"He's running so slow...."

1 hour later

"How can he still be running like that?"

I mean, if animals engage in pretend fights and other forms of play, it seems that they can on some level grasp the idea of practicing or doing something for fun.

Dogs do love a good jog though. Give that good boi a bit of kibble and then see how he feels.

I mean, the ability to run long distances without tiring is kind of what makes humans an apex predator. We can out-endurance just about every other creature. Most ancient human hunting techniques involved just wounding an animal, and then literally chasing it until it got too tired to keep going.

Wolves are very similar, which is what made us such natural hunting companions. The co-evolution of humans and dogs is an extremely interesting rabbit hole, if anyone is looking for one.

All that to say, the wolf would understand the need to run more than just about any other animal. A bear would work better here. A wolf would just see us running and think 'game recognizes game', just like they already did eons ago :3

So this is pretty neat:

https://www.science.org/content/article/born-run-early-endurance-running--may-have-evolved-help-humans-chase-down-prey

Humans aren't good at running fast, but we are good at running for a long time for long distances, so it's thought that we would just run after things until they got tired.

So like you know how people in horror movies would run and then look over their shoulder and Jason is somehow still there?

Other animals get zoomies too.

Jogging is practice for how humans killed pretty much all the megafauna in the world: exhaustion hunting.

Jogging from the perspective of non-human animals

FTFY

Whoever made this has never met a dog

“I don’t know why they’re running, but let’s chase them!”

So apex that most of us outsource our hunting and farming, which makes us fat and slow unless we purposefully burn energy for no other purpose than to burn it.

I know it's a joke. But would a wolf consider a human an apex predator? What about bears? Do these animals fear humans? I can't say I'm familiar with them. I figured they wouldn't, in most circumstances. I would think their default stance towards us is that we're their prey

One time, I was in the arctic doing some research. On a snowmobile, in winter, we crest a hill and see a couple of wolves pigging out on a caribou. I'm riding in the toboggan, and I start telling at the driver: "go go go!" They proceeded to chase our snowmobile for like a mile, with no hope at all of catching us, but running anyway. Like dogs chasing tires, I think they had no choice. Instincts are strong.

I say this to myself when I see people jogging and I really just want to yell "what are you running from!?"

If an apex predator is running, maybe keep up.

Let's say it's part of a mating ritual. I know this is not true, but I believe it gets the point across.

They are running from existential dread.