cross-posted from: https://aussie.zone/post/34370513

Anon likes bikes

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[–] 27 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (3 children)

I recently saw a scatter plot somewhere, I believe it was speed vs energy efficiency or something body weight vs cost of transport. And all animals, as well as most modes of transport follow a roughly anti-proportional relationship on a log-scale. If you're fast heavy, you use a lot of energy. If I remember it right, the fastest most efficient animal was the salmon (?). There was one single outlier from that trend, an animal that is much too fast and much too efficient for its weight at the same time: Human on a bike.

Edit: Found it: https://slowrevealgraphs.com/2025/12/31/a-human-on-a-bicycle-is-among-the-most-efficient-forms-of-travel/

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  • [–] 10 points 1 month ago (1 child)

    Too bad trains and boats are missing from the graph.

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  • [–] 8 points 1 month ago (1 child)
  • [–] 2 points 1 month ago* (1 child)

    That is interesting! Looks like that table is for passenger transport specifically, not energy per mass. People don't pack nearly as densly in transport as heavy cargo does. Not safely and willingly anyway.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 month ago

    There's also a table in that Wikipedia article that breaks it down for a few real world train services with percent capacity ranging from 27 to 65% (in different networks / on different trains, though). But yeah, humans like their personal space, even in trains, those wasteful brats.

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