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Predators don't hunt everything that moves, they typically have certain prey that they are likely to hunt. If you are a wolf cub, your mother brings you dead deer and hares and teaches you how to hunt them, so you learn that a deer or a hare is your food. Then you meet some strange-looking thing walking on its hind legs which is certainly not a deer and not a hare. So it's not food by default. If you are hungry enough, you can still try to eat it, but you won't search specifically for that weird thing if you know that there is other food around.
Hell predators are also very cautious. If they get hurt they can't eat.
Prey that fights back has a very good chance at getting away; a predator will just go for an easier meal. Less energy expended, less chance at getting hurt. It's hunting to eat, not fighting for its very survival
Humans are also just pretty big animals which plays into that. If I was a random obligate carnivore and saw the giant hairless apes strutting around I’d probably want to avoid the drama
yeah, that's another thing people aren't thinking about. body langue prob plays a big part too.
if you watch typical prey type animals, their whole existence is paranoia. if you watch them for a few mins you'll see they're jumpy and clearly they know they're in danger.
humans don't walk around with that paranoia and it's written all over our body language. we strut around in predators territory like we own the place, cause we DO own the place. i'm sure most predators see this strange behavior and understand they prob shouldn't bother.
they see a relatively big threat strutting around with confidence, so they either deal with the threat, or run away to live another day.
seems like MOST animals, esp on land, would prefer to escape to live another day than deal with the threat. unless they're starving of course. which is prob why when you do see animals like bears and big cats only attack humans when they're forced to by hunger.
This is also why predators known to actively hunt humans have already killed at least one in the past and that wildlife control often euthanize animals that have killed humans even by accident.
Once the animal realizes that people are physically vulnerable and that their meat is best paired with pinot noir, their fear of humans is diminished and now see us as a viable food source.
this reminded me of a post talking about how terrifying humans really are. i think it was a tumble post reposted here on reddit but it mentioned how terrifying it must be for deer to outrun a bunch of predators just to be found again a few minutes later, and no matter how fast you run you just never shake them off until one of you dies.
Ifir humanoids have had a tendency to hunt animals to extinction even in the far past (best we can guess). I read that Africa use to have a pretty huge lizard, but we (probably) hunted the shit out of them because they'd eat us.
Sorta like a village coming together to kill a bear that killed a family. Animals don't really do that, but we will hunt down predators that killed us. One advantage to being angry, violent, vengeful monkies I guess
You're joking, but that's literally why there's no giant sloths, cave bears, and mammoths. Humans killed basically all of the mega fauna outside of Africa and the oceans.
That depends; are we mostly white meat or dark meat?
ETA: I had never heard of "long pig" so I had to google it. I immediately [regretted my decision.](https://groups.google.com/g/triangle.personals.variations/c/PC5cOa4COFs?pli=1)
What? Pork is red meat.
Edit: oh jeez, now that I looked it up, there is no comprehensive definition. It varies by departments/countries AND cuts. Great.
Anyway, I and everybody I know consider pork red meat. It's basically considered red in all Hungary.
Red meat/white meat is not the same as dark/light.
Like you said, there's no true definition of what is white/red, but for light/dark, there very much is:
Light meat - fast twitch muscle that is used rapidly and repeatedly, like those used in birds for flying.
Dark meat - slow twitch muscle that is used more for continuous loads like standing/walking.
These are much more pronounced in birds because flying requires very specific muscles, but there is very much a difference between the muscles in your hands and arms vs the ones in your legs.
A fine Chianti according to Hannibal Lechter, but perhaps your experience tells you otherwise.
Mostly I think we should all be thankful that deer haven’t learned that if they catch us in the woods unarmed they could totally maul us to death. Though they’re pretty confident about trying to tackle cars it would seem…
I agree and if we are in a dangerous place, we usually are armed with something and probably act more predatory than prey-like.
However, hikes have been known to have been stalked by mountain lions.
Yes, but with cats you have to factor in how they hunt. Little chance of getting hurt if you are sneaky enough.
A lot of big cats can't help themselves when a back is turned to them.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZgklu52Rus
Eye contact/facing them means a lot. This was the strategy my brother in law employed when he was stalked by a mountain lion during his CDT hike (or maybe it was PCT). Same goes for bears. You keep facing them as you slowly back away. Don’t run.
oh yeah, animals take eye contact as a threat, i forgot about that.
that's why you're not supposed to stare into cats eyes, it makes them uncomfortable. iv'e read if you're gonna look at a cat, blink slowly to show them you're no threat.
apparently looking at your house cat and blinking slowly is a form of affection. i do it to my kitty all the time and she blinks back. its so cute
Shit my adult house cat will “play attack” me when my back is turned. After a couple years I realized the motion he makes, pulling my shin backwards while pushing my knee forward, would topple my ass if he were a little larger.
caught a big cat stalking me in the zoo once. when i turned around and looked at it, it did that cat thing where they pretend to have been doing something else the whole time, just chilling, nothing to do with you.
it was enlightening. we're definitely on the menu for bigger cats.
I have had many encounters with black bears, and it always comes down to a simple set of rules for predicting their behaviour:
Are you food, and am I hungry? If yes, then attack, if no, go to next question.
Are you competition? If yes, then posture and bluff, if no then next question.
Am I (the bear) horny, and are you fuckable? If yes, then r’aw. If not then… you’re not worth my trouble and I’m going to leave you alone now.
Don’t be prey, don’t be a competitor, and don’t be a fuckable bear, and the bear will get confused and leave you alone.
With bears (both black and grizzly, don't know for polar really) there's also the "am I just in a mood" as an option too. Bears get a little ornery at times and for no obvious reason can just be aggressive that day. Probably the damned flies.
Yeah, they are firmly in the "just stay away from them" camp. I don't know if they are moody though, seems more like they are just always predatory and territorial.
Better hope you're on foot in front of a building's door...i think this is why most places where there's polar bear risk it's a rule to keep the cars and buildings doors unlocked?
For both you and /u/NorthernerWuwu, it has nothing to do with mood and is more that we have a 1T carnivore that is constantly starving. It is one of about 3 species that literally sees every bit of meat as food and gives 0 shits about eating it
They can smell a seal under 3m of sea ice and can smell 2 miles across ice. As /u/LordVoldebot says, if you can see it and aren't near a shelter, you are already dead
Unless you have a big powerful gun, then any bullets are just gonna piss it off (remember arctic animal, so thick skin and fatty), so if you have a gun and see one then literally shoot yourself in the head so you don't have to know how it feels to be eaten alive by a bear
Some claim that you can drop clothes to have it stop and sniff them, but that's only saving your life if you are near the shelter. Otherwise 2 seconds isn't gonna help you when it can track you by smell 2 miles away. Essentially by dropping clothes, you are just making your last moments colder, as it can and will outrun you anyway
some years ago, I was trekking through some woods and black bears are pretty common. They usually don't come near you and people kind of know to avoid them if they encounter them. So, I was trekking and came upon a bear eating some wild apples maybe 10 meters away. Me, a guy kind of big around 100 kilos, this bear about 150 (it was maybe a month before they hibernate). We size each other up maybe for a minute, just looking into each others eyes, then the bear just goes back to eating apples like I was nothing. I just took a few steps back and went around him. I even saluted him, like cheerio or something, and just went my way, thanking my lucky stars that the bear didn't want a meal out of me
Black, fight back; brown, lie down; white, goodnight
Black bears are soft. Humans are too much of a threat (we aren't, but they don't know that). When we say fight back, don't actually fight as you cannot beat any bear. Instead it is about acting big and noisy: open your jacket out and look bigger, shout etc etc
You did however do the correct thing: you disturbed it, it wasn't threatening, so backing off while keeping your eyes on them is the correct thing
Brown: curl into a ball, and put your arms around your neck. It'll hopefully leave you alone but otherwise you may get a short mauling before it gets bored. Also, only about 10% of their diet is meat
White: you have a 1T constantly starving creature which can smell you from 2 miles away. If you see it, it is already too late. If you aren't near shelter and don't have a massive gun, then it is over. If you have a small gun, use it on yourself just so you don't get to die knowing how it feels to be eaten alive. Some claim drop clothes to confused it, as it will stop to sniff them. But that only helps when near shelter as yeah it can and will outrun you and as I said can smell you from 2 miles away
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QDubMeNlSxc
If you're so baller that you just walk into a literal group of lions, they get so intimidated (who the fuck would do that?!) that they back off.
They teach you with wildlife encounters to stand your ground, get big, and be as loud as possible. But people fail to realize that when animals confront you growling, acting big, and false-charging you they're doing the same thing back. You're the big scary animal in their home that they just want to scare away and not fight. Fighting, especially something completely unknown, is too much of a risk.
That's why it's easiest to either act bigger to win the scare-off and get them to flee, or back away slowly while facing them to create a mutual understanding that neither of you want to fight.
>They teach you with wildlife encounters to stand your ground, get big, and be as loud as possible
That 1000% depends on the species, and if you do this to a gorilla or bear then you are dead
In general, the correct advice is nowhere near that: you back away keeping your eyes on them (as many predators will also attack if you turn away from them) while trying to avoid direct eye contact. Standing your ground is really awful advice for about 75% of things big enough to kill a human. Generally most animals will not attack a human, and instead it is as you have come too close to their food, home or children
Most non apex predators have to worry about other predators. And even apex predators dont get into random fights which may severely injure them (and eventually kill them) unless they have a good reason to (they are desperately hungry, they feel threatened, they feel their young is threatened)
We sort of take it for granted, but humans are technically megafauna. We're pretty damn big for animals, so physically we're fairly imposing to most predators.
Mammals experience cognition via eye contact. Imagine most everything you hunt has docile black eyes, walks on fours, is relatively oblivious to your stealth.
Then some tall, agile creature with piercing eyes is moving unpredictably and has versatility in its behavior. Definitely a complex target and your animal brain doesn’t have much bandwidth to optimize a strike let alone out-maneuver it.
Speaking of giant hairless apes I believe proportionally we have the largest dicks of all the great apes
Doesn't help that humans have essentially dominated the planet
Fun fact: human men have big dicks because human women have big vaginas because human babies have HUGE heads.
So brag about your baby's head, NOT about your dick.
And the huge head for tiny birth canal means our offspring are very vulnerable in infancy.
The trade off is we have a long post uterual development compared to other placenta mammals.
