The Intense 8 Hour Hunt | Attenborough Life of Mammals | BBC Earth

> I am inclined to think we're built to go for a walk to a hunting ground, sprint and throw an arrow. The adaption to bipedalism actually reduced our sprinting capabilities and increased our endurance. It's likely that we used our superior endurance to chase down our prey over long distances far before we had arrows. See this video

"We’re the tortoises of the animal kingdom" ... That might be the deepest thing I've ever read. Also, here's Attenborough narrating this article this video

"In particular, persistence hunting (the form of hunting that relied on long distance running)" link Here it is in action this video

Whoever is interested, here are two very good academic articles about persistent hunting (subscription required): link link Also, here is a video of a modern persistent hunter this video

I have not come across the "without sleep" thing before and the Wikipedia link does not seem to mention it. The Wikipedia persistence hunting is to jog after them under the midday sun until the prey overheats. That stuff you can see on youtube - this video

I had to continue: > Work before farming resembles what the rich do on holiday today. The rich spend their holidays intimidating lions of their own kill link or running for 8 hours to drive a Kudo to having a heart attack this video >Subsistence farmers worked far longer hours than their ancestors. They died younger and lived more miserable lives. The sole upside was that farming allowed the same plot of land to feed many more people. The author misses the upside of not worrying about getting eaten by a lion or trampled by a wildebeest.

I think that there's a common thread that underlies the development of intelligence in both humans and Portia spiders. We both evolved in an environment where we were at a sensory and physical disadvantage to our prey. We both relied more on understanding the behavior of our prey in order to hunt. In the case of early humans, we adopted a style of hunting known as persistence hunting. Persistence hunting ( link )is a general hunting strategy in which a hunter chases their prey over a very long distance(15-30 miles). Eventually the prey becomes weak and succumbs to exhaustion. On its own, that's not very special -- both dogs and hyenas adopt a very similar hunting strategy. The key difference is that humans lack the extremely sensitive sensory abilities that are used by other persistence hunters. In the absence of such senses, early hominids had to predict where prey would go and accurately pursue them over very long distances based on very small amounts of visual evidence. In short, early hominids hunted by simulating the minds of their prey. If you look at this video (a documentary on persistence hunting), you can watch some Kudu tribesmen literally simulating where an antelope will go. It certainly seems to me like lucking into an evolutionary niche where you get caloric benefits that are directly linked to how well you can simulate the fairly-complicated minds of your prey is pretty much a recipe for extreme selective pressure in favor of general intelligence. The story is

One of the more reasonable theories about why Neanderthals went extinct was due to Homo Erectus and then Homo Sapiens having much more plentiful and common access to protein. The book Born to Run mentions Endurance Hunting[1] where tribes literally run down game animals such as elk or gazelles until they overheat as proof of this. There are tribes that . Virtually no other mammal on the planet can sweat while on the move. Big dogs and cats have to stop and pant or find shade to sweat and cool down. If they don't, they'll overheat and die. There are evil still tribes[2] that do this today. [1] link [2] this video

If you watch the attenborough documentary linked above it has some clear examples. "The hunters have no tracks at this point and so must imagine the path the Kudu has taken". And later, "The tracks have disappeared again. He imagines being in the mind of the Kudu to deduce the direction it must have fled". There's also the case that tracks alone need a lot of intelligence to process. "Here they can see the Kudu were running by the spacing of the tracks and the bull is isolated and taking a different track". this video

this video I think you're misunderstanding how endurance hunting works. There is no land-dweller on Earth that can outpace a fit, prepared human in a hot, dry environment indefinitely. Not even a horse; Google it. We're slow in the sprint, but we're monsters of endurance. (By "fit" I mean "makes a living this way," not "jogs and hits the gym regularly.")

Here's an old (14yo!) BBC Earth documentary about it: > Human beings are a particular type of mammal. In this compelling clip, we see a tribesman runner pursue his prey through the most harsh conditions in a gruelling eight hour chase. this video 8 hours of something more akin to trail running than marathon, interspersed with game tracking. I wouldn't describe the running parts as "sprinting" though.

I first became aware of persistence hunting, by seeing this BBC Earth documentary[0], in which three men track and hunt an Kudu for 8 hours. [0]: this video