Humans are basically defenseless against wild animals. But why do wild animals do not often attack them?
When going to mountains, hikers are usually reassured that wild animals are more afraid of humans than humans are of them. Even big predators like bears and pumas have little threat to humans even though they are slower and weaker than these animals.
There are few reasons to explain this but based on human physiology, humans have evolved to learn to walk on their two feet. From moving with four limbs to walking upright on longer legs.
Bipedalism Signals Threat to Predators
John Hawks, a paleoanthropologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told Live Science that being bipedal brings a new threat level. For instance, other primates like gorillas and chimpanzees stand to express threats and communicate to predators that they are in trouble.
Bipedalism makes humans look threatening to other animals. But this also causes them to be slower than their four-legged counterparts, which means they can easily be outrun by wild animals.
"It's sort of like a bluff," Live Science quoted Hawks saying. "It's like, 'I'm walking around; I'm tough; I'm showing where I am on a landscape.'" Wild animals or predators see that the upright stance of humans signals they are tougher than they actually are. But in reality, bipedalism is only a bluff."
Other Reasons Why Wild Animals Leave Humans Alone
Aside from bipedalism, there are other reasons why wild animals usually leave humans alone. Like many primates, humans live in groups and developed a strategy of defending themselves against threats that might work against predators.
Human technology has improved a lot and humans continue to develop an arsenal of weapons, like guns, that they could use from a distance. These humans become so deadly that they can use them to fight a wild animal attack.
Additionally, when visiting zoos, it is notable that lions or tigers do not immediately attack human tourists in open vehicles. According to Smithsonian Magazine, lions could easily attack a human but a motor vehicle that is so much larger than them would not be easy. They perceive it as a threat that they could not handle and so explains the predator-prey dynamics in which animals purposely make themselves look larger to avoid being perceived as prey.
Moreover, another reason humans are rarely attacked by large wild animals is that their numbers have declined over the past years. Justin Suraci, a lead scientist in community ecology and conservation biology, said that large wild animals had suffered great habitat loss in the US before and into the 20th century.
Humans have hunted, trapped, and poisoned wolves that almost went extinct, while the International Union for Conservation of Nature. (IUCN) said that pumas were wiped out of the entire eastern half of North America, except for a small population found in Florida.
Despite that, Suraci thinks that there is an upside to the "healthy fear" that predators have towards humans. He believes that it helped both species to coexist as long as humans are aware of their presence.
Check out more news and information on Animals in Science Times.
