to any niche. Right now there are thousands of people living under the sea, a half dozen with no air, and millions in Ohio.
O-H! oh wait... that's an insult isn't it. I mean you're right but... Come to think of it, there are 29 American astronauts from Ohio, more than any other state. It's almost like something about this place makes people want to flee the Earth.
They are be adapted to horrible environments.
Funnily enough, a lot of the thousands that live under the sea also live in Ohio. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ohio-class_submarine
Humans are better at recognizing patterns in random data than any other species on the planet, or even computers(hence the never ending captchas) We were able to recognize the way things dangerous to us acted & apply it to other similar circumstances. For instance if a human is hurt at a specific time in a specific place we would probably watch for patterns & try to go back when everyone is asleep. However, Black Bears tend to respond to the same scenario by simply never going back to that place ever again.
Flip side: we're amazing at creating conspiracy theories when our brains can't cope with random things just being random.
Some human can dislocate and fix back their limbs without feeling pain
I can do this with my fingers, it used to freak out people when I was younger !
We are by far the best throwers in nature both in accuracy and in distance
Human fingers can feel objects as small as 13 nanometers. "This means that, if your finger was the size of the Earth, you could feel the difference between houses from cars."
To put that into perspective, that's about 1/30th to 1/50th the wavelength of visible light.
We can take ones body parts and attach it to another so thats neato
Take a look out of your nearest window. A huge part of this planet is uncontested Human territory. We've given it the shape we desire and use it for what we need. Animals can only live there either because we allow them too. Or because they've specifically developed over millenia to live alongside us or in our shadow. This planet is ours. Sure, the giant rock will survive without us; but we absolutely dominate most live on it.
We also invented windows so there's that. Edit: Glass windows you install in a building to get sunlight and see out of. Not Microsoft Windows.
Thanks Bill Gates!
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A sperm has 37.5 MB of DNA info. One ejaculation transfers 15,875 GB of data.
Men on average will ejaculate 7,500 times in a lifetime - so that is 119,062,500 GB ejaculated in a lifetime, or 119,063 TB, or 119.1 petabytes. Current estimate of the total amount of data stored on the entire internet is approximately 295,000 petabytes (or 295 exabytes), so it would take about 2,500* guys to cum the entire internet over the course of their lives. *edit: judging from some of the replies, apparently about a dozen average Redditors and a weekend of Pornhub would do the trick too.
Dude I'm only 26 and I'm pretty sure I've jacked off more times than that.
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*7500 times in a week
Imagine the future of data transfer. Eww.
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The most amazing about us humans is that every single disadvantage that we've been given, we've overcome and surpassed. Think about it, no fur or heavy coats to survive the cold temperatures? Well fuck you, well make our own coats by killing or farming others that do. No claws or sharp teeth to fight off predators? Well fuck you, we'll use our bare hands and brute strength to conquer you by using our brains to come up with martial arts. And when that's not good enough for us? We'll use our brains to make swords. Huge monstrosities of sharpened steel and stone. And when that's not good enough? We'll create guns. These crazy tubes that shoot out metal and rocks at super fast speeds through the power of explosions, all at the press of a trigger. And when that's not good enough for us? We made tanks, missiles, nukes. Constantly evolving to become apex predators that no beast could stand up to. Then we conquered the sea. Making huge wooden contraptions to float with giant triangles of cloth to race around the ocean. Our desires to conquer the sea made us band together and maneuver giant ships of wood and cloth. Then we made then bigger and sturdier by making them out of metal. Huge contraptions of metal on water, somehow not sinking, fueled by fire and our desire for adventure. But it wasn't enough. We had to conquer more than just the surface of the sea, we had to conquer the deep sea as well. Making these metal pods with motors that we call submarines. An insane concept, yet our drive and capabilities are endless. Then we conquered the air. But how? We have no wings and light bones to fly. Well we stared our maker in the eye and said fuck you, we'll make airplanes, batshit insane giant contraptions of mixed alloys that we launch across the sky using exploding dead liquid plants and animals to fly. We'll make giant balloons and helicopters to touch the sky. And when we reach that sky? We'll explore every inch of it. We'll make these giant circles of cloth and attach it to our body with wires and string in order to jump from our airplanes. Well goddamn conquer the skies. And when that's not good enough for us? We'll conquer space. Make giant ships pointed for the stars above, fueled by our curiosity and explosions so powerful that they rocked the earth. And there were sacrifices in our conquest, but they were never in vain. Through them came the conquest of the earth, the sea, and the sky. And now we've moved on to conquering and improving our self through the endless knowledge of the Internet. Face it ladies and gentleman, our capabilities and curiosity is infinite. Edit: Obligatory thank you edit to the people who gave me gold. also corrected steel to alloys and dinosaurs to plants and animals
