the ħive

Researchers studying ultramarathon runners, Arctic explorers and Tour de France bike racers revealed in June the maximum amount of energy a person can expend for a sustained period of time. It’s around 2,5 times your basal metabolic rate — the amount of energy your body uses while just chilling out — which amounts to 4000 kcal per day on average.

The limit seems to come down to how much food you can digest, rather than anything to do with your heart, lungs or muscles. The real champions: pregnant women, whose energy use peaks at 2,2 times their basal metabolic rate.

Source: Nature Briefing, via Science Advances 05 Jun 2019: Vol. 5, no. 6, eaaw0341

An arctic fox made a record run from Svalbard to Canada in 2,5 months. The distance of 3,506 km was completed in only 76 days. The average daily distance the fox covered was 46 km. At most, the animal ran as much as 155 km per day.

Source: Norwegian Polar Institute

Image: Ann Kristin Balto / Norsk Polarinstitutt

Image: Arnaud Tarroux / NINA

verisimilitude:

1. The property of seeming true, of resembling reality; resemblance to reality, realism.
2. A statement which merely appears to be true.
3. (fiction) Faithfulness to its own rules; internal cohesion.

[Wiktionary]