> which seems like an obvious competitive advantage
I wonder if might be sort of the opposite. A lot of animals have natural downtime built into their schedules. Some animals are active only in the day because they need light to do whatever. Other animals are active only at night so they can avoid predators.
Being active all the time is not necessarily better. Idleness may seem like something you want to avoid (if you think in terms of the modern mindset of maximizing productivity), but activity requires energy. Which means it requires food, which is limited.
So you really would only want the amount of activity that actually helps you survive. Anything else should be eliminated because all activity has a cost.
Also, a bit of a tangent: when it comes to movement, rest is important. Endurance comes from the muscles. Muscles store energy inside themselves (in the form of glycogen), and they recharge slowly, on the order of hours. So we are a bit like an electric car that can run for a while but then needs to sit on a charger for a long time. Anyway, the point is that periods of rest help us keep our muscular charge topped up to 100%, and I'd bet there are situations where having your full endurance available is advantageous.
I suppose bodies could be built for faster muscle recharging, but that might make for a body that is more complicated or demands more resources to maintain. I'm not a biologist, but if I understand correctly, muscles draw energy from the bloodstream, and that energy can be supplied by the digestive system or by the liver converting fat. It's unlikely the digestive system could supply lots of energy fast, so you'd need a higher-throughput liver, which seems like a burden. It also might make it tricky to regulate blood sugar with things producing and consuming it at a high rate.
Point is, there might be advantages to a system where energy is staged near the final point of use in the muscles and can't be recharged all that quickly.
I wonder if might be sort of the opposite. A lot of animals have natural downtime built into their schedules. Some animals are active only in the day because they need light to do whatever. Other animals are active only at night so they can avoid predators.
Being active all the time is not necessarily better. Idleness may seem like something you want to avoid (if you think in terms of the modern mindset of maximizing productivity), but activity requires energy. Which means it requires food, which is limited.
So you really would only want the amount of activity that actually helps you survive. Anything else should be eliminated because all activity has a cost.
Also, a bit of a tangent: when it comes to movement, rest is important. Endurance comes from the muscles. Muscles store energy inside themselves (in the form of glycogen), and they recharge slowly, on the order of hours. So we are a bit like an electric car that can run for a while but then needs to sit on a charger for a long time. Anyway, the point is that periods of rest help us keep our muscular charge topped up to 100%, and I'd bet there are situations where having your full endurance available is advantageous.
I suppose bodies could be built for faster muscle recharging, but that might make for a body that is more complicated or demands more resources to maintain. I'm not a biologist, but if I understand correctly, muscles draw energy from the bloodstream, and that energy can be supplied by the digestive system or by the liver converting fat. It's unlikely the digestive system could supply lots of energy fast, so you'd need a higher-throughput liver, which seems like a burden. It also might make it tricky to regulate blood sugar with things producing and consuming it at a high rate.
Point is, there might be advantages to a system where energy is staged near the final point of use in the muscles and can't be recharged all that quickly.