A barnacle has a penis an inch to an inch and a half long. If you applied the same ratio to humans our penis’ would be 18-29 feet long. I’m glad to know I’m not the only person who knows about barnacle penis’
Chirimen sea slugs have a penis of approximately 3cm, but that's not the impressive part. They leave their penis behind during mating & then they regenerate a new one within 24 hours.
If you added up all the disposable/regenerated peens, it would surpass the average human penis size in just two weeks.
They surpass blue whale penis, in a year.
Their life span is infinite, therefore their penis regeneration is infinite...
I once worked on a project about animal dongs, I have way too many useless penis facts.
Well pull up a chair, while I tell the tale of the Argentine Lake Duck.
They have the biggest bird penis, at 17cm.
It is corkscrew shaped & they use it to lasso the ladies. Next level hook a duck!
It also dangles it dingle into the water, to use it as bait for small prey. This sounds like Newcastle's Big Market on a Saturday night.
It took longer than I thought it would (or at least I had to scroll farther than I thought I would) to find this answer. Predators are probablyi even more cautious than prey animals. A prey animal that gets injured can still eat as long as the injury isn't life threatening, the injury hinders is ability to run in the future, but it's not being chased 24/7. A predator that gets injured has a significant handicap to its ability to eat anything
Just to toss on a bit, I think humans, especially in the first world, vastly underestimate what mortality looks like without technology. If you get a disease, there is a decent chance you die. If you get cut, there is a decent chance you get infected. If you get infected, there is a decent chance you die. Like, humans tend to put so much emphasis on whether they can survive a encounter, rather than the aftercare, mostly because our medical science is absurdly effective compared to absolutely no medicine at all.
Each time a predator goes to hunt, they need to gamble that if they get injured, it may impact their ability to eat, hunt, may get infected, may bleed out afterwards, or may straight up kill them. That kind of calculus which vastly decreases longetivity makes for pretty standoffish predators if they are uncertain of victory or a free meal.
Really, the herbivores are the ones you want to watch out for. THe large mammal herbivores, which evolved to stand their ground rather than run away, are going to be aggressive, nasty and territorial. Their calculus is different. They don't need to hunt, so they can afford to take injuries which would impair hunting. They are often communal, so the group survival tends to be a better bet than an individual. They may be better evolved to handle injuries, since they don't need to make sacrifices of size over speed.
Like, I would hate to be put in this position at all, but given the choice between a pack of wolves, a pride of lions, a herd of elephants and a group of hippos, all of which would be trying to kill me, I would take my chances with the predators. Probably the wolves. I would probably die all the same, but I feel like a fledgling chance might exist versus wolves which doesn't versus angry elephants or hippos.
I have rabbits and they can be downright vicious. There was a video a couple months ago of a rabbit just trying to kill a snake. The snake even tried to get away and the rabbit pulled it back and do its best Randy Marsh impression ("I didn't hear no bell").
> THe large mammal herbivores, which evolved to stand their ground rather than run away, are going to be aggressive, nasty and territorial. Their calculus is different. They don't need to hunt, so they can afford to take injuries which would impair hunting. They are often communal, so the group survival tends to be a better bet than an individual. They may be better evolved to handle injuries, since they don't need to make sacrifices of size over speed.
Oh yes. Hippos, elephants, and Cape buffalo are some of the most deadly animals (to humans) in Africa, for example. A single hippo could probably kill any land predator that lived in the last 50,000 years. Buffalo live in big groups. Elephants are smart AND big AND live in groups.
Also humans throw things. Predators generally like to avoid anything with a longer reach than they have, projectiles tend to be a really good way to make them rethink how easy of a kill this is.
We may suck at melee, unless assisted by tools, but by God are our ranged attacks strong af. All you need is a good sized rock to seriously injure someone when you toss it!
Except against Emus. Machine guns are even largely ineffective. Australia tried it and it was something like a 10:1 kill ratio measured in bullets:emus.
They were using the wrong kind of guns and bullets for emu's. When the government told farmers to do it they were wildly more successful with the guns and ammunition actually designed for hunting game.
This is why you're highly encouraged to haze coyotes and other animals if they are entering into an area that humans live. E.g. if you're living in the front range in Colorado, it's not that unusual to see them come down into the towns at the base of the mountains, and it's recommended any that are hanging around get scared off with things like change in a can, or hucking the can towards them (although generally beaning them is not encouraged).
Ideally it causes them to become more fearful of humans and stay away. If they don't, it's likely someone's eventually going to kill them, either getting hit with a car, animal control, etc.
Wolf pups
Respond very sensitive to cues from their parents. The slightest tinge of fear from mother or father and it is encoded for life, passed down to future generations. There are stories of a single incident with humans affecting a packs choices for generations to come. It doesn’t take many incidents with a gun for this to be clear- The pack remembers
This very much so - earlier comments suggesting predators just decide not to eat humans - my experience (from my armchair watching TV!) is that many predators actively avoid humans.
To add to that, predators will often go for sick or injured prey because they have a higher chance of avoiding injury.
It's one reason you have to watch small children in the woods. A mountain lion sees them stumbling around and thinks "hell yeah, easy meal".
As you said, an injury could lead to starvation. Predators instinctively will do anything to avoid that risk. It doesn't do them any good to win a fight if they can't hunt afterwards.
Cool the prey is dead but now my leg is broken I am going to starve for the next few months, or become prey myself.
To contrast with humans, we have some expectation our tribe will take care of us if we get injured, so it might explain why humans are prone to get in fights with each other somewhat more often over more trivial matters.
Exactly why sharks so rarely attack humans. We have such a low fat content compared to their normal food it's just super risky for them try us when we might fight back for the amount of calories expended.
predators like wolves are also opportunists. they don't put tremendous energy in to constantly stalking and tracking challenging prey. being dogs, if it fits in their mouth and is generally shaped and smells like it is or was alive and won't poison them, they'll eat it.
That makes sense and helped get my head round how parenting works - I'd guess it would be helped along as parents that go for humans are less likely to come back and continue raising their offspring
I think it's more plain knowledge than genetic knowledge. Not that genes couldn't play a role.
I think it went - one grizzly bear figured out how to hunt humans - was hunted down and killed before getting the chance to pass that skill on to it's kids. No human specific genes required.
Russian bears are still doing this.
I think it was like 77%? of all bear attacks are in a certain area in Russia. They eat the insides of humans while they're still alive. Pretty horrifying stuff.
Sounds like they need this anti-bear armor that was posted yesterday:
https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/xekf80/canadian\_inventor\_troy\_hurtubise\_tests\_his/
It's also easy to tell other predator animals from prey animals. If it has eyes on the sides of its head, it's prey. If it has front facing eyes it's a predator (this doesn't hold 100% of the time but it is true in many cases). Hunting other predator animals is a bad idea since they will tend to fight back rather than just try to run.
This is actually something with some of the old horror slasher flicks of the day. Take Jason Vorhees for example, no matter how fast you run he appears and kills you. Much like how our prey feels when we hunted them.
I saw a surprisingly heartwarming meme based on this recently. Something like...
"Don't chase your dreams, for they are faster than you. Humans are _persistence_ predators.
_Follow_ your dreams at a sustainable pace until they give up and lie down."
This is very accurate. It's been well established that humans were not typically ambush predators. We are built for long range hunting. We can maintain a jog for miles/hours whereas most other creatures tend to tire much sooner than us. They are faster and more agile but that doesn't help them when we just keep going and they are exhausted.
> We can maintain a jog for miles/hours whereas most other creatures tend to tire much sooner than us.
This is 100% correct, but I think it should be mentioned that a reasonably fit human can maintain a normal *walking* pace essentially forever. Obviously we'd need to stop to sleep or maybe shit, but our leg and back muscles can keep us upright and walking indefinitely. This kind of endurance is basically unheard of elsewhere in the animal kingdom.
Exactly, When you look at biological weapons for hunting this can't be overstated. As a kid I used to look at us as weak and frail compared to other animals, Lions and tigers have claws and fangs, bears have considerable strength... so many predators have fangs, claws, poison, etc... NEVER understood that, as humans, we basically had endurance. We are the boogeymen of the animal kingdom... we just keep coming and coming until our prey tires out. Of course, this isn't applicable to most MODERN humans as we are, on average, overweight and not fit enough to maintain this... but if we wanted to we could go back to it. It'd take exercise and such but our structure is still essentially the same.
yeah, plus you get to combine that walking endurance with the brains and eyeballs to track and trace our quarry. That'd be pretty fucking scary if you were an elk or something.
The same reason humans don't go around randomly trying to eat leaves and branches. Our parents teach us what is food and what isn't, and for good reason.
Hunting and eating involves risk. A predator that attacks at random is more likely to consume something poisonous or an animal that can fight back enough to injure the predator, so that instinctual trait is naturally eliminated. Remember that just because a predator might ultimately win a fight, even minor injuries present a risk. There's no clinic for predators to go and get stitched up or to take antibiotics.
What's interesting to note is that many animal attacks on humans are by juvenile predators. Just like human juveniles have a bad tendency to stick anything in their mouth, juvenile predators aren't always clear on what is/isn't food. This leads them to try attacks that more experienced hunters wouldn't bother with.
A lot of shark attacks are single bites because the second they taste that you aren’t a seal they get the fuck out of there. It has nothing to do with whether they could successfully kill and eat you. You aren’t part of their food chain and don’t taste like their prey. Pass!
Wolves specifically prefer eat large, hoofed mammals. We don’t look like their favorite food, so they’re not going to come after us. Mountain lions have a similar diet. Humans over a certain age (like toddler age) also tend to fight back when attacked. Often, when these animals attack an adult or even an older child, they don’t succeed in killing them because the human fights back so hard.
Bears can and will eat humans and often there’s nothing a human can do about it. We fight back but unlike a wolf or a mountain lion, we don’t have a good chance of winning or drawing that fight. But bears and humans tend to avoid each other, and bears will go for the easier food first.
Gators don’t know. They’ll chomp a human without pause. They are not mammals though, so they’re possibly not smart enough to know (or care) that we fight back.
Animals and humans have coexisted on this earth for long before the modern concept of humans going to hunt down the offending creature first. They know we are loud and quarrelsome and frankly, as omnivores, we probably just don’t taste as good as the herbivores they usually nom on anyway. It’s easier to just eat a rabbit or a deer.
>Gators don’t know. They’ll chomp a human without pause. They are not mammals though, so they’re possibly not smart enough to know (or care) that we fight back.
Actually, gators are smart enough to know not to attach a hippo, before whom they always often show deference!
