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we call it a poison, not nature;) no such thing as poisons except what humans use to taxonomize
Imagining a fantasy setting where elves, dwarves, orcs and whatnot are just continually baffled by humans eating the most vile toxic things.
Salsa? You mean a mix of a hemolytic poison (onions), a cardiotoxin (tomatoes), and a nerve agent (chili peppers)? Eaten with corn chips dusted with a lethal amount of salt, and washed down with a cup full of neurotoxin (iced tea)?
Stay the fuck away from me because clearly you are the vile spawn of some incomprehensible eldritch god
Tbf dwarven religions are like "my ancestors carved these rules with their hands to guide us forward" and elven religions are like "my ancestors got intimate with a fae, starting our race. Also their firstborn is still alive."
Meanwhile human religions are like "here is a horse that's made out of all living beings, with a woman's face too. Mortals who mount it can go to heaven for 5 seconds."
HumanityFuckYeah is a genre that is basically this, although it's most often in a scifi setting.
Usually depicting humans reaching the wider universe and baffling/overcoming large more advanced galactic empires due to Earth effectively being a death world where everything is trying to kill us.
Earth effectively being a death world where everything is trying to kill us.
I'd be chill with that, but my experience with r/HFY was mostly humans being more amazing than aliens in every way for no apparent good reason. Just so weird.
Anything is poison in a high enough quantity.
My masturbation has become poison?!?
No no no, masturbation is how you get the poison out.
Phew! That's a load off...
Seriously. Our bodies are more than half poison, by OP's metric
Fucking hell. What a tragic story.
Isn't there an annual "man vs horse running race" where, once every decade or so, someone actually beats the horse?
People beat horses on the regular. The "man vs horse" race balances the course to try to make it equal. Horses will trounce people on courses under 3 hours or so. Humans do better with steep terrain. So humans will crush a trail endurance race over longer distances. We will lose badly on short, flat courses.
Interestingly dogs are the other species that can really hang with people in endurance runs. We will eventually leave them behind as well. They can outrun us in sprints and courses under a few hours. They can't keep pace at 4+ hours.
Yup, that's thought to be one of the main reasons we domesticated dogs. They could keep up, so they earned their keep, and because we anthropomorphize everything it was obviously only fair we share with them.
We're not fast and don't have a lot of natural weaponry
We are pretty fast compared to a lot of animals, especially when it comes to speed over any significant distance. Only a few other animals (like wolves and horses) can beat us in a long-distance race. And we're especially good at maintaining speed over distance in high temperatures -- as the temperature rises, our advantage there increases.
And having two hands to grab and grapple with (as opposed to only a mouth) is also a pretty rare and special skill in the animal kingdom. Maybe not the most impressive 'natural weaponry', but still quite useful and something to be feared by other animals. Then there's our sheer size -- we're certainly not the biggest ever, but in the grand scheme of things, we're definitely on the larger end of the spectrum, which gives us an advantage over most animals out there.
I wouldn't put money on us vs. a cheetah or even a bobcat
Depends on the distance. The cats are faster over a short distance, but can't keep it up for miles and miles.
Cheetahs have been clocked @70mph. That chase ain't getting any further than that short distance.
Ancient humans would casually jog at animals until they could no longer run away. Cheetahs can only run about 600 meters before they are forced to stop and rest. The shortest marathons are 42km. So yes, an average person on the street could almost certainly chase down a cheetah.
Depends who's chasing who.
Whomst's chasing who
He said race, not chase. Can't keep up that 70mph for too long
It only needs to keep it up long enough to catch you.
Unless you think arranging a race with a cheetah for bragging rights alone is an entirely realistic situation 🙄
To my understanding, wild cheetahs aren't known to attack humans, being on the small and fragile side for big cats and going after smaller animals than an adult human generally, so being chased down by a cheetah isn't that likely either.
Curses. You know your cheetahs
A single human would likely loose. 5 humans against 5 cheetahs?even if the cheetahs could work together, with basic weaponary (eg. Spears) the humans win.
Now hold on a goddamn minute, nobody said you could bring spears into this
.. that's what the cheetahs said
SURPRISE MOTHAFUCKAS
Don't forget how we've been partying by getting absolutely smashed with a large variety of poisons for fucking millennia. We make alcohol out of plants, honey and even milk.
tbf making things alcoholic is not really difficult, if you can seal things air-tight.
We're not fast but we can run for a long time. Don't have natural weapons but can make them. Then there are people who voted for trump 1-3 times. And other countries that see how the USA is doing and are trying to copy it. I'm not sure where I'm going with this. I hate it here
To be fair, most of the people who want more of what trump’s offering could probably still figure out how to make a wooden spear.
Not all of them, and I wouldn’t go as far as to say they could make and use arrowheads, but still.
I can't function without my morning cup of pesticide.
That or salt. Which goes well with the stable bond of two of the most reactive substances in the universe, that makes up 90% of our body.
Our superpower is sweating.
Well, thinking and sweating. Two things we do better than any other animal.
Though horses are actually a close second when it comes to sweating.
And throwing.
I think another quirk is that we study our species and make a judgement on an entire group of people from those studies. Most of those studies:
- Have a percentage of people it helped or hurt, you may not be in the larger percentage that decide what the study says.
- It may get it wrong because our make up could be different because they studied a different gender, racial body type, etc.
- Are paid for by the companies that make the "cure"
I'm glad we have the studies and all, but we have to talk to our doctor like they're AI, because they might be. Find out the percentages and discuss how you may or may not be part of the "groups" they're judging your illness on.
this post was submitted on 07 Aug 2026
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