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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 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.