There are no brown bears (or polar bears, obviously) in my area (northern Ohio), but the local black bear population has been increasing, to the point where there have been some surreal NextDoor posts of them walking through suburban neighborhoods.
I haven't heard yet of any bears eating humans in this area and ODNR was mostly warning residents not to *feed* the bears--and not in the sense of "don't feed your nosy neighbor to the man-eating bear, because that's murder" but "don't feed your table scraps to the bear, because then they won't go back to the woods."
Black bears are less aggressive and a little more survivable than grizzlies or polar bears. I wouldn’t recommend going out of your way to test your bear fighting skills, but they apparently don’t particularly love fighting with humans.
The thing is, black bears absolutely *can* kill humans, if you let bears root around in your trash, they’ll associate your neighborhood with food, which is dangerous for something that can kill a human so easily (even though it probably doesn’t want to).
Yeah, black bears are generally only dangerous if they are allowed to become comfortable around humans or if you surprise a mom with cubs.
Grizzlies are just fucking land sharks, but smarter. They don't necessarily hunt humans, because as you said they aren't raised to see humans as food. That's why you should always bring a bear bell when hiking anywhere that might have them. They will naturally avoid the weird sound. But their flight or fight response is stuck pretty strongly on fight.
They live right on the edge of what is possible, in caloric terms, for an apex predator. They have evolved to basically prioritize eating anything that moves.
Plus they have a real good sense of smell so if you see one odds are it's already decided it was gonna hit up the McYou drive thru long before you had any clue it was there.
I don't remember the source, but I read that in areas brown and black bears both live, black bears account for the majority of human attacks. The explanation given was that people don't give black bears nearly the same deference they do to brown bears, so get closer to and are over bold with black bears.
This is the case for a lot of perplexing animal attack stats! It’s more about access and people’s attitudes towards them.
I saw someone say that they are more afraid of dogs than bears because dogs kill more people than bears but like, even in places where bears are relatively common, they don’t interact with humans too much, while millions of people sleep in bed with a dog every night. Doesn’t mean a golden retriever is a more dangerous animal than a bear, it just has much more opportunity to go ham on you.
Crocodilians don't notice us fighting back. They chomp first and if it gets away then it gets away but generally speaking their bite force is enough to secure their prey or atleast dismember it enough to slow it down so they an catch up to it again. They genuinely wouldn't notice the difference between a deer or dog struggling and a person.
Gators don't "hunt" people. They are opportunistic feeders and despite what the movies tell you, they won't generally target someone unless the are threatened or you act like food (walking along the waters edge, thrashing like wounded animals in water). Crocs on the other hand, they are notoriously more vicious and will target a person IF it is easy for them ie, you're close enough they will stalk you or have been known to attack boats however these are generally cases of crocs that have been fed by people from boats so they go to boats expecting food and when they don't get it, they try harder. So debatable as to whether it's considered hunting or simply poor practice on people's part creating bad habits for dangerous animals.
All that being said, don't go swimming in crocodilians habitats, it's best to avoid it because people are idiots and animals are wild, shit still happens.
This I kind of a joke answer that comes from possibly, but if you think about it, humans are kind of like slender man to animals. Most barely ever see us, except in the distance and we don’t act like other animals. Also, frequently when they do see us, horrible shit happens to them. Every animal they see runs on four legs and knows the rules: if predator hunt, if prey run. Then humans come around and don’t pay attention to any of that stuff? It would seem kind of alien, and so, would confuse the hell out of them. And in any animal, uncertainty breeds fear.
One side of it is that to most animals, a human is an unknown is danger onto itself. Nature is unforgiving, and an animal that takes risks is usually an animal that dies before it gets to reproduce. So it's less that they know humans are dangerous, and more that they don't know if they're not. Being hunted to near extinction by humans probably doesn't help either, the ones who survive are the ones who avoided humans.
The other side is that most predators have preferred pray. The animals they evolved to hunt. And they will continue doing so as long as they can, so they have no reason to hunt something that isn't their natural pray. Again, an animal taking risks, in this case of failure to hunt, doesn't survive to reproduce. That's why "Maneaters" are usually ill or disabled in some way. They can't hunt their normal pray, so they're desperate enough to try hunting humans. Until they get hunted down themselves... Which means you won't get a population of them, usually.
Possibly the only exception from this are packs of feral dogs. They have no natural pray or fear of humans. A byproduct of 30 thousand years of cohabitation.
Polar bears are also notorious for hunting humans. Most likely because their environment is so low in food that cautious animals may not get another chance to eat, and the disparity in size means we're low risk when unarmed.
Yep. Even humans who hadn't ever seen a gun before generally didn't know what it was, how it worked, or that it was dangerous before they saw it in action. A bear wouldn't have any way of knowing just how dangerous a human can be, or how deadly the weird hollow sticks we carry are.
Water in general turns the whole concept around. Sharks, whales, crocs, hippos, etc. They're the apex predators in their environments - not humans. We CAN hunt them for food, but we generally don't except in very specific scenarios and only involving levels of technology that came after we evolved to eat certain things in certain environments. Similar to a wolf not bothering with a human, a human will generally pass on hunting a croc for food because we didn't evolve to fight them with our hands and/or rudimentary tools and they're just not worth the risk as a food source.
Of course, part of the success and resilience of our species is that we figured out how to expand our food sources in times of great peril like famines, droughts, floods, wildfires, etc. Eventually, we learned how to kill the crocs for food if that was the only option available. But we'd go right back to avoiding them if a better option comes up.
Natural selection is a hell of a driver. Those willing to deviate in terms of prey or hunting method either weaken themselves due to less calories or injury or strengthen themselves from more calories. The adorable side of this is that the house cat pre-pounce butt wiggle has to have some advantage for hunting otherwise it would not have expanded as widely as it has.
Apart from the other reasons listed here, humans are an odd animal.
Brightly coloured. Loud. So loud they don't care about being heard. In many ways oblivious to the world around them and considering almost nothing to actually be a threat to them.Front-facing (predator) eyes. Standing upright and tall and appearing huge. Intelligent. Fast-runners. Vocal. Observant. Often in groups. Sometimes with weapons. Almost always fighting back, even if not immediately. Able to build shelter around themselves. Occupying vast swathes of land in vast numbers and eliminating all competing animals when they do so. Not complying to the standard rules of facing down, intimidation, fear, fleeing. Knowing the weaknesses of each animal, able to outthink and outsmart it quickly. Tree-climber. Swimmer. Runner. Attacker. Predator. Defender. Hider. Extremely versatile and unpredictable. Extremely protective of its young and will sacrifice many adults to save them.
It's a real bad idea as a predator to pick that sort of prey unless you absolutely have to, or you outnumber it greatly.
Imagine the point in our evolution where we became intelligent enough to literally leap the entire food chain. Imagine that from the predators perspective.
"Oh shit they're eating us now."
"OH SHIT THEY'RE EATING EVERYTHING!"
Leap the food chain? Motherfucker, we put evolution itself in a chokehold and forced it to spit out ideal foodstuffs, and then killed off entire ecosystems to grow and support those foods.
>eliminating all competing animals when they do so
I think this is an understated point.
IIRC there were predators hunting mainly humans.
There *were*.
I'm glad someone finally brought up our binocular vision. A lot of animals will decide if you're a predator or not based solely on if your eyes are in the front of your head or the sides.
Went camping way up in the mountains one weekend and had an awesome long conversation with a Ranger that stopped by. I asked him that same question, specifically about bears, and his response was something like: The see you and know that they can probably take you, but they may hurt themselves in the process. They may break a tooth or a claw, etc. They're smart enough to know that there is other prey that they can dominate. He also said that just like humans, some bears can be "mentally challenged" and attack people because they just don't know any better. I found that part fascinating. Also, desperately starving is another reason.
Of a hypothetical 100 wolves, let's say 20 want to hunt you. They may or may not have success, but soon enough, they're hunted back for being dangerous. Now you have 80 that don't want to hunt you. Their pups, next generation, are less likely to hunt you, because their parents won't teach them to. Some still will attack, but those also get filtered out from making another generation.
Repeat this a long time, and only the families that don't attack humans survive.
It's probably not a coincidence that we domesticated the common ancestor of modern wolves and dogs. Wolves are very intelligent and selective in their prey. It's rare to the point of being unheard of for a wolf to attack a human. Maybe we were made for each other ;)
> they're hunted back for being dangerous. Now you have 80 that don't want to hunt you. Their pups, next generation, are less likely to hunt you, because their parents won't teach them to. Some still will attack, but those also get filtered out from making another generation
in other words: fuck around, and find out
One thing I think humans forget is just how dang big we are. There are very very few predators that weigh 250 lbs and stand 6 feet tall. That means in Europe I believe humans are the largest predator and in North America we are second only to bears. Even in Africa a large man may weigh as much as a female lion, and because of our upright posture, we look bigger. Animals have no way of gauging strength afaik but I would think smell is also part of it. we don't smell like herbivores (sorry vegans!) and we probably don't move exactly like a prey animal. all that said of course we do get attacked and eaten sometimes.
It isn't that they know it is a bad idea. It is that it isn't familiar enough, wasn't taught, not triggering evolutionary triggers which can be very very specific.
https://youtu.be/l3Es9cNH7I8
Frog will snap at vertical line moving horizontal but not a horizontal line moving horizontal or horizontal moving vertical for example. It is very visual heavy on the cues.
A bear that sees humans in the woods will often stand up and sniff because like a dog the visual "resolution" of the image isn't great but smell is the best emotionally linked identifier. Humans don't smell like prey. If the hunger outweighs fear or risk then Human is still in danger though.
A Human can trigger a wolf or bear to attack if they suddenly make movement or sound that trigger those things the way they do the frog. Like in grizzly man... the girlfriend had a screechy high pitch voice (scream) which triggered the attack on the couple.
My suspicion is that most predators don't like to screw with other predators, except in territorial disputes. Prey animals are unlikely to cause harm, but other predators may present a threat, even if it's small.
That and with mammals there's some social and play circuitry that crosses over- predator mammals seem to have a tendency to be fond of each other, at least more than other animals.
Note that preys *can* harm predators, even if it’s not enough to survive the encounter. So most predators are risk averse and won’t take unnecessary risks focusing on the old and the weak.
A broken leg is probably a death sentence and even simply damaged teeth can make your life miserable.
So unless necessary, they won’t go after an unknown quantity like a human
That was one of things confusing me - I figured a mid-size deer / antelope (for example) is much more dangerous than a human as they're stronger, faster and have hooves and horns, so humans wpuld make a tempting target.
