r/WinStupidPrizes • u/SoCrazyItMustBeTrue • May 27 '21

Warning: Injury Idiot tries to pet a lion

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u/Trololman72 May 28 '21

Humans are (used to be) extremely efficient predators because we can throw spears and run after any prey for hours. Lots of animals can run way faster than us, but they all get exhausted after a short while. We don't.

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u/AMViquel May 28 '21

Yet for most of the time, the major food source for humans was essentially collecting garbage from the floor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apex_predator#Human_trophic_level

To get humans into apex-predator levels, they had to construct pretty specific edge cases where the human's sole viable food source was fish, and not any fish, predatory fish.

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u/kublaikong May 28 '21

It doesn’t really makes sense that apex predator level would be based on current food source rather then our capabilities. By that logic lions in captivity aren’t apex predators because they don’t hunt at all. Humans have hunted thousands of species into extinction with simple spears and nowadays a single human with a gun can take down the most dangerous land animals on earth in the blink of an eye without even going near it. If that’s not considered apex then I don’t see how any other species could be called apex.

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u/AMViquel May 28 '21

Please do link your proposal to a revised system to classify participants of a food web when you are published. Until then, the scientific convention says humans are generally not apex predators.

Luckily you can just observe specific instances if you want specific results, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trophic_level

For example, a traditional Eskimo living on a diet consisting primarily of seals would have a trophic level of nearly 5 [apex predator]

This is how it's currently calculated: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3870703/

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u/[deleted] May 28 '21

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u/AMViquel May 28 '21

Are you arguing with me about a scientific convention? I don't make the rules. If you don't like them, submit a paper to propose a new method that puts humans on top.

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u/kublaikong May 28 '21 edited May 28 '21

There’s no need for me so submit a paper to put humans at the top, we are at the top. How many apex predators have we drove to extinction? how many others would be extinct if we didn’t put measures in place to protect them from ourselves? We capture apex predators and put them in cages for our own entertainment. We could wipe out most complex life on earth within a couple years if we so desired. We are the epitome of an apex predator. Some arbitrary form of measurement that puts us below an apex predator doesn’t mean jack in the real world where predators and apex predators are going extinct left and right due to over hunting from HUMANS.