{"id":293722,"date":"2025-11-19T00:31:07","date_gmt":"2025-11-19T00:31:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/293722\/"},"modified":"2025-11-19T00:31:07","modified_gmt":"2025-11-19T00:31:07","slug":"the-super-predator-how-humans-became-the-animal-kingdoms-most-feared-hunters-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/293722\/","title":{"rendered":"The Super Predator: How Humans Became the Animal Kingdom\u2019s Most Feared Hunters"},"content":{"rendered":"

Over time, however, the need to hunt for survival has been replaced by greed, leading to the exploitation of natural resources, which is destroying the environment and causing the extinction of\u00a0thousands of species<\/a>.<\/p>\n

There has been a 60 percent decrease in the wildlife population between 1970 and 2014, according to the Living Planet 2018 report by the World Wildlife Fund. Referring to the report, the Guardian\u00a0stated<\/a>\u00a0that \u201cthe\u00a0vast and growing<\/a>\u00a0consumption of food and resources by the global population is destroying the web of life, billions of years in the making, upon which human society ultimately depends for clean air, water and everything else.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hunting for Survival<\/p>\n

The\u00a0San People<\/a>, also known as the Bushmen of the Kalahari Desert in Africa, have for generations employed\u00a0persistence or endurance hunting<\/a>\u00a0to chase down prey such as the\u00a0kudu<\/a>. Groups of three or more men find a herd and scatter it, targeting the weakest, slowest, or heaviest animal in the herd. During the hunt, one of the Bushmen serves as the main runner, who finishes the last legs of the hunt by tracking and finally killing the prey. Although the Bushmen do employ more\u00a0familiar tactics<\/a>\u00a0like ambushing, shooting poisoned darts, and throwing spears, persistence hunting has been a standby of the San People in an environment that favors human endurance and stamina.<\/p>\n

Over the years, however, persistence hunting has become a topic of debate. In a 2007 article\u00a0published<\/a>\u00a0in the Journal of Human Evolution, Henry T. Bunn, a paleoanthropologist from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Travis Rayne Pickering, a professor of anthropology from UW-Madison, questioned the assumption that endurance training was \u201cregularly employed\u201d during hunting and scavenging. They argued that humans would have relied more on their brains than their legs to hunt.<\/p>\n

Bunn and Pickering studied a pile of bones found in the Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania, dating back to 1.8 million to 2 million years ago\u2014which were unearthed by paleontologist Mary Leakey\u2014and\u00a0discovered<\/a>\u00a0that \u201cmost of the animals in the collection were either young adults or adults in their prime\u2026 To Bunn and Pickering, that suggested the animals hadn\u2019t been chased down. And because there were butchering marks on the bones with the best meat, it was also safe to assume that humans hadn\u2019t scavenged animal carcasses after being killed by other predators\u2026 Instead, Bunn believes ancient human hunters relied more on smarts than on persistence to capture their prey,\u201d\u00a0according<\/a>\u00a0to a 2019 article in Undark magazine.<\/p>\n

Opposing this debate are researchers such as Eug\u00e8ne Morin, an evolutionary anthropologist at Trent University in Canada, and Bruce Winterhalder, from the Department of Anthropology and the Graduate Group in Ecology at the University of California, Davis. A 2024 article written by them,\u00a0published<\/a>\u00a0in the journal Nature Human Behavior, revealed that they scoured ethnographic records and identified almost 400 cases of\u00a0long-distance running<\/a>\u00a0used for hunting around the world. Their research on energy expenditure shows that \u201crunning can be more efficient than walking for pursuing prey,\u201d stated a Smithsonian magazine article.<\/p>\n

Many other scholars have written about the \u201clocomotor endurance<\/a>\u201d that humans possess compared to other animals, as well as the\u00a0anatomical advantages<\/a>\u00a0of long legs, Achilles tendons, arched feet, and large, stress-bearing joints in our legs, which collectively contribute to our ability to run long distances.<\/p>\n

Whether humans originally evolved as\u00a0persistence hunters<\/a>\u00a0is a matter of debate. What is undeniable is that humans are among the most deadly predators on Earth. \u201cFrom agricultural feed to medicine to the pet trade, modern society exploits wild animals in a way that surpasses even the most voracious, unfussy wild predator,\u201d\u00a0said<\/a>\u00a0a Smithsonian magazine article.<\/p>\n

Ways to Kill<\/p>\n

A 2023 study, \u201cHumanity\u2019s Diverse Predatory Niche and Its Ecological Consequences<\/a>,\u201d published in Communications Biology, describes human predation as a commercial enterprise rather than a necessity:<\/p>\n

We consider predation by humans broadly\u2014and from the perspective of effects on prey populations\u2014as any use that removes individuals from wild populations, lethally or otherwise\u2026 [ranging] from removal of live individuals for the pet trade, to harvesting by societies that rely heavily on hunting and fishing, to globalized, commercial fishing and trade of vertebrates, and interactions among these activities.<\/p>\n