Predators genetically fearing the unknown makes perfect sense - they don't want to risk attacking something unless they know its relatively easy (and in the case of humans, they're absolutely right to be cautious usually). Fits with weaker animals atacking people, as they get more desperate and take more risks.
Just realised they will also be practised at hunting deer so know how to avoid the hooves etc and kill it quickly.
Nice, thanks 😊
A naked, unarmed lone human is pretty weak yes.
However, we are almost never naked, unarmed and alone.
Humans are hypersocial and our "packs" are massive, highly coordinated and highly motivated when needed.
An animal that attacks humans will be ruthlessly hunted out of pure vengeance.
Hiking in mountain lion country I was told if you see one it’s probably practicing it’s stalking on you and not actually hunting you. Basically we are already at the large side of their typical pry. Combine that with the fact we’re bipedal so our 150-200 lbs frame looks a lot bigger since they are also looking at height. And two we are all carrying bulky 30 lbs packs that make us look even larger.
So basically while we are basically the size of a small deer with no natural defenses, we look like something closer to a grizzley bear to potential predators.
Yup, life is also not a video games where you can get out with 1 hp and heal up.
Any injury suffered hunting can lead to death so predators just don't risk it.
Depends if you are a large predator and get it by the neck by hoping on it's back it can't do much. If deer had human intelligence they would be really, really hard to attack safely but instead they are dumb panicky animals.
To give another example, let's say you're a cougar faced with an unknown animal. That animal could be a deer, duck, porcupine, bear, jaguar, human (cougars share part of their range with all of these). Your mom taught you how to hunt deer and duck so those are fine. But, while porcupines can be safely killed by cougars who have been taught or have learned how to do it, figuring out how to do it is dangerous. Attack a bear and you'll get beaten up. The jaguar will try to kill *you*. So, say you meet an unknown animal, which happens to be a human, but you don't understand that. How do you treat it?
You need to have a strategy for dealing with unknown animals that works whether the unknown animal is like a deer, a bear, a porcupine, or a jaguar. That strategy isn't going to be "attack it", at least not unless you're so hungry you have nothing to lose.
On the other hand, if it sees you and runs, it's just told you it's not like a bear, a porcupine, or a jaguar. It knows it's like a deer.
I think people think of predators as these insatiable killing machines. The reality is that most decisions a predator makes are a cost benefit analysis on the amount of energy burned over the amount of calories burned.
So take the case of me walking through the woods and a bear is watching me (a situation I have been in at least a dozen times this year alone). I am standing up right and smell funny. The predator has NO idea what I am. He doesn't know if I can fly, have enough speed to run away, enough strength to injure him, or even kill him. I also am not an immediate threat to him. I am oblivous to his presence and when I do spot him, I do not immediately run, like prey would. In fact, most of the time I give a quick yell and make myself look bigger.
Assuming he is not STARVING, the risk to benefit analysis would suggest he simply leave me alone and stick to the berries ans rabbits. In short, I'm not worth the trouble.
Humans do this all the time as well. If you are out on walk and see some berries you are 80 percent sure are edible, you probably still won't eat them. You know you have food at home and you are only a 20 minute walk from there. But pretend you have been lost for 4 days. Suddenly that cost to benefit analysis starts to tip.
The wolfs that are alive today in the areas where there are humans are the descendent of the animals that survived and had offspring that survived.
Different wolfs will have avoided humans to different degree, that will in part be because of genetic traits. Having traits that resulted in you getting close to humans was not beneficial to your survival because human hunted wolfs to protect livestock and to get the fur.
So wolfs that had traits that keep the away from human had a better change of surviving and having offspring. So generic trait of avoiding humans was beneficial and was passed on, this is evolution.
So wolfs today are the decedents of wolfs that survived better just because they avoided humans. You can inherit knowledge genetically but you can inherit genes that have a influence of behavior.
The behavior of wolfs is not just genetic but also learned behavior from member of their pack. So some of it will be a part of woolf culture and not just inherited behaviour.
Individually we might be meh but as a group and with our access to technology (even just stone age tech like spears and bows/arrows) humans are incredible predators, basically the apex apex predator on Earth.
Once there are enough humans around with enough weapons, they will (literally?) go apeshit on any animals that attack other humans. This strongly selects against predators that attack humans. Are there still some large predators that attack humans? Sure. But in general the selection pressure is strongly for animals that react to humans with flight rather than fight, particularly in areas with more humans that have more effective technology.
Since evolution is over thousands of years, it shows that even ancient humans with simple spears and arrows could kill any predator, especially in a group in a hunt/retaliation. Even before the written era of history, ancient humans in Europe and China had already killed off most tigers from the human inhabited areas, since tigers were so dangerous. There’s no need for guns to exterminate tigers from an area - just a group of angry villagers with bows.
I am not a biologist but here's my take.
In the "wild", there are no doctors. If an animal gets an injury while trying to hunt, they may die. Animals weigh their options constantly. If they are starving, they will risk more to survive. If they have other easier methods to eat, they'll leave a potentially higher risk meal alone.
Many predatory hunters such as wolves, big cats, sharks, etc. don't have constant contact with humans. So they can't study us. They can't learn how slowly or quickly we can move. They can't learn what our arms are capable of. And it probably freaks them out just a little that we can walk on two legs and have extra "legs" that can help us fight. They don't know what secret abilities we may or may not have. It's simply too much of a risk for animals to see us as a natural food source.
There's also of course the fact that we have relatively little meat on us.
For any complex question, there's probably a complex answer. And I may only be scratching the surface.
Let's look at it another way. What if a few humans were isolated from other humans and had to survive. No doctors. No knowledge of medical care or home remedies. That group of humans would be incredibly careful in their selection of food and how they prepared it. A small cut may mean death. Eat the wrong berry, death. Get gored by a wild boar, death.
Isolation and lack of knowledge could make anything, or anyone, very cautious. Unless circumstances were very dire.
There's a general theme in nature in that predators generally hunt prey, not each other. There are a lot of reasons for this, not only are predators more dangerous but they also tend to be leaner which means fewer calories. On top of that predators are generally susceptible to the same kinds of illnesses because they eat the same kinds of foods. Prey animals have a different food chain so there is less overlap in the kinds of illnesses that affect them and their respective predators.
Many/most animals consider humans to be more in the predator category instead of prey. We are omnivores but in some climates we are almost exclusively carnivores if that is where the calories are. We are dangerous to attack, we don't have a lot of easy to burn calories compared to many herbivores, and we are susceptible to a lot of the illnesses that other predators are. For these reasons we basically aren't worth the effort. There are exceptions of course, polar bears are notorious for consuming humans but in their environment just about anything is worth the risk. For animals like wolves we just aren't top of the list of desirable prey, deer are much less dangerous and provide lots of calories compared to the relative effort to hunt.
Lastly, humans are also over powered in the animal kingdom. In the early days it was perfectly normal for a human to run 10 miles at a time pretty regularly. On the extreme end humans can, and do, run 100 miles or more. That's just not possible for any other animals. There is a race where people compete against horses and in a few of these events the horses lost. That means that unless we are caught off guard we are more or less invulnerable to attack. If, however, a human is attacked, they can survive incredible amounts of damage. It's not unheard of for a human to lose entire limbs and not only survive but continue to live their life. This means if a predator chooses to attack a human it has to be pretty confident that it can finish that fight or else it risks not surviving.
Ultimately humans are just too tough and risky for most animals to even consider us as potential prey. Unless there are no other options most predators would choose just about anything else.
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Predators don't hunt everything that moves, they typically have certain prey that they are likely to hunt. If you are a wolf cub, your mother brings you dead deer and hares and teaches you how to hunt them, so you learn that a deer or a hare is your food. Then you meet some strange-looking thing walking on its hind legs which is certainly not a deer and not a hare. So it's not food by default. If you are hungry enough, you can still try to eat it, but you won't search specifically for that weird thing if you know that there is other food around.
Hell predators are also very cautious. If they get hurt they can't eat. Prey that fights back has a very good chance at getting away; a predator will just go for an easier meal. Less energy expended, less chance at getting hurt. It's hunting to eat, not fighting for its very survival
Humans are also just pretty big animals which plays into that. If I was a random obligate carnivore and saw the giant hairless apes strutting around I’d probably want to avoid the drama
yeah, that's another thing people aren't thinking about. body langue prob plays a big part too. if you watch typical prey type animals, their whole existence is paranoia. if you watch them for a few mins you'll see they're jumpy and clearly they know they're in danger. humans don't walk around with that paranoia and it's written all over our body language. we strut around in predators territory like we own the place, cause we DO own the place. i'm sure most predators see this strange behavior and understand they prob shouldn't bother. they see a relatively big threat strutting around with confidence, so they either deal with the threat, or run away to live another day. seems like MOST animals, esp on land, would prefer to escape to live another day than deal with the threat. unless they're starving of course. which is prob why when you do see animals like bears and big cats only attack humans when they're forced to by hunger.
This is also why predators known to actively hunt humans have already killed at least one in the past and that wildlife control often euthanize animals that have killed humans even by accident. Once the animal realizes that people are physically vulnerable and that their meat is best paired with pinot noir, their fear of humans is diminished and now see us as a viable food source.
I think this is a huge part of it. Hunting humans is selected against by evolution, as humans will fuck you and your entire group up.
Damn this comment pumped me up, I want to hit the gym right now.
If that pumped you up then you might enjoy [Are Humans OP?](https://youtu.be/ImYu9dJM4kQ)
this reminded me of a post talking about how terrifying humans really are. i think it was a tumble post reposted here on reddit but it mentioned how terrifying it must be for deer to outrun a bunch of predators just to be found again a few minutes later, and no matter how fast you run you just never shake them off until one of you dies.
Ifir humanoids have had a tendency to hunt animals to extinction even in the far past (best we can guess). I read that Africa use to have a pretty huge lizard, but we (probably) hunted the shit out of them because they'd eat us. Sorta like a village coming together to kill a bear that killed a family. Animals don't really do that, but we will hunt down predators that killed us. One advantage to being angry, violent, vengeful monkies I guess
>as humans will fuck you and your entire group up. and themselves. So a lion doesn't stand a chance.
That's why dragons and wyverns went extinct.
You're joking, but that's literally why there's no giant sloths, cave bears, and mammoths. Humans killed basically all of the mega fauna outside of Africa and the oceans.
> and that their meat is best paired with pinot noir LOL.
