Study Shows That Humans Are Super Predators

We hunt our prey ever since we get out of mother’s womb. We seek for what’s vulnerable around us, to only catch it in the middle of its weakness and ultimately devour its insights. We hunt for professional prey, emotional prey, but most of all, we hunt for meat. Leaving aside the philosophical aspects of this predatory display, a new study has categorized humans as super predators.

Most animals hunt when they are hungry. They don’t do it for fashion, they don’t do it for design, they don’t do it for an alternative way of living, they don’t do it as a new experiment, meant to enrich their taste buds. We do all of the above, we hunt for fashion, design, experiment, vanity, seldom because we are merely hungry.

A new study has made researchers look at 2.125 interactions between predator and prey and found that humans not only have a higher kill-rate than all other animals but they use methods that can have a dramatic impact on the survival rate and evolution of all other species.

Mankind has a special gift to wipe out adult fish populations at 14.1 times the median rate of other marine predators. They have killed top land-based predators at a rate 9, 2 times that of prominent carnivores. This is enormous and this means that soon enough, our planet’s bio systems will fail to be sufficient for our insatiable appetites. Lead conservation scientist told to Los Angeles Times that he is “surprised by the magnitude” of the results they found.

Moreover, humans kill predators at a rate 3, 7 times higher, compared with that at which they kill herbivores. Our modern hunting techniques are used to remove 20% of the planet’s large carnivores each year. Mankind is killing off all the planet’s creatures much faster than they can produce adult offspring and sustain population levels.

This doesn’t sound good at all, as increasing population of humans also increases demand and advanced technology has allowed humans to hunt animals both on land and in water. We not only kill immense numbers of creatures, but we kill the biggest and most mature animals rather than killing the smaller and weaker ones, as it usually happens in all other natural environments where predators are found.

Needless to say that killing or hunting is a sport, it is an activity that makes us feel good about ourselves, while other animals only kill when hungry and have a limited number of foods they can choose from. Humans, on the other hand, have many other sources of nourishment. Humans are super predators, which makes the future look rather dark, both for us, with our appetite for self-destruction, and for natural habitats all around.

Image Source: commons.wikimedia.org