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.
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.
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.
![[meme] Anon likes bikes](https://files.ikt.id.au/aqdemc.webp){kind=link}
I recently saw a scatter plot somewhere, I believe it was
speed vs energy efficiency or somethingbody 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, thefastestmost efficient animal was the salmon(?). There was one single outlier from that trend, an animal that is muchtoo fast and muchtoo efficient for its weightat 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/
I had to click way to many things to see an actual version of the graph large enough to read without my glasses so here’s a link to that lol: https://static.scientificamerican.com/dam/m/715ae217b6961ab5/original/saw1125Gsci31_d_DEFAULT.gif?m=1759758107.705&w=1300
What if we gave a salmon a bike
Then we could judge a fish on it’s ability to ride a bike.
Too bad trains and boats are missing from the graph.
I agree. To my surprise, human on a bike still seems to win out, though:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File%3AEffizienzLeistungFahrzeuge.png
From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_efficiency_in_transport
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.
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.