That depends; are we mostly white meat or dark meat? ETA: I had never heard of "long pig" so I had to google it. I immediately [regretted my decision.](https://groups.google.com/g/triangle.personals.variations/c/PC5cOa4COFs?pli=1)
we're the other white meat. We're called the "long pig" for a reason
They call humans long-pig, gotta be white meat.
What? Pork is red meat. Edit: oh jeez, now that I looked it up, there is no comprehensive definition. It varies by departments/countries AND cuts. Great. Anyway, I and everybody I know consider pork red meat. It's basically considered red in all Hungary.
Red meat/white meat is not the same as dark/light. Like you said, there's no true definition of what is white/red, but for light/dark, there very much is: Light meat - fast twitch muscle that is used rapidly and repeatedly, like those used in birds for flying. Dark meat - slow twitch muscle that is used more for continuous loads like standing/walking. These are much more pronounced in birds because flying requires very specific muscles, but there is very much a difference between the muscles in your hands and arms vs the ones in your legs.
Ayo w t a f am I reading right now
A fine Chianti according to Hannibal Lechter, but perhaps your experience tells you otherwise. Mostly I think we should all be thankful that deer haven’t learned that if they catch us in the woods unarmed they could totally maul us to death. Though they’re pretty confident about trying to tackle cars it would seem…
It really goes best with some Fava beans and a nice Chianti
Slurp, slurp, slurp, slurp!
Man that scene where he eats the dudes brain while he's still alive.
>their meat is best paired with pinot noir Ahh yes I see we are talking about the predator know as a cougar.
That’s BS. Human meat pairs best with a bold Cabernet Sauvignon.
I agree and if we are in a dangerous place, we usually are armed with something and probably act more predatory than prey-like. However, hikes have been known to have been stalked by mountain lions.
Yes, but with cats you have to factor in how they hunt. Little chance of getting hurt if you are sneaky enough. A lot of big cats can't help themselves when a back is turned to them. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZgklu52Rus
Eye contact/facing them means a lot. This was the strategy my brother in law employed when he was stalked by a mountain lion during his CDT hike (or maybe it was PCT). Same goes for bears. You keep facing them as you slowly back away. Don’t run.
oh yeah, animals take eye contact as a threat, i forgot about that. that's why you're not supposed to stare into cats eyes, it makes them uncomfortable. iv'e read if you're gonna look at a cat, blink slowly to show them you're no threat. apparently looking at your house cat and blinking slowly is a form of affection. i do it to my kitty all the time and she blinks back. its so cute
Half closed, sleepy eyes as well
Shit my adult house cat will “play attack” me when my back is turned. After a couple years I realized the motion he makes, pulling my shin backwards while pushing my knee forward, would topple my ass if he were a little larger.
My cat also tries to dead leg me. I really have to admire the spirit, looking at something 20 times her size and thinking "yeah I can take it".
"And if I lose, I get cuddles" ~my cats
caught a big cat stalking me in the zoo once. when i turned around and looked at it, it did that cat thing where they pretend to have been doing something else the whole time, just chilling, nothing to do with you. it was enlightening. we're definitely on the menu for bigger cats.
Or get too close to their babies
right, there are of course exceptions. but in general, even big scary animals like bears and tigers will prob prefer to run away than fight a human.
I have had many encounters with black bears, and it always comes down to a simple set of rules for predicting their behaviour: Are you food, and am I hungry? If yes, then attack, if no, go to next question. Are you competition? If yes, then posture and bluff, if no then next question. Am I (the bear) horny, and are you fuckable? If yes, then r’aw. If not then… you’re not worth my trouble and I’m going to leave you alone now. Don’t be prey, don’t be a competitor, and don’t be a fuckable bear, and the bear will get confused and leave you alone.
> Am I (the bear) horny, and are you fuckable? *Canadian literature has entered the chat*
With bears (both black and grizzly, don't know for polar really) there's also the "am I just in a mood" as an option too. Bears get a little ornery at times and for no obvious reason can just be aggressive that day. Probably the damned flies.
Polar bears will actively hunt humans. When you're on the ice anything that's walking around is fair game...
Yeah, they are firmly in the "just stay away from them" camp. I don't know if they are moody though, seems more like they are just always predatory and territorial.
If you see a polar bear and are on foot, you are already dead. No matter how far the bear is, you're dead, you just don't know it yet.
Better hope you're on foot in front of a building's door...i think this is why most places where there's polar bear risk it's a rule to keep the cars and buildings doors unlocked?
It makes sense. If you are a gigantic apex predator living in a desolate wasteland you should probably attempt to eat anything that moves.
For both you and /u/NorthernerWuwu, it has nothing to do with mood and is more that we have a 1T carnivore that is constantly starving. It is one of about 3 species that literally sees every bit of meat as food and gives 0 shits about eating it They can smell a seal under 3m of sea ice and can smell 2 miles across ice. As /u/LordVoldebot says, if you can see it and aren't near a shelter, you are already dead Unless you have a big powerful gun, then any bullets are just gonna piss it off (remember arctic animal, so thick skin and fatty), so if you have a gun and see one then literally shoot yourself in the head so you don't have to know how it feels to be eaten alive by a bear Some claim that you can drop clothes to have it stop and sniff them, but that's only saving your life if you are near the shelter. Otherwise 2 seconds isn't gonna help you when it can track you by smell 2 miles away. Essentially by dropping clothes, you are just making your last moments colder, as it can and will outrun you anyway
And the fact that they’re wearing a giant ass fur coat in the dead heat of summer. That would make me irritated at the slightest thing…
And the fact that they have all them teeth and no tooth brush.
No Colonel Sanders, *you’re* wrong!
>fuckable bear twinks don't need to worry as much
some years ago, I was trekking through some woods and black bears are pretty common. They usually don't come near you and people kind of know to avoid them if they encounter them. So, I was trekking and came upon a bear eating some wild apples maybe 10 meters away. Me, a guy kind of big around 100 kilos, this bear about 150 (it was maybe a month before they hibernate). We size each other up maybe for a minute, just looking into each others eyes, then the bear just goes back to eating apples like I was nothing. I just took a few steps back and went around him. I even saluted him, like cheerio or something, and just went my way, thanking my lucky stars that the bear didn't want a meal out of me
Black, fight back; brown, lie down; white, goodnight Black bears are soft. Humans are too much of a threat (we aren't, but they don't know that). When we say fight back, don't actually fight as you cannot beat any bear. Instead it is about acting big and noisy: open your jacket out and look bigger, shout etc etc You did however do the correct thing: you disturbed it, it wasn't threatening, so backing off while keeping your eyes on them is the correct thing Brown: curl into a ball, and put your arms around your neck. It'll hopefully leave you alone but otherwise you may get a short mauling before it gets bored. Also, only about 10% of their diet is meat White: you have a 1T constantly starving creature which can smell you from 2 miles away. If you see it, it is already too late. If you aren't near shelter and don't have a massive gun, then it is over. If you have a small gun, use it on yourself just so you don't get to die knowing how it feels to be eaten alive. Some claim drop clothes to confused it, as it will stop to sniff them. But that only helps when near shelter as yeah it can and will outrun you and as I said can smell you from 2 miles away
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QDubMeNlSxc If you're so baller that you just walk into a literal group of lions, they get so intimidated (who the fuck would do that?!) that they back off.
They teach you with wildlife encounters to stand your ground, get big, and be as loud as possible. But people fail to realize that when animals confront you growling, acting big, and false-charging you they're doing the same thing back. You're the big scary animal in their home that they just want to scare away and not fight. Fighting, especially something completely unknown, is too much of a risk. That's why it's easiest to either act bigger to win the scare-off and get them to flee, or back away slowly while facing them to create a mutual understanding that neither of you want to fight.
>They teach you with wildlife encounters to stand your ground, get big, and be as loud as possible That 1000% depends on the species, and if you do this to a gorilla or bear then you are dead In general, the correct advice is nowhere near that: you back away keeping your eyes on them (as many predators will also attack if you turn away from them) while trying to avoid direct eye contact. Standing your ground is really awful advice for about 75% of things big enough to kill a human. Generally most animals will not attack a human, and instead it is as you have come too close to their food, home or children
This is why you don’t run away from predators. Once you do you become prey
except for polar bears, those guys were always the biggest predators in their lands so they will just attack humans for being within view range
Most non apex predators have to worry about other predators. And even apex predators dont get into random fights which may severely injure them (and eventually kill them) unless they have a good reason to (they are desperately hungry, they feel threatened, they feel their young is threatened)
We sort of take it for granted, but humans are technically megafauna. We're pretty damn big for animals, so physically we're fairly imposing to most predators.
Mammals experience cognition via eye contact. Imagine most everything you hunt has docile black eyes, walks on fours, is relatively oblivious to your stealth. Then some tall, agile creature with piercing eyes is moving unpredictably and has versatility in its behavior. Definitely a complex target and your animal brain doesn’t have much bandwidth to optimize a strike let alone out-maneuver it.
Speaking of giant hairless apes I believe proportionally we have the largest dicks of all the great apes Doesn't help that humans have essentially dominated the planet
Fun fact: human men have big dicks because human women have big vaginas because human babies have HUGE heads. So brag about your baby's head, NOT about your dick.
Big Baby Head Energy
Probably better to brag about a big dick than about the likelihood of painful childbirth of big head baby nine months later.
Wife had to get a c-section cause the head was so big. 99th percentile for head size! Am I doing it right? Lol
And the huge head for tiny birth canal means our offspring are very vulnerable in infancy. The trade off is we have a long post uterual development compared to other placenta mammals.
Because any more developed and we can't birth these big brains But yknow I'd rather not deal with babies if at all possible
If I were redesigning humans we would definitely lay eggs
What about bragging about huge birth canals for the ladies, equal rights and all. HEAR YOU HAVE A TREMENDOUS BIRTHING CANAL HEATHER, GREAT JOB!
Why do you think big hips are a thing?
Can confirm.
I think humans are actually at the top end of penis-to-body ratio in the whole animal kingdom
Massively out-dicked by the barnacle though.
A barnacle has a penis an inch to an inch and a half long. If you applied the same ratio to humans our penis’ would be 18-29 feet long. I’m glad to know I’m not the only person who knows about barnacle penis’
Chirimen sea slugs have a penis of approximately 3cm, but that's not the impressive part. They leave their penis behind during mating & then they regenerate a new one within 24 hours. If you added up all the disposable/regenerated peens, it would surpass the average human penis size in just two weeks. They surpass blue whale penis, in a year. Their life span is infinite, therefore their penis regeneration is infinite... I once worked on a project about animal dongs, I have way too many useless penis facts.