When a shark, a tiger, a boa constrictor, or even the rusty-spotted cat of South Asia kills another animal, its primary aim is survival. As carnivores, these animals must eat meat, and therefore, they must kill. But humans go beyond the necessary. In our years of\u00a0remodeling landscapes and industrializing the wilderness<\/a>, we have pushed animals toward extinction. Our activities have had\u00a0maximum impact<\/a>\u00a0on the ocean, leading to the exploitation of 43 percent of Earth\u2019s marine species. While these species are killed for several purposes, 72 percent of marine and freshwater fish species are being used for food. Taxonomically, birds were the most predated group, with 46 percent mainly being used as pets or for other \u201crecreational pursuits.\u201d<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, \u201cin the terrestrial realm, use as pets is almost twice as common (74 percent) as food use (39 percent),\u201d\u00a0according<\/a>\u00a0to the 2023 study. Sport hunting and other forms of activities (i.e., for trophies) accounted for 8 percent of the use of exploited terrestrial species.<\/p>\n

Due to humanity\u2019s alarming\u00a0exploitation of 14,663 species,<\/a>\u00a0we are driving 39 percent of these species toward extinction. \u201cWe exploit around a third of all wild animals for food, medicines, or to keep as pets\u2026 That makes us hundreds of times more dangerous than natural predators such as the great white shark,\u201d\u00a0according<\/a>\u00a0to a 2023 BBC article, referring to an analysis by scientists. The article further stated that we were entering the Anthropocene, \u201cthe period during which human activity has been the dominant influence on climate and the environment.\u201d<\/p>\n

Today, human-induced climate crises and environmental damage are the forces that pulverize bones to dust. An analysis of peer-reviewed literature published between 2012 and 2020\u00a0revealed 99 percent consensus<\/a>\u00a0that human activity shapes climate change\u2014a collective power that no other species on Earth has ever had. Not even the dinosaurs would have been able to out-roar the din of factories and exhaust pipes.<\/p>\n

Fearful Symmetry<\/p>\n

Human beings have been termed \u201csuper predators,\u201d surpassing other famous predators in the number of prey they kill. This has led to animals fearing us. \u201cConsistent with humanity\u2019s unique lethality, a growing number of playback experiments have demonstrated that fear of humans far exceeds that of the non-human apex predator in the system. In Africa, 95 percent of carnivore and ungulate species (e.g., giraffes, leopards, hyenas, zebras, rhinos, and elephants) in the Greater Kruger National Park ran more or faster on hearing humans compared with hearing lions,\u201d\u00a0stated<\/a>\u00a0the Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series B: Biological Sciences.<\/p>\n

An atavistic fear also afflicts animals when they see a human. We might be slower and weaker creatures compared to bears and lions, but to these animals, we look monstrous. \u201cThere is a threat level that comes from\u00a0being bipedal<\/a>,\u201d said John Hawks, a paleoanthropologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, to Live Science. So when, say, a kudu in the Kalahari Desert spots one of the San People or Bushmen jogging or walking toward it, the kudu bolts.<\/p>\n

This ecology of fear has shifted the predator-prey paradigms, as ungulates such as white-tailed deer and moose will \u201cshield\u201d their offspring by giving birth close to houses and villages, utilizing the\u00a0local predators\u2019 fear of humans<\/a>\u00a0to create a safe environment for their offspring to grow up.<\/p>\n

Wildlife researcher Hugh Webster said that research about animals fearing humans shows that \u201chuman impacts on animal behavior are even more wide-reaching than we thought. Perhaps the key point is that we need to identify the most disturbance-sensitive species and engineer protections for them that allow freedom from this pervasive fear,\u201d\u00a0writes<\/a>\u00a0Phoebe Weston, a biodiversity writer for the Guardian.<\/p>\n

In the animal kingdom, humans now occupy a unique role, surpassing all other predators in lethality and reshaping the natural order through unchecked consumption and industrial-scale exploitation. Our presence instills a pervasive fear across ecosystems, altering animal behavior and disrupting millennia-old predator-prey dynamics. Yet this super predator status comes with unprecedented responsibility. Unlike other apex predators, humans possess the awareness, technology, and moral capacity to recognize the consequences of our actions and to mitigate the harm we inflict. The question before us is whether we will continue to exploit the web of life for short-term gain or harness our intelligence and ingenuity to protect it\u2014ensuring that future generations inherit a planet where humans are not feared as destroyers, but remembered as stewards of the living world.<\/p>\n

This article was produced by\u00a0Earth | Food | Life<\/a>, a project of the Independent Media Institute.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Over time, however, the need to hunt for survival has been replaced by greed, leading to the exploitation…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":293723,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[64,63,128,338],"class_list":{"0":"post-293722","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-science","11":"tag-wildlife"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293722","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=293722"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293722\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/293723"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=293722"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=293722"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=293722"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}