this post was submitted on 12 Aug 2023
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When it's hot out, the human wins. When it's cold/cool, humans can't stand a chance against the horses. Similarly, wolves and dogs can easily outrun humans in the cold, but lose to humans when it's hot.
That's because the biggest comparative advantage that humans have is actually thermal management while running, not the act of running itself.
Humans sweat. This means we can actually perform intense exercise even in heat, without overheating as easily as most other animals. Most quadruped mammals pant to cool, and have their breaths tied to their steps while running, so they can't cool themselves efficiently while on the move. Persistence hunting doesn't tire out prey, but actually overheats the prey to where they can't run any further.
Throw in the fact that we can throw, handle weapons while running, climb shit, talk, invent things, etc., and we really have been a deadly species for long before industrialization.
Do they actually allow the horses to run to exhaustion in the heat?
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No, there are mandatory vet checks that can last large amounts of time that are deducted from all horses time. So the cold/heat makes a negligible difference, the horses get long rest periods either way and have historically often won even in years where it was very hot.
It's not a negligible difference. The race results for that specific race are correlated with temperature during the race. The horses naturally hold back on their speed when it's hot out, to prevent running to exhaustion. This is borne out by statistical results comparing speeds for horse races generally, not just the human versus horse race.
Note that horses generally are much faster than humans, even over distance, so the trend lines wouldn't cross unless very hot, to where it would literally be dangerous for either species to be running.