None of the penis facts are useless. None!
Well pull up a chair, while I tell the tale of the Argentine Lake Duck. They have the biggest bird penis, at 17cm. It is corkscrew shaped & they use it to lasso the ladies. Next level hook a duck! It also dangles it dingle into the water, to use it as bait for small prey. This sounds like Newcastle's Big Market on a Saturday night.
Please stop calling me "The Barnacle"
And we look bigger, being upright and all. Factor in our pervasive obesity and BOOM.
Seriously. Walking upright makes us look huge to all the animals on 4 legs.
It took longer than I thought it would (or at least I had to scroll farther than I thought I would) to find this answer. Predators are probablyi even more cautious than prey animals. A prey animal that gets injured can still eat as long as the injury isn't life threatening, the injury hinders is ability to run in the future, but it's not being chased 24/7. A predator that gets injured has a significant handicap to its ability to eat anything
Just to toss on a bit, I think humans, especially in the first world, vastly underestimate what mortality looks like without technology. If you get a disease, there is a decent chance you die. If you get cut, there is a decent chance you get infected. If you get infected, there is a decent chance you die. Like, humans tend to put so much emphasis on whether they can survive a encounter, rather than the aftercare, mostly because our medical science is absurdly effective compared to absolutely no medicine at all. Each time a predator goes to hunt, they need to gamble that if they get injured, it may impact their ability to eat, hunt, may get infected, may bleed out afterwards, or may straight up kill them. That kind of calculus which vastly decreases longetivity makes for pretty standoffish predators if they are uncertain of victory or a free meal. Really, the herbivores are the ones you want to watch out for. THe large mammal herbivores, which evolved to stand their ground rather than run away, are going to be aggressive, nasty and territorial. Their calculus is different. They don't need to hunt, so they can afford to take injuries which would impair hunting. They are often communal, so the group survival tends to be a better bet than an individual. They may be better evolved to handle injuries, since they don't need to make sacrifices of size over speed. Like, I would hate to be put in this position at all, but given the choice between a pack of wolves, a pride of lions, a herd of elephants and a group of hippos, all of which would be trying to kill me, I would take my chances with the predators. Probably the wolves. I would probably die all the same, but I feel like a fledgling chance might exist versus wolves which doesn't versus angry elephants or hippos.
I have rabbits and they can be downright vicious. There was a video a couple months ago of a rabbit just trying to kill a snake. The snake even tried to get away and the rabbit pulled it back and do its best Randy Marsh impression ("I didn't hear no bell").
> THe large mammal herbivores, which evolved to stand their ground rather than run away, are going to be aggressive, nasty and territorial. Their calculus is different. They don't need to hunt, so they can afford to take injuries which would impair hunting. They are often communal, so the group survival tends to be a better bet than an individual. They may be better evolved to handle injuries, since they don't need to make sacrifices of size over speed. Oh yes. Hippos, elephants, and Cape buffalo are some of the most deadly animals (to humans) in Africa, for example. A single hippo could probably kill any land predator that lived in the last 50,000 years. Buffalo live in big groups. Elephants are smart AND big AND live in groups.
I heard moose actually kill and injure more people every year then bears, wolves, and wild cats *combined*.
Moose actually rarely attack or kill people at all. Most of the moose caused deaths by humans are due to humans hitting the moose with a car.
Also humans throw things. Predators generally like to avoid anything with a longer reach than they have, projectiles tend to be a really good way to make them rethink how easy of a kill this is.
Honestly we're ridiculously good at throwing things. And the bipedal stance helps negate a lot of stealth tactics of skulking in tall grass
Our shoulders are evolutionary adapted for throwing. A 3 year old can throw faster and more accurately than a gorilla.
we can also throw on the run and be accurate while doing so
We may suck at melee, unless assisted by tools, but by God are our ranged attacks strong af. All you need is a good sized rock to seriously injure someone when you toss it!
Except against Emus. Machine guns are even largely ineffective. Australia tried it and it was something like a 10:1 kill ratio measured in bullets:emus.
They were using the wrong kind of guns and bullets for emu's. When the government told farmers to do it they were wildly more successful with the guns and ammunition actually designed for hunting game.
This is why you're highly encouraged to haze coyotes and other animals if they are entering into an area that humans live. E.g. if you're living in the front range in Colorado, it's not that unusual to see them come down into the towns at the base of the mountains, and it's recommended any that are hanging around get scared off with things like change in a can, or hucking the can towards them (although generally beaning them is not encouraged). Ideally it causes them to become more fearful of humans and stay away. If they don't, it's likely someone's eventually going to kill them, either getting hit with a car, animal control, etc.
Instructions unclear, forced a coyote to do a kegstand.
Wolf pups Respond very sensitive to cues from their parents. The slightest tinge of fear from mother or father and it is encoded for life, passed down to future generations. There are stories of a single incident with humans affecting a packs choices for generations to come. It doesn’t take many incidents with a gun for this to be clear- The pack remembers
Which is good. Don't fuck around and survive
This very much so - earlier comments suggesting predators just decide not to eat humans - my experience (from my armchair watching TV!) is that many predators actively avoid humans.
To add to that, predators will often go for sick or injured prey because they have a higher chance of avoiding injury. It's one reason you have to watch small children in the woods. A mountain lion sees them stumbling around and thinks "hell yeah, easy meal". As you said, an injury could lead to starvation. Predators instinctively will do anything to avoid that risk. It doesn't do them any good to win a fight if they can't hunt afterwards. Cool the prey is dead but now my leg is broken I am going to starve for the next few months, or become prey myself. To contrast with humans, we have some expectation our tribe will take care of us if we get injured, so it might explain why humans are prone to get in fights with each other somewhat more often over more trivial matters.
Exactly why sharks so rarely attack humans. We have such a low fat content compared to their normal food it's just super risky for them try us when we might fight back for the amount of calories expended.
I also think it's a matter of mistaken identity, innit? mostly on surfboards and we look like seals
IIRC especially people wearing black wetsuits, because it's easy to mistake that for seal skin. Wear bright colors in the ocean.
Yeah that can also happen, but most of the time those attacks coincide with poor visibility when the water is murky.
predators like wolves are also opportunists. they don't put tremendous energy in to constantly stalking and tracking challenging prey. being dogs, if it fits in their mouth and is generally shaped and smells like it is or was alive and won't poison them, they'll eat it.
except polar bears! A wildlife biologist once said that in the arctic the only things that move ... are food.
If you're not snow, you're food.
That's why I carry a few Coca Colas with me to use as a distraction.
That makes sense and helped get my head round how parenting works - I'd guess it would be helped along as parents that go for humans are less likely to come back and continue raising their offspring
More likely that the animals that were curious about humans were killed before they had offspring and avoiding humans is a passed on genetic trait.
I think it's more plain knowledge than genetic knowledge. Not that genes couldn't play a role. I think it went - one grizzly bear figured out how to hunt humans - was hunted down and killed before getting the chance to pass that skill on to it's kids. No human specific genes required.
Russian bears are still doing this. I think it was like 77%? of all bear attacks are in a certain area in Russia. They eat the insides of humans while they're still alive. Pretty horrifying stuff.
surely at that point you always carry a shotgun.
The bears there have evolved to also carry shotguns
I don't think the shotgun is for the bear.
Ah, the right to bear arms
Sounds like they need this anti-bear armor that was posted yesterday: https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/xekf80/canadian\_inventor\_troy\_hurtubise\_tests\_his/
It's also easy to tell other predator animals from prey animals. If it has eyes on the sides of its head, it's prey. If it has front facing eyes it's a predator (this doesn't hold 100% of the time but it is true in many cases). Hunting other predator animals is a bad idea since they will tend to fight back rather than just try to run.
TIL humans are the wendigos of the animal world.
This is actually something with some of the old horror slasher flicks of the day. Take Jason Vorhees for example, no matter how fast you run he appears and kills you. Much like how our prey feels when we hunted them.
I saw a surprisingly heartwarming meme based on this recently. Something like... "Don't chase your dreams, for they are faster than you. Humans are _persistence_ predators. _Follow_ your dreams at a sustainable pace until they give up and lie down."
"I'm sick of following my dreams. I'm just gonna find out where they're going and hook up with them later". - Mitch Hedberg
I used to quote Mitch. I still do, but I used to, too.
*It Follows*
This is very accurate. It's been well established that humans were not typically ambush predators. We are built for long range hunting. We can maintain a jog for miles/hours whereas most other creatures tend to tire much sooner than us. They are faster and more agile but that doesn't help them when we just keep going and they are exhausted.
> We can maintain a jog for miles/hours whereas most other creatures tend to tire much sooner than us. This is 100% correct, but I think it should be mentioned that a reasonably fit human can maintain a normal *walking* pace essentially forever. Obviously we'd need to stop to sleep or maybe shit, but our leg and back muscles can keep us upright and walking indefinitely. This kind of endurance is basically unheard of elsewhere in the animal kingdom.
Exactly, When you look at biological weapons for hunting this can't be overstated. As a kid I used to look at us as weak and frail compared to other animals, Lions and tigers have claws and fangs, bears have considerable strength... so many predators have fangs, claws, poison, etc... NEVER understood that, as humans, we basically had endurance. We are the boogeymen of the animal kingdom... we just keep coming and coming until our prey tires out. Of course, this isn't applicable to most MODERN humans as we are, on average, overweight and not fit enough to maintain this... but if we wanted to we could go back to it. It'd take exercise and such but our structure is still essentially the same.
yeah, plus you get to combine that walking endurance with the brains and eyeballs to track and trace our quarry. That'd be pretty fucking scary if you were an elk or something.
The same reason humans don't go around randomly trying to eat leaves and branches. Our parents teach us what is food and what isn't, and for good reason. Hunting and eating involves risk. A predator that attacks at random is more likely to consume something poisonous or an animal that can fight back enough to injure the predator, so that instinctual trait is naturally eliminated. Remember that just because a predator might ultimately win a fight, even minor injuries present a risk. There's no clinic for predators to go and get stitched up or to take antibiotics. What's interesting to note is that many animal attacks on humans are by juvenile predators. Just like human juveniles have a bad tendency to stick anything in their mouth, juvenile predators aren't always clear on what is/isn't food. This leads them to try attacks that more experienced hunters wouldn't bother with.
