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An article in the LA Times discusses a publication in the journal Science (abstract) on why humans as predators have a much greater ecological impact than other predators.
From the LA Times article, it is because:
... humans have a very different, and problematic, hunting strategy from nature's other successful hunters. Humans tend to pick out adults rather than younger, smaller, weaker members of a species.
The article goes on to use an analogy:
Think of it from a business perspective, the researchers said. An adult female, for example, is like your capital; the young that she produces are the interest generated by that capital. If you kill an adult animal today, it will take years for another to grow up and take her place. But if you kill a young animal, it will (theoretically) take only until the next breeding season to produce another. In other words, it's better to use the up [sic] interest rather than to draw down the capital, because the capital is much more difficult to build back. Once it's gone, it's gone -- and so is the interest.
This has several consequences, including for the evolution of the prey species. For example, killing the biggest or strongest animals (as might be done with trophy hunting) potentially leads to smaller or weaker future generations.
Original Submission
(Score: 3, Interesting) by ledow on Friday August 21 2015, @02:55PM
Humans are one of the few animals that do modify their environment as a matter of course. A cat will not drag its bed to somewhere more comfortable, it'll either sit in it or not. A beaver, however, will dam a river deliberately to give itself a home free from predators. But similarly other animals farm other animals - ants farm aphids quite commonly, for instance. (P.S. Every time you think we're "unique", we're not... our uniqueness only comes from being able to do combinations of things that others don't, not from doing those things themselves, and that's easy and cheating!).
Farming is our saviour, but at the cost of environment. There's only so much environment to modify, adjust or take account of in order to continue living forever. Not saying we're anywhere near that, but we aren't really looking at the bigger picture if we ignore that. The cow, certainly, is entirely unrecognisable today. It's just a grass-beef machine, basically. Even carrot - that used to be purple and tiny, and we bred it to become more useful to us.
But the problem with humanity is not farming or the environment they use up - it's that they do stuff that's unnecessary for survival. There is no need to go hunting elephants - they aren't a significant threat to us. And wiping them out is probably more damaging than keeping them around. But we still continue to do it, even with rules against doing that. But we aren't doing this to feed. You would never have taken on a full-size lion before guns (or possibly bows and arrows). You'd be insane to try. Even a wolf would likely have you. The fact is that we only really started to hunt those for sport, and when weapons evolved to the point they could kill anything. You also don't "eat" lion, or elephant etc. but we still hunt them. None of this has anything to do with food. You could argue that we historically did it for defence - removing predators that might affect our survival and there it MAKES SENSE to take out the adults to stop them producing children, put any offspring at a disadvantage (no daddy lion to help feed them), while removing the largest threat first. There you DO take out the animals in a super-predator way, adults-first.
But I'm fairly sure that we won't be the only species to operate in the way of taking out the adults-first. However, we are probably the only animal that kills things for sport, and not for defence, food or other sensible reasons.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 21 2015, @03:19PM
However, we are probably the only animal that kills things for sport, and not for defence, food or other sensible reasons.
I've seen cats slowly torture and murder small insects, and they definitely didn't want to eat them.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 21 2015, @09:03PM
Predator animals have to be taught to hunt and kill, and this has been obseverd in multiple species, including cats. What you are likely observing is extinctual behavior where the cat does not know it should kill. It is just "playing" and since adult cat (experienced at hunting for food and survival) was around to show how to go beyond the play stage.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 22 2015, @06:11AM
Even old cats do this. It's not just training.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 21 2015, @04:05PM
"P.S. Every time you think we're "unique", we're not... our uniqueness only comes from being able to do combinations of things that others don't, not from doing those things themselves, and that's easy and cheating!"
I think one thing we are unique about is that we have the ability to ask how we, life, the planet, the solar system, the galaxy, the universe originated. We have an innate ability and perhaps curiosity to ask the question about God or origin and to inquiry and research the matter and attempt to find answers. As far as we can tell animals lack this ability and do not ask this question about origin. If you have a pet bird or dog that doesn't remember its mother it won't 'miss' its mother or parents or family or ask how it got to be where it is or if it has relatives it will just accept the current environment as is.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 21 2015, @04:11PM
We have an innate ability to ask about ultimate causality and to ask about causality that relates to before our proximal birth. Where were my parents born. Where were their parents born. Where did it all begin. Questions about our history both as individuals and as a species. That's why we have ancestry websites for instance. It's why we have history classes.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 21 2015, @04:13PM
Actually those who do the hunting are doing it for feed. They don't eat the elephants, but they eat the food they can buy with the money they get from selling the elephants' teeth.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 21 2015, @09:10PM
No, it is the ivory, which is sold to fund warlord and terror groups. Ivory sales are banned in many countries, but there are loopholes, including the USA for pre-existing items made of ivory, which is exploited by profiteers to sneak in new items, but claim they are old.
http://ecowatch.com/2015/03/24/elephants-killed-illegal-ivory-trade/ [ecowatch.com]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by mcgrew on Friday August 21 2015, @04:15PM
Every time you think we're "unique", we're not
Of course we are. Every species is unique, although all species have attributes shared by other species.
we are probably the only animal that kills things for sport, and not for defence, food or other sensible reasons.
Cats do it. They don't chase mice for food, especially if they're well fed, they do it for fun. I had a cat that trophy hunted. We'd moved into a house infested by mice, and every day there was a dead mouse laying next to my chair.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 2) by sudo rm -rf on Friday August 21 2015, @05:11PM
I recently read somewhere that wild dogs are more dangerous than wolves because over the centuries they learned from their masters to kill without them being hungry. Maybe this is also true for cats?
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Saturday August 22 2015, @03:10PM
I don't think so. Watch a video of big cats and their prey sometime, they act just like house cats when hunting. I saw one video of a gazelle that wouldn't run away from a couple of tigers, who didn't know what to do with a docile gazelle.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 3, Interesting) by edIII on Friday August 21 2015, @07:12PM
You misunderstand cats while also anthropomorphizing them.
They don't do it for *fun*. It's called *training*. Much like I might reverse engineer a piece of software, a cat is constantly reverse engineering its prey. It's a very human like trait to say they do it for sport, while it makes more sense that they simply do it to better understand their prey and thereby becoming more proficient hunters. I'm also hard pressed to call it a sport when instinct is compelling them so strongly to chase down prey that runs away from them. They're really just little killing machines that always want to learn how to kill better, and beyond their immediate needs for food.
It laid the dead mouse down by your chair everyday as a statement that it found you to be a wholly unreliable hunter, and that you would die without it feeding you. It was taking care of you. Awwwwwwwwwww :)
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 1) by Murdoc on Sunday August 23 2015, @03:55PM
Why can't it be both? Why do you think humans have "fun", from an evolutionary perspective that is? Most children's games are getting them exercise, or developing their reasoning and imagination, socialization, even preparing them for future "adult" roles by pretending to be them. It even has benefits for adults. It's all "training", if you want to reduce it evolutionary biology terms, but from an emotional perspective, it's called "fun". And since cats are far less capable of sentient reasoning than humans are, emotions --coming from "instincts" as you point out-- is the only real motivator for them to do it. Do you think that cat's are incapable of experiencing any pleasure at all? Not with the way they love to be petted I think. So why can't they enjoy their games, including hunting ones? I don't think that the GP was anthropomorphizing cats so much as you calling them "machines", implying that they have no feelings.
Oh, and cats giving you a dead mouse is a gift, not an admonishment. They do it for for each other all the time, to those they like anyway. It's a social thing. A cat "custom" if you will.