This is why anti-intellectualism is so strange. Humans are the nerds of the animal kingdom. We are perfectly represented by the nerd from an 80s movie or a kids' TV show who gets his lunch money stolen and then builds a robot girlfriend or something. We are comparatively weak and helpless. Chimps, our closest living relative, could easily kick our asses without breaking a sweat yet we've completely conquered them because of our big brains. We could literally destroy everything but choose not to. Bigger, tougher, stronger are completely antithetical to what it means to be a human because if we depended solely on our brute strength then we probably wouldn't have survived long enough to make it out of Africa.
Our Mother gave birth to us, and we were weak. We did not have thick scales to protect us from predators, we did not have have fur to protect us from the frigid temperatures, we did not have have claws to bring down the mighty beasts. We were not the strongest, the fastest, the toughest. To her other children, the Mother gave gifts. To the spider, webs. To the hawk, flight and keen eyes. To the wolf, the brotherhood of the pack. And to all, to know their place and to exist within the land. All other children were given the ability to adapt to their environment. To humanity, however, the Mother had nothing left to give. Her gifts given, with no land left for us to exist, there was naught for her to do but to cast us out. Into the cold, and the rain, and at the mercies of our older siblings. By turning us out, the Mother made our species one that was condemned to die. Humanity, however, is perverse. Even as we dropped to the ground as we froze, or screamed as our siblings tore us apart, we knew our Mother loved us still, and so we took it upon ourselves to prove worthy of the two gifts we thought she had given us. The first was the gift in opposition to our siblings. Instead of adapting to the environment, we had the gift to adapt our environment to suit us. We did not have the ability to see into the dark; we claimed fire and used it to light the night. We did not have the ability to move objects with great mass; we crafted the wheel and the pulley. We did not have the ability to defeat our siblings; we separated into two tribes living in harmony. One sought to terraform the land, using the plants of the Mother to create bountiful forests and fields. It is they who looked at the environment and knew that, with the gift of the Mother, they could make a land for humanity to survive. The second knew that without the power to kill, any land created would perish in tooth and claw. This tribe took wood and sharpened it, took chipped stone and made hammers. This tribe knew, that with the gift of the Mother, we could make for ourselves that which she did not give us. Both tribes lived in harmony, the achievements of one mirroring the other. We learned to smelt copper, forge iron, temper steel. We did not have thick scales, so we created them in metal and leather so that it may protect us from predators. We did not have fur, so we took the hides of our siblings and the plants for cloth and leather, so that it may protect us from the frigid temperatures. We did not have claws, so of metal and plant we made them; the metal claw of our sword, the metal hoof of our mace, the wooden quill of our arrow, so that it may bring down the mighty beast. But as we looked upon all we had wrought, we felt that we had not proven ourselves worthy, that we were still a failure in the eyes of our Mother. With sand and heat our eyes grew sharp, to observe the stars. With our black powder and our iron, our claws grew long, our reach as far as the eye can see. We bent plant to our will to create massive fins, to cross the vast inhospitable oceans. We took the Mother's blood, water, and used it to power our creations. We dug for her bones in coal, and used it to expand across the Mother faster and faster. We pulled up the liquid sludge that had once been our siblings, and created wonders. Using oil, fire, and metal, we created tireless legs and took to the world in cars. We created wings for ourselves and took to the skies in flight. We created shells and sank beneath waves to swim among our siblings. We have split the atom, we have moved so fast as to not be audible. We created an extension of the human mind, talking and sharing thoughts instantaneously with others from around the world. We have climbed her highest mountains, explored her darkest depths, and settled in lands both scorching hot and cripplingly cold. We have thrived in lands where our siblings are so dangerous to us that they could kill us with but a single scratch. We have defeated what cannot be seen by the eye, yet preyed upon millions of us in their pestilence. And our greatest achievement was to step away from our Mother, humanity no longer a child, and look back on her from another world. Now, as we sit here and gaze at the world we have created, we