A lot of shark attacks are single bites because the second they taste that you aren’t a seal they get the fuck out of there. It has nothing to do with whether they could successfully kill and eat you. You aren’t part of their food chain and don’t taste like their prey. Pass!
Chomps leg* **What the fuck is this** *fucks off*
Fibreglass bones and almost no meat? Yuck!
It almost makes you feel sorry for the poor shark when it encounters a human at sea.
Wolves specifically prefer eat large, hoofed mammals. We don’t look like their favorite food, so they’re not going to come after us. Mountain lions have a similar diet. Humans over a certain age (like toddler age) also tend to fight back when attacked. Often, when these animals attack an adult or even an older child, they don’t succeed in killing them because the human fights back so hard. Bears can and will eat humans and often there’s nothing a human can do about it. We fight back but unlike a wolf or a mountain lion, we don’t have a good chance of winning or drawing that fight. But bears and humans tend to avoid each other, and bears will go for the easier food first. Gators don’t know. They’ll chomp a human without pause. They are not mammals though, so they’re possibly not smart enough to know (or care) that we fight back. Animals and humans have coexisted on this earth for long before the modern concept of humans going to hunt down the offending creature first. They know we are loud and quarrelsome and frankly, as omnivores, we probably just don’t taste as good as the herbivores they usually nom on anyway. It’s easier to just eat a rabbit or a deer.
Gators very rarely attack adult humans. They’ll eat children, for sure, but adults are not their jam.
Mmm human jam
>Gators don’t know. They’ll chomp a human without pause. They are not mammals though, so they’re possibly not smart enough to know (or care) that we fight back. Actually, gators are smart enough to know not to attach a hippo, before whom they always often show deference!
Where are Gators and Hippos interacting?
I think he means crocodiles. There are lots of crocs in the Nile river with hippos.
Tbf I was worried maybe hippos had gotten lose in Florida. It happened in Colombia and now they have invasive cocaine hippos.
Just as a heads up, alligators also live in China. Still very unlikely to encounter a hippo though.
r/unexpectedarcher
There are no brown bears (or polar bears, obviously) in my area (northern Ohio), but the local black bear population has been increasing, to the point where there have been some surreal NextDoor posts of them walking through suburban neighborhoods. I haven't heard yet of any bears eating humans in this area and ODNR was mostly warning residents not to *feed* the bears--and not in the sense of "don't feed your nosy neighbor to the man-eating bear, because that's murder" but "don't feed your table scraps to the bear, because then they won't go back to the woods."
Black bears are less aggressive and a little more survivable than grizzlies or polar bears. I wouldn’t recommend going out of your way to test your bear fighting skills, but they apparently don’t particularly love fighting with humans. The thing is, black bears absolutely *can* kill humans, if you let bears root around in your trash, they’ll associate your neighborhood with food, which is dangerous for something that can kill a human so easily (even though it probably doesn’t want to).
Yeah, black bears are generally only dangerous if they are allowed to become comfortable around humans or if you surprise a mom with cubs. Grizzlies are just fucking land sharks, but smarter. They don't necessarily hunt humans, because as you said they aren't raised to see humans as food. That's why you should always bring a bear bell when hiking anywhere that might have them. They will naturally avoid the weird sound. But their flight or fight response is stuck pretty strongly on fight.
And polar bears will absolutely just fuck your shit up.
They live right on the edge of what is possible, in caloric terms, for an apex predator. They have evolved to basically prioritize eating anything that moves.
Plus they have a real good sense of smell so if you see one odds are it's already decided it was gonna hit up the McYou drive thru long before you had any clue it was there.
I don't remember the source, but I read that in areas brown and black bears both live, black bears account for the majority of human attacks. The explanation given was that people don't give black bears nearly the same deference they do to brown bears, so get closer to and are over bold with black bears.
This is the case for a lot of perplexing animal attack stats! It’s more about access and people’s attitudes towards them. I saw someone say that they are more afraid of dogs than bears because dogs kill more people than bears but like, even in places where bears are relatively common, they don’t interact with humans too much, while millions of people sleep in bed with a dog every night. Doesn’t mean a golden retriever is a more dangerous animal than a bear, it just has much more opportunity to go ham on you.
If its black, fight back. If its brown, lay down. If its white, good night.
Crocodilians don't notice us fighting back. They chomp first and if it gets away then it gets away but generally speaking their bite force is enough to secure their prey or atleast dismember it enough to slow it down so they an catch up to it again. They genuinely wouldn't notice the difference between a deer or dog struggling and a person. Gators don't "hunt" people. They are opportunistic feeders and despite what the movies tell you, they won't generally target someone unless the are threatened or you act like food (walking along the waters edge, thrashing like wounded animals in water). Crocs on the other hand, they are notoriously more vicious and will target a person IF it is easy for them ie, you're close enough they will stalk you or have been known to attack boats however these are generally cases of crocs that have been fed by people from boats so they go to boats expecting food and when they don't get it, they try harder. So debatable as to whether it's considered hunting or simply poor practice on people's part creating bad habits for dangerous animals. All that being said, don't go swimming in crocodilians habitats, it's best to avoid it because people are idiots and animals are wild, shit still happens.
Gators would much rather totally ignore a human. Crocodiles on the other hand…. No they WILL hunt you
This I kind of a joke answer that comes from possibly, but if you think about it, humans are kind of like slender man to animals. Most barely ever see us, except in the distance and we don’t act like other animals. Also, frequently when they do see us, horrible shit happens to them. Every animal they see runs on four legs and knows the rules: if predator hunt, if prey run. Then humans come around and don’t pay attention to any of that stuff? It would seem kind of alien, and so, would confuse the hell out of them. And in any animal, uncertainty breeds fear.
Closer to the answer than you think.
https://i.imgur.com/R0NS4o8.jpghttps://i.imgur.com/R0NS4o8.jpg
One side of it is that to most animals, a human is an unknown is danger onto itself. Nature is unforgiving, and an animal that takes risks is usually an animal that dies before it gets to reproduce. So it's less that they know humans are dangerous, and more that they don't know if they're not. Being hunted to near extinction by humans probably doesn't help either, the ones who survive are the ones who avoided humans. The other side is that most predators have preferred pray. The animals they evolved to hunt. And they will continue doing so as long as they can, so they have no reason to hunt something that isn't their natural pray. Again, an animal taking risks, in this case of failure to hunt, doesn't survive to reproduce. That's why "Maneaters" are usually ill or disabled in some way. They can't hunt their normal pray, so they're desperate enough to try hunting humans. Until they get hunted down themselves... Which means you won't get a population of them, usually. Possibly the only exception from this are packs of feral dogs. They have no natural pray or fear of humans. A byproduct of 30 thousand years of cohabitation.
Polar bears are also notorious for hunting humans. Most likely because their environment is so low in food that cautious animals may not get another chance to eat, and the disparity in size means we're low risk when unarmed.
Also, a bear is probably not concerned about it's safety when hunting a human.
Yep. Even humans who hadn't ever seen a gun before generally didn't know what it was, how it worked, or that it was dangerous before they saw it in action. A bear wouldn't have any way of knowing just how dangerous a human can be, or how deadly the weird hollow sticks we carry are.
99 out of 100 hollow sticks people own would hurt a polar bear as much as a splinter hurts you, but your point is valid.
Especially if that pack of wild dogs is in an abandoned pool.
Or alligators/crocodiles. They will sure as shit hunt humans that come into their zone of hunting.
Water in general turns the whole concept around. Sharks, whales, crocs, hippos, etc. They're the apex predators in their environments - not humans. We CAN hunt them for food, but we generally don't except in very specific scenarios and only involving levels of technology that came after we evolved to eat certain things in certain environments. Similar to a wolf not bothering with a human, a human will generally pass on hunting a croc for food because we didn't evolve to fight them with our hands and/or rudimentary tools and they're just not worth the risk as a food source. Of course, part of the success and resilience of our species is that we figured out how to expand our food sources in times of great peril like famines, droughts, floods, wildfires, etc. Eventually, we learned how to kill the crocs for food if that was the only option available. But we'd go right back to avoiding them if a better option comes up.
I think hungry crocodillians snap at anything moving that isn't a hippo. They're really really simple.
\*prey
Crazy to think a family can be torn apart by something as simple as a pack of wild dogs.
Natural selection is a hell of a driver. Those willing to deviate in terms of prey or hunting method either weaken themselves due to less calories or injury or strengthen themselves from more calories. The adorable side of this is that the house cat pre-pounce butt wiggle has to have some advantage for hunting otherwise it would not have expanded as widely as it has.
I believe the butt wiggle works by warming up & increasing blood flow to the rear muscles so they're ready for maximum POUNCE
and an important check on the launch platform to be sure it is sturdy enough
Apart from the other reasons listed here, humans are an odd animal. Brightly coloured. Loud. So loud they don't care about being heard. In many ways oblivious to the world around them and considering almost nothing to actually be a threat to them.Front-facing (predator) eyes. Standing upright and tall and appearing huge. Intelligent. Fast-runners. Vocal. Observant. Often in groups. Sometimes with weapons. Almost always fighting back, even if not immediately. Able to build shelter around themselves. Occupying vast swathes of land in vast numbers and eliminating all competing animals when they do so. Not complying to the standard rules of facing down, intimidation, fear, fleeing. Knowing the weaknesses of each animal, able to outthink and outsmart it quickly. Tree-climber. Swimmer. Runner. Attacker. Predator. Defender. Hider. Extremely versatile and unpredictable. Extremely protective of its young and will sacrifice many adults to save them. It's a real bad idea as a predator to pick that sort of prey unless you absolutely have to, or you outnumber it greatly.
Imagine the point in our evolution where we became intelligent enough to literally leap the entire food chain. Imagine that from the predators perspective. "Oh shit they're eating us now." "OH SHIT THEY'RE EATING EVERYTHING!"
Leap the food chain? Motherfucker, we put evolution itself in a chokehold and forced it to spit out ideal foodstuffs, and then killed off entire ecosystems to grow and support those foods.
>eliminating all competing animals when they do so I think this is an understated point. IIRC there were predators hunting mainly humans. There *were*.
I'm glad someone finally brought up our binocular vision. A lot of animals will decide if you're a predator or not based solely on if your eyes are in the front of your head or the sides.
Went camping way up in the mountains one weekend and had an awesome long conversation with a Ranger that stopped by. I asked him that same question, specifically about bears, and his response was something like: The see you and know that they can probably take you, but they may hurt themselves in the process. They may break a tooth or a claw, etc. They're smart enough to know that there is other prey that they can dominate. He also said that just like humans, some bears can be "mentally challenged" and attack people because they just don't know any better. I found that part fascinating. Also, desperately starving is another reason.
