How Fast Can Bigfoot Run?

[JDL]

To me, this is a perfect example of reverse engineering bigfoot to fit a preconceived notion of what they should be like. Giving bigfoot desired characteristics, and then manufacturing biology to achieve those characteristics. Let's see, let's give bigfoot a larger liver so it can store greater amounts of glycogen. And then we'll make sure it has lungs big enough to stave off fatigue. And then we'll install a greater blood volume so they can have more glucose reserves. That is bigfoot by design, not bigfoot by nature, and certainly not bigfoot by evidence.

I beg your pardon? A difference in height of as little as two inches in humans corresponds to a dramatic increase in lung capacity and more efficient oxygenation of the muscles, resulting in higher performance in sports like Olympic swimming. Are you arguing that bigfoot do not have larger lungs, greater blood volume, and a proportionally larger liver, or that the biological processes associated with these systems are so dramatically different in bigfoot that we cannot extrapolate from human performance trends based on these parameters?

I'm not reverse engineering to suit myself here, I'm making a logical extrapolation.

[Guest thermalman]

I like the analogy of Shaq. Being he was the biggest man in basketball, he likely had the biggest muscles, lungs, feet, (brain?? NOT!), and legs, but that did not make him the fastest or highest jumper of all the players. Speed is a combo of many things, and Shaq did not have the right combo. If we look at the animal world...the sleekest, slimmest, lighter animals are the fastest. BF, IMHO would not be capable to run down a deer, moose, or elk. Maybe by working in groups or packs can they only catch the faster animals. Or by element of surprise, like a cougar?

Edited May 9, 2012 by thermalman

[Guest]

^Shaquille O'Neal may be many things, but the man is no dummy. Among many examples of his mental acumen, Shaq earned an MBA and just this past weekend graduated with a PhD in some kind of "leadership" curriculum. For his dissertation, Dr. O'Neal studied measures of success in leaders who adopted either an authoritarian or a humorous leadership style. I haven't read it, but the dissertation and degree are legit.

That said, I stand by my NBA analogy from a few pages ago in this thread. It is by no means established that simply being bigger or increasing stride length automatically makes one faster. I submit that estimates of bigfoot size are likely exaggerated and that NBA players have physiques that very closely match what people report as bigfoots. Shaq is an excellent proxy for a bigfoot at right about 7' tall and well over 300 lbs. In his prime, he was as muscular as just about anyone in the NFL, he could run around for an hour, he was incredibly quick, and could probably out-vertical leap anyone reading this post. Cover him with hair and have him chase you out in the woods - he would be perceived as a massive hairy giant of uncommon quickness, speed, and agility. And he's not alone - average height in the NBA is 6' 7", and most guys spend a lot of time in the weight room. Kobe and LeBron would make passable bigfoots. The average physique of an NBA power forward these days is really quite squatchy.

So, which of those guys in the NBA run the best, the smaller guys in the 6'-6'4" range or the bigs 6'10" and larger? Which ones are the fastest? If stride length and muscle power were all it took to translate to great speed, then according to some things I've read in this thread, rather typical NBA centers should be able to cruise at a comfortable 35 mph over level terrain.

Couple other things: pacers are quadrapeds that move both legs in tandem on one side of the body, resulting in a rocking motion. This seems to be an efficient means of moderate speed in locomotion for large animals with long legs: it is the default gait of giraffes, camels, and elephants, for example (although they're not all doing the same thing biomechanically). We humans train some harness racing horses to use this gait as well. Giraffes and camels can gallop, however.

Natural selection shapes animals for various forms of locomotion. Cursorial (running) locomotion is very often indicated by a lengthening of the limbs to increase stride length, a narrowing of the limbs to reduce weight at the extremities, a reduction in the number of digits to concentrate the surface area of each limb's strike point with the ground, and a hardening of that strike point. A ground-dwelling mammal not adapted for prolonged running will tend to retain close to the ancestral number of digits on each limb (i.e., 5) and tend toward plantigrade locomotion whereas one adapted for long-distance running will tend toward digitigrade locomotion with a reduced number of digits. Check out this Thompson's gazelle - just two toes strike the ground, they do so with a sharp and hardened hoof at the tip, the limbs are long and slender, and the animal's mass is concentrated at its center of gravity. That's an animal built for speed. Compare to this olive baboon, and animal kind of built for speed and life on the ground, but also one that retains a more generalist body plan - baboons run, dig, climb, etc. A better comparison to the gazelle for this discussion would be a really big antelope, like eland. In this massive antelope, more muscle and a longer stride does not translate into greater speed.

We are the gazelles and bigfoots are the elands. They should not necessarily be any faster than any human athlete simply because they are larger and more robust - I would actually expect the opposite. Moreover, speed running on a broad, flat foot (especially one with a hinge in the middle) flies counter to how selection has acted on all the other mammals out there.

[Guest MikeG]

+1 simply for the amount of typing involved!!!

