We’re also surprisingly resilient compared to many other species. We can recover from wounds that would be lethal for other animals in weeks or months - such as broken or even lost limbs. We grow scar tissue at a pretty rapid pace as well, allowing us to heal wounds quickly. And our pain tolerance is high enough that other animals would drop dead of shock from some of these things. We invented surgery at least 200 years before painkillers, and things that we consider minor surgery would outright kill other animals. Hell, we were punching holes in our skulls to “let the bad light out” in the Neolithic era. Our mouths grow too many teeth, so we rip them out and graft metal onto the rest to force them to grow in alignment.
Our endurance is so high that the only other species that can keep up with us is dogs, and even then, they can only sort of keep up. We used to have a hunting strategy where we’d follow an animal at a walking pace for hours on end, never letting them rest, until they eventually couldn’t run anymore or simply dropped dead from exhaustion. We have a pretty wide range of temperatures and climates that we can survive in thanks to our ability to sweat off heat and shiver to burn extra calories for warmth. We can go 3 days without any food or water, and a full week with only water to sustain us.
There was a great sci-fi short story somebody wrote once about how humans were some of the most beloved crew members for spaceships because while we may not be the strongest, fastest, or most intelligent species out there, our ability to pack-bond with literally anything - including inanimate objects - and crazy endurance meant that we were the most dependable and capable species in a crisis. A human would jump into Hell itself in order to save a crewmate and simply walk it off like it was nothing afterward.
When I broke my ankle, I thoroughly shattered it then tried to set it myself and stand - twice - before realizing it was broken. Point being, it was in bad shape. After realizing what had happened, I called my wife who came out to help me while waiting for the EMT’s.
I remember her at one point, in a very comforting manner, saying “It’s hard to believe you can even recover from this kind of injury.”
(To be fair, I guess she was the best kind of correct. It still plagues me to this day.)
We’re also surprisingly resilient compared to many other species. We can recover from wounds that would be lethal for other animals in weeks or months - such as broken or even lost limbs. We grow scar tissue at a pretty rapid pace as well, allowing us to heal wounds quickly. And our pain tolerance is high enough that other animals would drop dead of shock from some of these things. We invented surgery at least 200 years before painkillers, and things that we consider minor surgery would outright kill other animals. Hell, we were punching holes in our skulls to “let the bad light out” in the Neolithic era. Our mouths grow too many teeth, so we rip them out and graft metal onto the rest to force them to grow in alignment.
Our endurance is so high that the only other species that can keep up with us is dogs, and even then, they can only sort of keep up. We used to have a hunting strategy where we’d follow an animal at a walking pace for hours on end, never letting them rest, until they eventually couldn’t run anymore or simply dropped dead from exhaustion. We have a pretty wide range of temperatures and climates that we can survive in thanks to our ability to sweat off heat and shiver to burn extra calories for warmth. We can go 3 days without any food or water, and a full week with only water to sustain us.
There was a great sci-fi short story somebody wrote once about how humans were some of the most beloved crew members for spaceships because while we may not be the strongest, fastest, or most intelligent species out there, our ability to pack-bond with literally anything - including inanimate objects - and crazy endurance meant that we were the most dependable and capable species in a crisis. A human would jump into Hell itself in order to save a crewmate and simply walk it off like it was nothing afterward.
When I broke my ankle, I thoroughly shattered it then tried to set it myself and stand - twice - before realizing it was broken. Point being, it was in bad shape. After realizing what had happened, I called my wife who came out to help me while waiting for the EMT’s.
I remember her at one point, in a very comforting manner, saying “It’s hard to believe you can even recover from this kind of injury.”
(To be fair, I guess she was the best kind of correct. It still plagues me to this day.)