• @[email protected]
    link
    fedilink
    English
    1522 days ago

    I know it’s a joke. But would a wolf consider a human an apex predator? What about bears? Do these animals fear humans? I can’t say I’m familiar with them. I figured they wouldn’t, in most circumstances. I would think their default stance towards us is that we’re their prey

    • @[email protected]
      link
      fedilink
      English
      1122 days ago

      The bears and coyotes around here hide from me! Even if I try and creep on 'em, they still usually sense me and run.

    • @[email protected]
      link
      fedilink
      English
      2422 days ago

      We are certainly not their prey and without modern urban sprawl forcing animals into urbanized areas they would avoid humans as much as possible and this has been true for thousands of years.

      Humans are the ones wielding fire after all.

    • @[email protected]
      link
      fedilink
      English
      622 days ago

      Most animals know humans are too much trouble to mess with.

      Sure, you can kill one human. But next thing you know your whole species has gone extinct, or worse, has been domesticated into pocket yappy dogs that can’t breathe properly.

      In places where we’ve been around long enough staying away from humans has practically been bred into every surviving predator’s instincts by now (which is what makes polar bears so terrifying, they’re about the only dangerous predator that doesn’t have this instinct yet, and probably never will, now that murdering whole species has become a bit of a bad look); anything that considered us prey and didn’t learn not to simply doesn’t exist anymore.

      Wolves in particular (in the few places where they survive) definitely know not to mess with us, except maybe in the frozen depths of Canada, and so do most bears (again, with possible exceptions in the least populated bits of North America) except polar ones.