No one is chasing us, so why do we run? For decades, one answer offered by biologists is “to get high,” and in fact, running has been shown to seriously boost levels of endocannabinoids (yes, they are what they sound like) in our blood. The next question posed, in this case by New York Times writer Gretchen Reynolds, is ‘why do ferrets run?’. And the answer is: they don’t. The reason they don’t, as suggested by research conducted at the University of Arizona, is that running does not make them high, as it does humans. Reynold reports that researchers at the school compared the endocannabinoid response to running in species that both do and do not historically run: humans and dogs were elected to represent running species, and ferrets were the chosen non-runners. The researchers had each person or animal run on a treadmill for 30 minutes at about 70 percent of their maximum heart rate, then measured their levels of endocannabinoids. You guessed it: both the humans and the dogs had significantly increased levels of endocannabinoids after running. And the ferrets? Nada. Ferrets, it turns out, do not experience runners high. But they are cuter than humans.
“But they are cuter than humans.”–says who?
Interesting! And I do think they are cuter than us, so I guess we can forgive them for not running…