There is no predator that naturally hunt humans, because we killed all predators that tried. And we also killed all predators that interfered with any of our other business. We hold a grudge and are vindictive against predators, and it is transferred through generations as culture, which makes it even worse for predators.
At some point in deep history, prehumans banded together and started to use weapons in the form of sharp sticks and stones. An armed band of prehumans was a serious threat to predators, that learned to keep away from humans. Over many generations, that resulted in an instinct to keep away from humans.
For example, I live in Sweden, and it is 70% forest and wilderness. We have bears, and they are extremely difficult to come by. They do everything they can to avoid humans. Each year an allotted number of bears are killed for fun. The bears that are better at keeping away from humans survive better.
We now also have a few wolves, after being extinct for 300 years. We have decided to allow 275 wolves in Sweden, which is slightly larger than California, and kill off the surplus, and any wolves that cause problems.
This is a very strong selection pressure to evolve an instinct to be afraid of humans and avoid them.
But there are predators that kill humans and eat them if they get an opportunity for an alone human. Crocodiles don’t care if it’s a human, and an occasional bear, tiger or lion also make the mistake to kill a human.
However, for many predators, humans are weird creatures, that behave strange, smell strange, and have strange contraptions on them and with them. Humans most often don’t trigger the hunting instinct, and are often not even recognized as food. That’s why humans can sit in an open vehicle a few meters beside a pride of lions and not get eaten.
Because animals aren’t normally suicidal and homo sapiens (including neanderthals and other cousins), the humans of the past 250,000 years, have objectively broken tradeoffs between speed, offence, and endurance thanks to tools with the spear, invented at least 400,000 years ago (wooden tools very very rarely survive that long), giving a crushing advantage. But we were also descended from homo erectus, a species that was more than able to handle itself without spears.
The Clacton Spear is thought to be over 400,000 years old. Photo by Geni, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
The Masai treated solo hunting a lion with a spear as a rite of passage. Which makes humans a tribe-living species with a very good sense of vision (partly because we’re so high above the ground on the same scale) with our tribes being the size of herbivore groups, and where many can 1v1 lions without taking a scratch while we hunt as packs.
What animal in their senses wants to hunt that? Even if you’ve somehow managed to break the biological tradeoffs there was easier prey. The biggest threat was probably rats and mice simply because they were too small to hunt … at which point cats took a look and decided they could wait in nice warm dry human settlements and have the prey come to them. And that was only a real problem after we invented farming about 12,000 years ago.
But even before the spear homo erectus hadn’t left very many animals wanting to think about hunting humans during the stone age. Below are some handaxes – held in the palm of the hand and brought down. As hard and sharp as any claws.
1.7 million year old Oldowan choppers by Didier Descouens, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons
But hunting even homo erectus as a favourite enemy within about the past two million years was for suckers. Not only were they in tribes, covering each other.
Not only could they throw and hurt predators from far away (something homo erectus seemed to develop about 2 million years ago) and not only could they fight well enough to gouge eyes or bring sharp rocks down on predator’s heads, humans both have always had a lot of stamina and have been vindictive.
Having that much stamina means we can chase down almost anything. And being vindictive means that if something started to prey on humans as a favoured target we’d wipe them out so they’d never have kids.
This is the very last photograph of “Grizzly man” Timothy Treadwell and his girlfriend Amy Huguenard.
Well, the last photograph in which all their limbs were still connected to their bodies and in which Timothy still had a head, that is.
Timothy was a self-declared bear connoisseur — a bear whisperer, if you will. He lived 13 Summers among coastal brown bears in Katmai National Park, Alaska, studying them without ever taking the necessary precautions, because Timothy considered himself to be “one of them.”
He was more bear than man (he really believed this), and so the bears would never hurt him, nor his girlfriend. And yet, Timothy and Amy were victims of a fatal bear attack at their campsite in Katmai National Park and Reserve in October 2003.
They visited the camp site later than usual, when the bears they knew so well (or so they thought) were actually preparing for hibernation. And a bear that prepares for hibernation needs as much food as it can take.
And that’s what the bear whisperer (and his girlfriend) did not realize: although Timothy was convinced he understood bears better than anyone else, the exact opposite was true.
For Timothy was never “one of them” and nor was his girlfriend —
They were the food.
Everything with teeth used to eat us, than we started winning at long distance running, than we had fire and tools and now we literally own the whole planet and go to war with ourselves because animals got too weak.
Prehistoric animals like saber-toothed cats preyed on early humans.
A lot of animals would eat a human if they found a dead one. But, animals aren’t idiots and the track record of taking on the planet’s apex predator who specializes in endurance hunting – just having a crowd of humans chase you until you die of exhaustion – isn’t a path that most animals would go down on purpose.
Here’s a short list of some animals who absolutely do still see us as reasonable members of their food chain:
– large crocodiles.
– hyenas.
– lions & tigers (you can find a Wikipedia page that tells you about the man eating lions and tigers – they end up documented).
– polar bears
Polar bears will actively try to hunt you if you aren’t careful. Hyenas scout through African villages at night, looking for easy meals.
The idea that nothing hunts us is an illusion granted to you by you living in relatively developed society.