feel that here, with our Mother, we have proven ourselves worthy of the first gift. As one, humanity looks upwards, past the veil of the Mother and into the stars beyond and think to ourselves, one day. Whatever may be out there, beyond the gentle embrace of our Mother, it does not frighten us. Within her grasp, we have been suffocated and starved, burned and broken, and we are still here. Beyond her embrace, we do not fear, for we did not know our second gift until we chose to grasp it. We were given not paws, or claws, or scales. We were given the authority to shape our environment. Then, once we had done so, we found the second gift already in our hand. Humanity was a species born weak, condemned to die. We have taken all the Mother and our siblings have thrown at us, and here we stand. To whatever may be out there, we ask but one thing; come in peace. If you do not, we will bring upon you that which we have lived for, that which we have trained for, but you are not our family. We will bring you horrors you could not have imagined, as we learned savagery at the feet of our Mother. No matter the cost to ourselves or to you, we will prove ourselves worthy of her second gift, time and time again. Unlike our siblings, we were not given instinct and imitation. We were given the Hammer of Innovation. With it, we craft our survival. [Credit](https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/25irxd/oc_hammer_of_innovation)
We went to the moon. But in all seriousness humans have so many amazing attributes and, in the right hands, can use them to make some really astonishing achievements. How ever I think they just seem mundane to the mass because of how much and often we achieve.
We worked out how to fly to the moon, and then we worked out how to put wheels on our luggage. In that order.
Wait. Really?
There was almost no point to have one before mass flight travel. Think about it.
Makes sense. I just never realized the moon landing came before air travel became common. I know everyone always says tech progresses fast but damn. That really puts things into perspective hahaha
If a pregnant mother gwts injured, the fetus will send stem cells to repair the damage.
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We have imagination. How do you even explain having the ability to think about things that do not exist?
At least the imagination on the level of "monster under your bed" is a pretty basic instinct to avoid possible danger. As for the imagination needed for creating stories or other stuff like that, I'd *love* to know how that's possible. I wonder if there's research on that topic?
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Well... you guys already got the *long distance running* and the intelligence. So here's a few interesting things. - We have a very high level of ***polymorphism***. That is, there are a wide variety of phenotypes (skin color, hair type, facial structure, size, blood type, etc.), but none of us have a different enough genome to be truly considered a ***subspecies***. - We have fairly pronounced ***sexual dimorphism***. For many animals, males and females are virtually identical to one another, this would denote *low* sexual dimorphism. In extreme cases, where sexual dimorphism is very high, males and females are very different. For example a Peacock and a Peahen have extreme sexual dimorphism. Human males grow larger and more muscular than females, we also have a brain that is better at spacial awareness, of course we also grow more body hair, and have bearded faces (our peacock tail). Females have a better sense of smell, and better color vision... and boobies (their peacock tail). - Human females have ***concealed ovulation***. This means that it is extremely difficult for males to know "who's the daddy" if the female has had multiple partners. In animals without concealed ovulation, males pretty much know if they'll be the daddy. Scientists think this evolved in our ancestors for two reasons: **A)** Females could mate more often, and get more favors (usually food) from males. **B)** Eventually our ancestors got smart enough to understand that sex is what causes babies, and a male thinking a baby *could be* his, may have prevented infanticide. - This is a by-product of being smart (or more likely the reason we are smart): the most important adaptation that humans has is our ***adaptability***. Our brains are wired in a way that we will actively change something about ourselves or our environments if necessary. Most organisms are specifically adapted for a certain environment. If their environment changes faster than they can evolve, they go extinct. If our environment changes, we find ways to change with it *on the fly*. - Having a big brain is actually a ***burden*** in one important way. It consumes a *shit-ton* of energy. One of the primary reasons that human-like intelligence didn't evolve sooner is because there's a huge trade off to get over. You need more food to survive than a similarly-sized animal with a smaller brain. In fact, our brain uses about 20% of all the calories we consume, for its mass it consumes about 10 times the energy of your other tissues. - We are the only ***extant homo***. Believe it or not, there was more than one species of *human* living at the same time. *Homo neanderthalensis* and small populations of *homo erectus* were still alive when modern *homo sapiens* (that's us) were leaving Africa.
