Definitely a scene from the neverending story

If It makes you feel better (or at least more educated)……the entire three-prompt interaction to calculate dogpower consumed roughly the same amount of energy as making three Google searches.

A single Google search uses about 0.3 watt-hours (Wh) of energy. A typical AI chat query with a modern model uses a similar amount, roughly 0.2 to 0.34 Wh. Therefore, my dogpower curiosity discussion used approximately 0.9 Wh in total.

For context, this is less energy than an LED lightbulb consumes in a few minutes. While older AI models were significantly more energy-intensive (sometimes using 10 times more power than a search) the latest versions have become nearly as efficient for common tasks.

For even more context, It would take approximately 9 Lemmy comments to equal the energy consumed by my 3-prompt dogpower calculation discussion.

A dog’s power output comes from its muscle mass, which for a healthy dog is about 45% of its total body weight. This gives our 28-pound dog roughly 12.57 lbs (or 5.7 kg) of muscle.

Studies of animal muscle show that the peak power output of vertebrate muscle tissue during a short, explosive burst (like a jump or the start of a sprint) is around 100 to 200 watts per kilogram of muscle.

Now we can estimate the dog’s peak power:

• Low estimate: 5.7 kg of muscle x 100 W/kg = 570 watts
• High estimate: 5.7 kg of muscle x 200 W/kg = 1140 watts

Converting these figures to horsepower (1 horsepower = 746 watts):

• Low estimate: 570 W / 746 ≈ 0.76 horsepower
• High estimate: 1140 W / 746 ≈ 1.5 horsepower

So, a small 28-pound dog might be able to generate a peak power of around 0.75 to 1.5 horsepower for a very brief moment.

So this YASA motor is somewhere between 670 and 1,340 times more powerful than the dog it’s being compared to in weight. That’s some jaw-dropping power output.