Why are certain animals and insects docile towards humans like tarantulas, banana ball pythons and dolphins? Some may be due to selective breeding or captivity but how much of a creatures genetic makeup determines whether or not it will eat my face?
In: Biology
These animals are wild, but they don’t see humans as food or threats. For the most part, animals “get along” in this sort of situation because it’s not worth getting into a confrontation where you could get hurt. Getting hurt can be fatal in the wild.
Any predator will try eating your face if they are hungry enough but most of the time, we are deemed not worth the trouble. We are relatively large compared to most other animals and to animals we evolved in a close proximity we aren’t identified as easy prey. That is because humans and our predecessors have been using weapons like spears for hundreds of thousands of years, we are pack hunters and we got unrivaled stamina in hot environments.
The vast majority of animals wouldn’t like and would try to avoid interactions with humans. For exactly the same reason we love eating cows and not tigers. It’s always a better strategy to try and eat/attack something that won’t try to kill and eat you back! And we’re pretty dangerous.
Interestingly the deadliest creatures are usually those who have only recently come across humanity. Deadly funnel web spiders (yeh they live in the country you’d expect them to live in) use a venom which is very painful but not deadly to most other mammals, and that’s because very often it’s better to hurt something but not kill it, as a defence mechanism. If you kill it it can’t spread the message of what a dick you are and to stay away from you. Had we co evolved together it’s likely it’s venom would have changed to be less deadly to us, so we could live to tell the tale to other humans and we would leave the poor buggers alone. As it happens, just by chance, their venom is very dangerous, and it’s that they haven’t had the chance to evolve not to kill us, not the other way around as people often think.
Humans are big animals. 5-6 feet tall, 100-200 pounds – and sometimes even larger.
While there are bigger and stronger animals for sure, your size and power is considerable.
The vast majority of the animal kingdom doesn’t stand a chance, and would prefer to flee or at least avoid provoking you. Only a few apex predators and giant, territorial herbivores are willing to pick that fight.
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