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 first 10 minutes of the film 2001: A Space Odyssey, provide part of the answer, our ancestors developing the ability to use tools in defense against animals, and working together as a group. (It didn’t actually require a monolith, but that’s part of the story.)
Humans are dangerous revenge freaks.
When one animal kills another that generally is it.
If an animal kills a human we will find it and kill it and it’s family and every other animal that looks like it in the vicinity.
Sure, there are predators that could take out humans individually or in small groups, but we would hunt them down if they did.
There is a reason practically no animal thinks about humans as food.
We genocided it out of them. Every animal that learned humans are food was hunted down and exterminated with extreme prejudice.
We got so good at it that we completely eliminated it from their collective memory.
And if no predator thinks of you as food you are at the top.
We can make tools.
That’s about it. We’ve managed to overcome outside threats by engineering solutions to them. Regular bear attacks? Make pointy sticks to poke at them. Hostile tribe nearby? Hey guys, look at this cool new thing I call “rock slingshot.” Not enough water in an area? Dig a huge fuckoff trench from the nearest river, maybe even build a bridge for it, aka an aquaeduct. Need consistent food supply? We can build a fence and put these huge docile meat machines called cows inside.
Humanity’s edge has always been intelligent design and use of tools.
We’re actually larger than many wild animals.
We are very good at throwing things, which makes us unique among all other animals.
Your assumption here is wrong. A group of humans armed with nothing but spears would pose quite a challenge for any group of animal predators. Especially close to the humans homes where they have walls, fires, traps, etc. to defend themselves. Even a pack of lions, tigers or wolves would have a lot of problems attacking humans. At best it might be an even trade with wounded and dead on both sides.
Another addition, we can out-walk pretty much anything on land
If a human is tracking and following an animal, it will eventually collapse exhausted
(Except dogs in the arctic, those can outrun us)
Humans are fairly large animals. Like we’re in the top 1% or something. We’re also not that weak. We got a little weaker as we got smarter, we are endurance animals, but its not like animals half our size can push us around. In fact, we learn about unique animals, or animals that allow humans near them, or the animals that are actually a threat, more than we talk and learn about average animals or the most common types in detail. We know all the large African predator groups, but probably don’t know how many types of rat exist, and they’re more common and there are billions of them. So the average person knows more about exceptional animals than average ones.
We can take a predator like coyotes. Scary, big, dogs. There is only like 1 adult recorded to have been killed by coyotes in the wild, in North America. It was an 18 year old women, she was not very large, could pass as a child to a coyote.
In Africa tribes steel kills from Lions. So a humans size is even just large enough to fool a Lion into thinking about it for too long.
False premise. Throughout history the average human would have been able to kill the average Redditor
Teamwork. Opposable thumbs.
Humans have an interesting physical competitive advantage over all animals. Distance running. No other animal can run as far as a human at any comparable speed due to our capacity to manage internal heat.
Society and sticks.
We had strong social groups with the ability to communicate and coordinate. We also found/made pointy sticks and used them in lieu of teeth or claws.
Finally, we are bipedal with special lungs that allow us to sustain ordinary breathing rhythm while running. This makes us endurance runners. Prey animals might have been faster than our savanna ancestors in a sprint, but we didn’t care; we just kept jogging behind in a group, never slowing down, carrying our pointy sticks and communicating with each other.
Imagine what a nightmare it must have been for a prey animal. You’re just hanging out with your herd, minding your own business, when suddenly you spy predators! The herd breaks into a gallop, but somehow the multiple predators appear to be acting as if with a single mind, and they move independently to cut you off from the rest of the herd. You resolutely break into a sprint away from the herd, confident that your speed will save you. Somehow, the predators seem to know exactly what direction you are moving in, and even the ones that did not see where you went join the rest of the group and follow you. You sprint again, this time, using all of your reserves to put as much distance down as possible. You stop, winded, with the predators nowhere in sight. Then, a few minutes later, one of them appears in the distance…then the rest follow. Again and again, you outpace them, and every time they appear out of nowhere, never tired, always loping after you in a group. They track you until you are too tired to move, and even if you try to stand and fight, they have the power to make inanimate objects rise off the ground and fly through the air and do their bidding. Absolute madness.
We have some other good abilities as well. Thanks to intelligence and social groups, we are able to treat and heal from wounds that would doom most other animals. We are omnivores who are individually not very meaty, which makes us a poor choice of prey to other apex predators. Hunting us takes just as much effort as hunting, a wildebeest, but just one of us won’t be enough to feed the entire pride. And there, again, you have to contend with pointy sticks. Once we conquered fire, we were able to cook our food, which meant much less time spent chewing/digesting and much more time spent hunting and gathering and communicating and making tools.
Early hominids were such great apex predators that we had covered Africa even before modern humans emerged. There were many many different hominid species, all evolving at once in different areas, which is a great way to maximize the effect of natural selection.
Latest Answers