World's Most Efficient Being

I’ve always been a fan of good charts. Nothing gets me going quite like a real nice data visualization presenting some non-trivial fact of the universe in a new light.

One of my favorite charts is this one:

It plots out the locomotive efficiency of various animals and machines, the holy grail of Darwin’s natural selection.

And it’s beautiful to see because here lies the fruits of billions of years of evolutionary biology — over the course of which mother nature has incrementally perfected her designs with graceful precision.

Take a second to think about how amazing it is that a salmon slices through water with graceful precision. A hummingbird hovers with microscopic adjustments of its wings. Even the common pigeon has mastered the art of aerial navigation.

And yet looking at this chart, at the very bottom you see something different: that the most efficient being of all-time is actually a man on a bicycle.

This, my friends, is human ingenuity on full display, illustrated perfectly.

This simple marriage of human and machine—two wheels, a frame, and a chain—achieves what billions of years of evolution could not.

It moves us through space using less energy per gram per kilometer than any other known form of locomotion. Less than a soaring eagle. Than a cruising salmon. Than even our most advanced jet fighters.

It is the definition of poetry. The simplicity.

No fusion reactors. No turbine engines. It's a testament to human ingenuity that our greatest victory over nature's efficiency came not from our most complex machines, but from one of our simplest.

As the great Steve Jobs once said: “Simplicity is the highest form of Sophistication”

And it’s hard to find an example that illustrates this as powerfully as this image.

Peace,

Ramsey