Two limbs combined with afro hair (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afro) which acted as a sun shade allowed humans to move faster and longer at midday in Africa than most of their prey. Lack of sun hitting the body being upright plus sweat from the largely hairless skin made them overheat less than the prey.
The article was published in 2016, and the authors extrapolated from 7 data points (!) over about 7 years of progress in the world record. This is obviously insufficient to project 30 years into the future.
I think it's sort of reasonable in this case, given there's very little investment in running on 4 limbs, while nation states fund track and field programs to the tune of millions of dollars. That the small number of 4 limbed runners are making progress against 2 limbed runners does indicate it might allow higher peak performance. Of course, 4 limbed runners have probably already plucked the low hanging fruit in performance improvements, but the researchers aren't projecting linear improvement
It's a tradeoff. Having two general purpose limbs is useful for all sorts of things, but not escaping scary things, so endurance can somewhat make up for that.
Two limbs combined with afro hair (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afro) which acted as a sun shade allowed humans to move faster and longer at midday in Africa than most of their prey. Lack of sun hitting the body being upright plus sweat from the largely hairless skin made them overheat less than the prey.
There is actually some evidence that, in a sprint, humans might be able to run faster on all 4 limbs than on 2
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27446911/
The article was published in 2016, and the authors extrapolated from 7 data points (!) over about 7 years of progress in the world record. This is obviously insufficient to project 30 years into the future.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27446911/#&gid=article-figur...
That record progressed
2.87 seconds over 7 years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenichi_Ito_(athlete)
If we check in on more recent progress since then, we find the current record is 15.66 set in 2022. https://web.archive.org/web/20241222175947/https://www.guinn...
Another 7 years, for an improvement of 0.05 seconds, or about 850 years of linear improvement to reach Bolt's 9.58 seconds.
Anyone wanting to bet on beating Bolt by 2048?
>some evidence
https://xkcd.com/605/
I think it's sort of reasonable in this case, given there's very little investment in running on 4 limbs, while nation states fund track and field programs to the tune of millions of dollars. That the small number of 4 limbed runners are making progress against 2 limbed runners does indicate it might allow higher peak performance. Of course, 4 limbed runners have probably already plucked the low hanging fruit in performance improvements, but the researchers aren't projecting linear improvement
1 reply →
It's a tradeoff. Having two general purpose limbs is useful for all sorts of things, but not escaping scary things, so endurance can somewhat make up for that.