Maybe I am just crabby this week, but, I have watched another TV program proclaiming their theories etc, and the term "natural preditor" came up. This is probably the thousandth time I have heard this term and I never gave it second thought until TODAY.



It seems we humans are not considered natural preditors of ANYTHING!



How can that be?



Is it because we use guns, bows, camo, scent free, etc, etc, etc.....



Then I think, well hell, many preditory animals have means to increase their success at predation. For instance, spiders use tools, they have their webs and of course poison. Many animals have camo patterns in order to increase their success. Many "natural preditors" will stalk game at water holes, food plots, etc. Some even use lures. Hmmm.



I am not seeing where we are "unnatural preditors". So because of this, the term really irks me. We've been hunting game an awful long time through out the ages. We started in the motherland of Africa and as I see it we are a link in the scheme of things. How is it so many consider "us" to be unnatural?



Can anyone offer some insight?



Who ever coined this term is probably responsible for the existence of bunny huggers too.

I can kill things using hundreds of ways including bare handed. I guess I am just an unnatural predator.

Ann,
when I read your new insight I remembered my outrage about "natural products": when an outfit sells a potion of "herbs" "roots" and gallbladders from bear etc-it is NATURAL medicine- the true thing.When we give 'em penicillin it is "ARTIFICIAL"
That level of understanding must therefore be that anything manmade is artificial,unnatural.While the raw poisons are natural.Me thinks that therefore man is implicitly declared to be unnatural,man is pitted against the rest of the earth-which is "nature".
Sounds logical for a city slicker that knows milk comes from a refrigator

sheephunter

I still would like to know who decided we were unnatural!

My eyes face forward not out to the side. I may be "un-natural" but I sure as hell am a predator!



Dont try to figure out their thought process or rather lack of it Ann, it will only give you a headache.

Let me add a peeve: "Sensless Killing"

I'm a retired homicide investigator. Heard that one often. If there is a sensless killing, is there a killing that makes sense? Aside from legitimate self-defense.

My answer will surprise you. Every killing, no matter how brutal and sadistic, makes perfect sense to the killer. In fact, the more sadistic, the more it makes sense. Society screws up when it tries to fit the killer's act and motivation into our frame of reference, and not keep it in the killer's frame of reference.

Roger, I am a bit confused. I thought we were talking about the predation ie hunting of other species, not our own. How does your comment fit with this?

Ann:

Wow! You know how to lure a guy into what he knows already is a fight he should stay out of -but can't resist the temptation to put in his two cents! Women!

Anyway, here goes. The definition of being "civilized" is supposed to have started when human beings started to farm and stopped being hunters (for their food) Ever since, any hunting was supposed to be either by somebody too "uncivilized" to farm and grow or raise food. We are at the end of some 6-7000 years of being farmers and not hunters for our food. Those of us who felt a need to hunt when we were old enough to be allowed to handle a hunting weapon are really throwbacks. You and I (and the others in this forum) represent a deeply embedded instinct in the human race. Those ancestors of ours from 10000 years ago would have recognized us on sight - as we would have recognized them. I am not joking about this. There is something very different about us and the critics of hunting - who eat meat regularly and wear shoes made of leather. (The PETA types and the vegetarians simply are examples of the type of humans who would have gone under in a hunting society and thrive only because they are allowed to do so in a civilized society) Look, the world of our ancestors of 10000 years ago must have been incredibly savage. We are better off because mankind learned how to grow wheat and to raise cattle. Like I said, we hunters are throwbacks. That's why we can only talk to one another and can never talk to a non hunter (who only just tolerate us if they are understanding of us)

Gerry

Ah! This is one of my pet topics! I am also amazed about the people who make such claims about "natural predators", and that includes people - at least here in Sweden - who ought to know better including some hunters. Of course we are the natural predators of a lot of species.

And I agree about those who claim that some sort of food or medicine is natural... My wife have some friends who like to praise anything "natural" and I love to point out that scabies and tapeworm is very natural indeed. So is our striving for a comfortable and safe life, including decent food and medicine!

Regards,
Martin

Ann needless to say, if you do not already understand how "unnatural" you are, you will never get it.

Do you live a lifestyle anything like a native primordial tribesman? NO! Modern civilization is a perversion of nature. In nature the strongest, fastest, or smartest kills and eats the the weaker, slower, or less smart. In modern civilation this is consider bad form, and punished accordingly. You do not hunt for the same reasons a wolf hunts, no matter what you may think! Trophy hunting is the biggest abomination of it all, when only the strongest herd animals are killed leaving the weak to propogate the breed.

I agree though "natural predator" is a bad term. I prefer to speak of 4 legged predators. Man has most of the killed them off to the point that they no longer serve as a viable threat to man's sport hunting pleasures.

By the way, the bunny huggers don't get it either so don't feel bad. To me you and the bunny hugger are just two sides of the same coin.

Sorry if the truth hurts.

I think I have another candidate for the ignore list.

-Steve

Poseur,
Even if Ann already have given the main arguments, I like to add that there are further examples proving the point: Konrad Lorentz cites some very interesting studies where cats was given the opportunity to hunt mice even when the cats were well fed. Even with a full stomach they continued to hunt mice, but the more food they had eaten, the more did they concentrate on the mice that were most difficult to catch. That is "hunting for sport" in my book.

There are, as Ann pointed out, a lot of studies showing that many (most?) predators kill the animals they have a chance to get at regardless of its condition. This is not only true for four legged predators. There are studies of hawks killing wood grouse, showing that the individual behavior - as an adjustment to the environment - of the grouse is of far greater importance than age or condition.

"Civilization" seems a bit crude a concept to be used in the way that you do, but I might point out that researchers argue that they have found altruistic behavior amongst monkeys (even if I can't say the results are altogether convincing).

Ann,

Once upon a time when the feds were dithering over the introduction of predators into the Yellowstone ecosystem, I submitted a comment that they should reintroduce the Sioux.

They didn't take my recommendation.

jim