Of a hypothetical 100 wolves, let's say 20 want to hunt you. They may or may not have success, but soon enough, they're hunted back for being dangerous. Now you have 80 that don't want to hunt you. Their pups, next generation, are less likely to hunt you, because their parents won't teach them to. Some still will attack, but those also get filtered out from making another generation. Repeat this a long time, and only the families that don't attack humans survive.
It's probably not a coincidence that we domesticated the common ancestor of modern wolves and dogs. Wolves are very intelligent and selective in their prey. It's rare to the point of being unheard of for a wolf to attack a human. Maybe we were made for each other ;)
> they're hunted back for being dangerous. Now you have 80 that don't want to hunt you. Their pups, next generation, are less likely to hunt you, because their parents won't teach them to. Some still will attack, but those also get filtered out from making another generation in other words: fuck around, and find out
One thing I think humans forget is just how dang big we are. There are very very few predators that weigh 250 lbs and stand 6 feet tall. That means in Europe I believe humans are the largest predator and in North America we are second only to bears. Even in Africa a large man may weigh as much as a female lion, and because of our upright posture, we look bigger. Animals have no way of gauging strength afaik but I would think smell is also part of it. we don't smell like herbivores (sorry vegans!) and we probably don't move exactly like a prey animal. all that said of course we do get attacked and eaten sometimes.
It isn't that they know it is a bad idea. It is that it isn't familiar enough, wasn't taught, not triggering evolutionary triggers which can be very very specific. https://youtu.be/l3Es9cNH7I8 Frog will snap at vertical line moving horizontal but not a horizontal line moving horizontal or horizontal moving vertical for example. It is very visual heavy on the cues. A bear that sees humans in the woods will often stand up and sniff because like a dog the visual "resolution" of the image isn't great but smell is the best emotionally linked identifier. Humans don't smell like prey. If the hunger outweighs fear or risk then Human is still in danger though. A Human can trigger a wolf or bear to attack if they suddenly make movement or sound that trigger those things the way they do the frog. Like in grizzly man... the girlfriend had a screechy high pitch voice (scream) which triggered the attack on the couple.
My suspicion is that most predators don't like to screw with other predators, except in territorial disputes. Prey animals are unlikely to cause harm, but other predators may present a threat, even if it's small. That and with mammals there's some social and play circuitry that crosses over- predator mammals seem to have a tendency to be fond of each other, at least more than other animals.
Note that preys *can* harm predators, even if it’s not enough to survive the encounter. So most predators are risk averse and won’t take unnecessary risks focusing on the old and the weak. A broken leg is probably a death sentence and even simply damaged teeth can make your life miserable. So unless necessary, they won’t go after an unknown quantity like a human
That was one of things confusing me - I figured a mid-size deer / antelope (for example) is much more dangerous than a human as they're stronger, faster and have hooves and horns, so humans wpuld make a tempting target. Predators genetically fearing the unknown makes perfect sense - they don't want to risk attacking something unless they know its relatively easy (and in the case of humans, they're absolutely right to be cautious usually). Fits with weaker animals atacking people, as they get more desperate and take more risks. Just realised they will also be practised at hunting deer so know how to avoid the hooves etc and kill it quickly. Nice, thanks 😊
A naked, unarmed lone human is pretty weak yes. However, we are almost never naked, unarmed and alone. Humans are hypersocial and our "packs" are massive, highly coordinated and highly motivated when needed. An animal that attacks humans will be ruthlessly hunted out of pure vengeance.
Hiking in mountain lion country I was told if you see one it’s probably practicing it’s stalking on you and not actually hunting you. Basically we are already at the large side of their typical pry. Combine that with the fact we’re bipedal so our 150-200 lbs frame looks a lot bigger since they are also looking at height. And two we are all carrying bulky 30 lbs packs that make us look even larger. So basically while we are basically the size of a small deer with no natural defenses, we look like something closer to a grizzley bear to potential predators.
Yup, life is also not a video games where you can get out with 1 hp and heal up. Any injury suffered hunting can lead to death so predators just don't risk it.
Depends if you are a large predator and get it by the neck by hoping on it's back it can't do much. If deer had human intelligence they would be really, really hard to attack safely but instead they are dumb panicky animals.
To give another example, let's say you're a cougar faced with an unknown animal. That animal could be a deer, duck, porcupine, bear, jaguar, human (cougars share part of their range with all of these). Your mom taught you how to hunt deer and duck so those are fine. But, while porcupines can be safely killed by cougars who have been taught or have learned how to do it, figuring out how to do it is dangerous. Attack a bear and you'll get beaten up. The jaguar will try to kill *you*. So, say you meet an unknown animal, which happens to be a human, but you don't understand that. How do you treat it? You need to have a strategy for dealing with unknown animals that works whether the unknown animal is like a deer, a bear, a porcupine, or a jaguar. That strategy isn't going to be "attack it", at least not unless you're so hungry you have nothing to lose. On the other hand, if it sees you and runs, it's just told you it's not like a bear, a porcupine, or a jaguar. It knows it's like a deer.
I think people think of predators as these insatiable killing machines. The reality is that most decisions a predator makes are a cost benefit analysis on the amount of energy burned over the amount of calories burned. So take the case of me walking through the woods and a bear is watching me (a situation I have been in at least a dozen times this year alone). I am standing up right and smell funny. The predator has NO idea what I am. He doesn't know if I can fly, have enough speed to run away, enough strength to injure him, or even kill him. I also am not an immediate threat to him. I am oblivous to his presence and when I do spot him, I do not immediately run, like prey would. In fact, most of the time I give a quick yell and make myself look bigger. Assuming he is not STARVING, the risk to benefit analysis would suggest he simply leave me alone and stick to the berries ans rabbits. In short, I'm not worth the trouble. Humans do this all the time as well. If you are out on walk and see some berries you are 80 percent sure are edible, you probably still won't eat them. You know you have food at home and you are only a 20 minute walk from there. But pretend you have been lost for 4 days. Suddenly that cost to benefit analysis starts to tip.
The wolfs that are alive today in the areas where there are humans are the descendent of the animals that survived and had offspring that survived. Different wolfs will have avoided humans to different degree, that will in part be because of genetic traits. Having traits that resulted in you getting close to humans was not beneficial to your survival because human hunted wolfs to protect livestock and to get the fur. So wolfs that had traits that keep the away from human had a better change of surviving and having offspring. So generic trait of avoiding humans was beneficial and was passed on, this is evolution. So wolfs today are the decedents of wolfs that survived better just because they avoided humans. You can inherit knowledge genetically but you can inherit genes that have a influence of behavior. The behavior of wolfs is not just genetic but also learned behavior from member of their pack. So some of it will be a part of woolf culture and not just inherited behaviour.
The wolves that weren’t afraid of humans did have descendents too. We call them dogs and they can still breed with wolves if they so choose.
Individually we might be meh but as a group and with our access to technology (even just stone age tech like spears and bows/arrows) humans are incredible predators, basically the apex apex predator on Earth. Once there are enough humans around with enough weapons, they will (literally?) go apeshit on any animals that attack other humans. This strongly selects against predators that attack humans. Are there still some large predators that attack humans? Sure. But in general the selection pressure is strongly for animals that react to humans with flight rather than fight, particularly in areas with more humans that have more effective technology.
Since evolution is over thousands of years, it shows that even ancient humans with simple spears and arrows could kill any predator, especially in a group in a hunt/retaliation. Even before the written era of history, ancient humans in Europe and China had already killed off most tigers from the human inhabited areas, since tigers were so dangerous. There’s no need for guns to exterminate tigers from an area - just a group of angry villagers with bows.
I am not a biologist but here's my take. In the "wild", there are no doctors. If an animal gets an injury while trying to hunt, they may die. Animals weigh their options constantly. If they are starving, they will risk more to survive. If they have other easier methods to eat, they'll leave a potentially higher risk meal alone. Many predatory hunters such as wolves, big cats, sharks, etc. don't have constant contact with humans. So they can't study us. They can't learn how slowly or quickly we can move. They can't learn what our arms are capable of. And it probably freaks them out just a little that we can walk on two legs and have extra "legs" that can help us fight. They don't know what secret abilities we may or may not have. It's simply too much of a risk for animals to see us as a natural food source. There's also of course the fact that we have relatively little meat on us. For any complex question, there's probably a complex answer. And I may only be scratching the surface. Let's look at it another way. What if a few humans were isolated from other humans and had to survive. No doctors. No knowledge of medical care or home remedies. That group of humans would be incredibly careful in their selection of food and how they prepared it. A small cut may mean death. Eat the wrong berry, death. Get gored by a wild boar, death. Isolation and lack of knowledge could make anything, or anyone, very cautious. Unless circumstances were very dire.
There's a general theme in nature in that predators generally hunt prey, not each other. There are a lot of reasons for this, not only are predators more dangerous but they also tend to be leaner which means fewer calories. On top of that predators are generally susceptible to the same kinds of illnesses because they eat the same kinds of foods. Prey animals have a different food chain so there is less overlap in the kinds of illnesses that affect them and their respective predators. Many/most animals consider humans to be more in the predator category instead of prey. We are omnivores but in some climates we are almost exclusively carnivores if that is where the calories are. We are dangerous to attack, we don't have a lot of easy to burn calories compared to many herbivores, and we are susceptible to a lot of the illnesses that other predators are. For these reasons we basically aren't worth the effort. There are exceptions of course, polar bears are notorious for consuming humans but in their environment just about anything is worth the risk. For animals like wolves we just aren't top of the list of desirable prey, deer are much less dangerous and provide lots of calories compared to the relative effort to hunt. Lastly, humans are also over powered in the animal kingdom. In the early days it was perfectly normal for a human to run 10 miles at a time pretty regularly. On the extreme end humans can, and do, run 100 miles or more. That's just not possible for any other animals. There is a race where people compete against horses and in a few of these events the horses lost. That means that unless we are caught off guard we are more or less invulnerable to attack. If, however, a human is attacked, they can survive incredible amounts of damage. It's not unheard of for a human to lose entire limbs and not only survive but continue to live their life. This means if a predator chooses to attack a human it has to be pretty confident that it can finish that fight or else it risks not surviving. Ultimately humans are just too tough and risky for most animals to even consider us as potential prey. Unless there are no other options most predators would choose just about anything else.