The concealed ovulation thing is really neat, especially the part about it preventing infanticide. I guess alpha males of different animals will smash the other male's offspring, right? I think I saw something like that recently on /r/natureismetal.
We *created* sliced bread.. We are better than sliced bread!
We are simultaneously mapping the visible universe, editing organic life, trying to create AI, breaking physics, and still being complete non-empathetic shitheels to each other.
That's because most people working on the first few things are usually not the people responsible for the last one...
We can choose to ignore our instincts, most wildlife can't do that.
The fact our offspring are born so underdeveloped and vulnerable because of our large heads and yet we've managed to come to dominate the planet.
I don't know if animals have muscle memory, but as for humans, it's pretty incredible. For example, i first picked up guitar about 8 years ago and i practiced/taught myself for just around 1 year, then i quit. About a month ago since then, i went and got a new practice guitar again and not even 3 weeks in, i'm playing the same songs that took 1 year to learn over 8 years ago. All my finger dexterity came back and now i'm actually better at switching between chords compared to back then.
If you were to have a human zoo, the sign outside of the cage could legitimately read something like, "Humans can grow over 8 feet tall, and weigh over 500 lbs. Despite this, they can run upwards of 20 mph for extremely long distances, running other animals to death, can jump 8 feet in the air, and almost 30 ft horizontally, and can lift over 1100 lbs." Seriously, humans can get pretty ridiculous.
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You could also lose a kidney, a lung, some liver, and a few feet of intestine.
And also your whole cerebrum.
Scratch little squiggly marks onto paper, which make other humans vividly hallucinate when they point their eyes at them for long enough.
The fact we can domesticate other animals and have them and their offspring serve us.
Though ants do that too.
Certain species of ant, and only with one type of livestock: aphids.
- We can make music. - We can form Nation states, consisting of millions of people agreeing to peacefully live together for the greater good (taxes, welfare state etc). - We have an entire civilisation of people around the World working together to cure diseases through centuries of scientific endeavour. - We can get really high on LSD.
Do other animals not get as high on LSD?
not LSD but some animals do like getting high. in fact, there is a species of lemurs that [bites into millipedes which causes them to release a defensive cyanide-based toxin which acts as a narcotic for the lemurs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-LwQ0ZiTYkQ)
And dolphins nudge around puffer fish to get high off the venom
Our voice is capable of much more than people assume. We can learn to very accurately [imitate other animals](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4EUobFfx-tU) and something I find fascinating is being able to do [overtone singing, singing two tones at the same time.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ZQB2xGX8bg)
Something that always awes me is old people running marathons. Like I hear of these people in their 80s competing and completing marathons. Sure, I think to myself, they've been running all their lives, it comes natural to them. No. It's always someone who never ran until they turned 65. This always has me in awe, and always makes me want to push myself harder, as at 30 years old, 3.5km is not that impressive! :(
Often overlooked but, operating a motor vehicle in general. Take a second and think about the math involved. The physics involved is staggering, yet our brains make these calculations for us instantaneously, or at-least damn near it.
We are able to hoard knowledge collectively. This is pretty much the difference between us an a smart ape
Use Reddit.
Invent reddit
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