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
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).
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