A scary thought

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Its scary and a little depressing to think about the fact that humans are not really preditors but prey. We are only predators when we have weapons. But without them we dont have much of a chance against a lion. In parts of the world, every once in a while people are eaten or just plain killed by large cats. I wonder how much it would hurt to be killed by a lion.

Yeah this is the stuff I think about.

Ah, but we ARE predators! We have to be taught the skills, but it is possible to catch a fish with your bare hands, to ambush grazing animals by dropping down on them, or by swarming over your prey with your tribal buddies and tearing it apart with your bare hands.

Not easy, but possible.

We are prey to some animals but not all. Why, I could just kill my cat right now, in an instant, because she's small and gentle and rather defenseless, and so it would be that easy.

By the way I will never, ever, ever do such a terrible thing, not in a million billion trillion infinity +1 years. I was just giving an example.

I can't say I have seen any lions where I live.

But then I think about veganism. Didnt meat make our brains grow bigger? If the world turns vegan because of over population and everyone turns vegan wont we get stupider over time? I read stuff about how meat lead to us evolving into more intelligent creatures.

Then over time we could evolve to be prey again like before we used tools.

Brain size may not make a difference, as we could be highly intelligent but have small brains or have a large brain and be thick. It really does not matter if we have been blessed with great intelligence or just have enough intelligence to get by. Its more that we enjoy what we have. You are special. Smile!
A few things in life I have asked myself as I drift through time. What are I here to do while I am here and how do I achieve it. I could do with asking myself things like that as I am drifting a little... Drifting through time... Does time exist? Umm. If clocks and watches and sundials were not invented then would time exist? Umm. Probably.
Ignore my thoughts. Just enjoy the day!

As the video is not on youtube, I can only link it, not embed: https://joemonster.org/filmy/97693/Daj_ ... przez_lata
All those guys have are wooden sticks.

Humans are very flexible omnivores, we can survive in incredibly wide range of environments. The only note I could add is that humans naturally live and act in societes, which gives them enormous advantage over mostly solitary other predators.

I like meat. I would never go vegan.

We are predators. We became predators because of the evolution of our intelligence.

We were originally omnivorous scavengers, who ate AFTER the lions and hyenas. That was after we were forced to live in savanna, rather than forest. We were sort of in the middle of the food chain in the savanna originally.

In the forest, we were primarily herbivorous.

Awhile back, I had this episode of dark humor in which I envisioned a bored narrator of a nature show droning on and on about the circle of life as a human was being chased down by a lion...

Most people know how to use common sense when they are out in the wild. Those that don’t are more likely to pay the price.

As far as being a predator, I haven’t eaten any meat in a few months, but I have intentionally killed a few bugs. Normally, I do the catch and release method but not with troubling, invasive species.

People are often predatory in an offhand sort of way, by destroying habits, pollution, and the like.

There is still a lot we don't know about the history of human evolution, it looks like there were much more stages than just jungle -> savannah.
Humans and their ancestors have been using tools for over 3 million years https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lomekwi
Used fire probably for about 1 million years https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Control_o ... rly_humans
We have direct evidence of cooking plant material from 120,000 years ago https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2 ... 115142.htm

We have been dependent on technology since the very beginning of the humanity That's part of being human.

Last edited by magz on 19 May 2019, 6:59 am, edited 1 time in total.

I don’t think that eating meat has anything to do with one’s intelligence.

Perhaps in our evolutionary past, trying to come up with methods to hunt or catch animals we developed some critical thinking skills as we continued to advance our current weaponry or traps, but in this age, we have other problems that we can use our brain power to try to solve.

That's because we are trained to survive in completely different environments. Those living from early childhood in a particular kind of wilderness know how to deal with it.
It's cultural adaptation, faster than species evolution, making us more adaptive.

So a lion could eat you so what?

The "kill ratio" is still in the human species' favor by 100's to one.

Rich jokers like the sons of Donald Trump, probably kill more lions every year for sport than the number of humans killed by lions around the world in ten years.

Lions themselves succumb to predators in their old age.

In our day to day lives its not non human predators you have to worry about.

Its the human predators you have to worry about. Muggers, rapists, and online scammers.

Here in the US our native mountain lions (aka cougars) are making a comeback in some regions, and they do kill human hikers now and again. But you yourself are more likely to kill a sea mammal by releasing a party balloon into the air (it most likely will end up in the ocean, and seals often chock on plastic) than you are to be yourself killed by a cougar on the Appalachian trail (a human hiker was recently murdered by another human on the Appalachian trail).
+++++++++

To answer the question what its like to be killed by a lion:

One time I read a book that described how scientists in the lab notice that mice sometimes seemed to go to a euphoric state when they are in the jaws of a kitty cat. They stop fighting when hope is gone, and just seem to bliss out.

Shortly after that I read a quote in another book. A quote by the famous Victorian African explorer Livingstone. Livingstone was attacked by a lion, and was about to be eaten, when an African assistant rescued him by shooting the lion just in the nick of time. Livingstone reported that just before the lion was shot he experienced "a sense of euphoria, like being on opium" while he was in the lion's jaws about to be devoured.

So apparently nature has mechanism to - make you bliss out- while a big kitty cat eats you! Works for both mice and men.

Wow that is so wierd! I hope it would be the same when getting eaten by wild dogs.

Even if eating meat did cause human brain to get bigger, that doesn't automatically mean it made us smarter... I mean, from what I've understood, we humans don't use the majority of our brains, so even if we did literally get more brains from eating meat, it might not have been the useful parts that increased.

A lone wolf can be chased off a carcass by the far more savage (and for its size) strong wolverine, but a pack of wolves will tear a wolverine to pieces.

A tiger can ambush and kill a siberian brown bear but will only do so if desperate because if its first strike fails it is likely to lose the fight.

Humans are very dangerous with weapons and pack tactics, but can be vulnerable alone and relying on only our fists. (Even so we are relatively large and dangerous in the animal world).