OK, kidding........for the content too. Eland, BTW, are huge! Bigger than almost any oxen you can think of, and are yet still an antelope. They can jump vertically, too, which considering their size is extremely impressive. I'm always slightly surprised by how well known Thompson's gazelles are, when afterall, they are rare, and found only in a small corner of Kenya and Tanzania. I would have chosen the springbok, the impala, the puku or the lechwe as the exemplar of the small, flighty gazelle.......but the point is the same. However, I digress.......

Mike

[Cisco]

I appreciate Sas's post and I don't fully understand it so please forgive my ignorance.

Given the examples that he presented; why then, are elephants and hippos so fast?

[JDL]

All in all, it's a matter of good biomechanics, good body conformation, and good biochemistry (energy conversion). Don't discount the ability to efficiently process oxygen. There's a reason we don't inhale only through our noses when we are sprinting. At higher rates of exertion, we require an increased and uninterrupted supply of oxygen. After looking at its limbs, the one other thing that makes a cheetah stand out is the proportional size of its chest. Proportionally bigger lungs = higher oxygenation rates = greater potential for speed.

[Guest]

^Sure lung capacity is important for sustained running. But by that logic, an eland should be able to outrun an impala (longer stride, more muscle, and bigger lungs) and Shaq should've been able to run circles around Steve Nash.

[Guest Tontar]

Good thinking going on here, I love it! Fantastic examples to support the theories as well.

Proportionally bigger lungs might equal higher oxygenation rates, but the key word is proportionally. When speaking of bigfoot, it's total speculation. Nobody knows if hey have proportionally bigger lungs. One would assume, and likely correctly, that they would have bigger lungs than humans, being bigger than humans, but there is no evidence that would indicate that their lungs are proportionately bigger than ours. If they are carrying around a significantly higher percentage of bone and meat, then their lungs would have to be significantly larger just to maintain the same proportion as ours.

Cheetahs don't just have larger lungs, they also have large hearts to pump the blood. That big, long chest has huge airbags in it, as well as a huge blood pump. The closest thing we have domestically to a cheetah, in the form of speed, are race dogs. We have a pack of race dogs, and after a hard session of training, which is generally a lot of tennis ball chucking or Frisbee throwing, the dogs will either stand or lay down with their mouth open panting at an incredibly fast rate. Their throat is open wide, and if you use a flashlight you can see well down into their bronchial tubes, far enough that we're likely seeing into the lungs. I've snapped a few goofy flash photos zoomed up on those caverns, which is a bit off topic, but when talking about size versus speed, the two fastest running domestic dog breeds are whippets and greyhounds. Greyhounds are faster due to their larger size, and longer stride, but not by a proportional amount. Pound for pound, and size for size, the whippet is much faster. Why that is has always been debated, but the whippet is built better for speed, a more flexible spine, more developed muscles, and lighter weight. The greater weight of the greyhound requires a lot more energy to get everything to move. Bigger legs, bigger bones, bigger bodies, don't just need proportionally bigger muscles, they need more than proportionally bigger muscles to equal a proportional speed. That's why we don't have giant animals running around. You can't just scale things up and have performance scale up as well. Greater size means greater weight. Greater weight means a non-linear increase in bone strength, which means even bigger muscles to move that greater weight. Generally, as size goes up, speed does not go up at the same rate. If you had a giant, 20 foot long cheetah, 4 times the size of a normal cheetah, it would not run 4 times as fast.

[Guest BFSleuth]

I think the lung capacity thing is proportional to the amount of total body mass. If you have large lungs (and large heart for pumping oxygenated blood) feeding a small body mass, then yes you would have the makings of a high endurance creature. BF likely have huge lungs, but this is feeding a large body mass. So my take on it is that they are likely good for short bursts of maximum speed, but I'm not so sure that they have the endurance to run for hours.

[indiefoot]

So, does a 7ft Bigfoot equate to a 6ft NBA guard.... Really quick. An 8footer is the same as a power forward and a 9ft Foot is a Shaq?

Edited May 9, 2012 by indiefoot

[Guest FuriousGeorge]

I'm okay with that, Indie. Obviously I have no idea, but it seems like a good premise (to me).

[Guest Tontar]

What about those little 5 foot suckers? they ought to be crazy fast and nimble.

[indiefoot]

Big is relative,no.

[Sasfooty]

Maybe they have big hearts. That was supposedly why Secretariat could run so fast.

At the time of Secretariat's death, the veterinarian who performed the necropsy, Dr. Thomas Swerczek, head pathologist at the University of Kentucky, did not weigh Secretariat's heart, but stated, "We just stood there in stunned silence. We couldn’t believe it. The heart was perfect. There were no problems with it. It was just this huge engine." Later, Swerczek also performed a necropsy on Sham, who died in 1993. Swerczek did weigh Sham's heart, and it was 18 pounds (8.2 kg). Based on Sham's measurement, and having necropsied both horses, he estimated Secretariat's heart probably weighed 22 pounds (10.0 kg), or about two-and-three-quarters times as large as that of the average horse.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secretariat_%28horse%29

[Guest MikeG]

Would someone care to speculate on their pulse rate and blood pressure?

I hope the irony in that question comes shining through.

Mike