Throughout history an average wild animal has had the ability to kill an average human being so how did we as a species not only survive but ended up on the top of the food chain?
In: Biology
The average wild animal definitely can’t kill a human. Some large predators can, but humans are social animals so its not going to be 1v1 most of the times anyways. Regardless, just because some humans were killed by predators doesn’t mean the species would cease to exist any more than the thousands if other prey species thst are thriving in the wild.
Our enormous meaty brains give us an advantage over the big scary things with mighty teeth and claws. We use our ability to use language to strategize and outsmart the other animals and teach each other how to make and use tools and weapons. That gives us an enormous advantage, so long as we know how to utilize it.
For the last couple of million years, humans have literally evolved as a tribal animal. We are a community species like ants and bees, but much more complicated. That means we don’t just evolve as individuals, but also as groups. Part of that is that we act together. Those individual animals can take one of us in a fight. But our tribe can take one of them in a fight every frigging time. We work together as groups.
Humans are a lot bigger than the average animal–there’s so many mice, rabbits, rats, and so on.
We are in the top 100 largest animals on the planet. Almost every wild animal is smaller and weaker than us.
It’s been an awfully long time since the average human being was in any serious danger from a wild predator on more than an occasional basis. There was some research done a couple years ago theorizing that our ancestors, Homo Erectus, likely became apex predators around a couple million years ago. The term “apex predator” refers to the species in a habitat which has no natural predators of its own.
Now, in many cases, apex predators are simply so large and fierce that other species do not pose a physical threat to them. For humans and our ancestors, however, the advantage was the cooperation that our intelligence made possible. Humans are like pack animals. An individual human with no tools or weapons is, as you say, easily attacked by many natural predators. However, for the last two million years, our ancestors have neither normally lived alone, nor been without their tools (at least, primitive stone ones).
You’re glossing over the fact that the “average human” in these scenarios has a pointy stick and probably a bunch of other average humans with pointy sticks around him.
The average animal is not going to have a fun time going against that. We don’t have sharp claws or fangs or enormous bulk or anything similar to deter predators with _because_ we have the brains and the social structure to do that.
We live in the deserts and plains, bring water in, plant crops, grow our own food, increase population, and outnumber other animals.
We’re cunning, we think ahead, make plans.
We work together, communicate plans, shout warnings, team up.
We build tools, have goals, have opposable thumbs, understand sharpness and springiness and fire.
Most of the biggest creatures like Elephants and Buffalo and Deer are herbivores, they have no benefit for killing us. But we are omnivores, we kill them and eat them, and we get energy to chase down the next one. They fight us, they get injured and tired, but no energy for winning.
Mostly our big brains and sociability/plagiarism but a fun little tidbit to add being bipedal with big butts evolved for distant running and big predators’s inability to sweat made us real good hunters
Haven’t seen it added here yet: on top of cooperation and intelligence, we are the most reliable, accurate and hard hitting throwers the animal kingdom has ever seen. An 11 year old little league baseballer throws twice as hard, twice as accurate and twice as far as an adult chimpanzee im pretty sure.
Anything thrown at anyone is pretty nasty, particularly if someone’s and their entire lineage has been throwing for a long time.
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