(Repost) Why are a lot of the exotic African animals not extinct?
Why do a lot of exotic African animals still exist if Humans first evolved in Africa and lived there for all those thousands of years? How did they continue to be widespread until more recent history? Why were a lot of the animals, like the Quagga, not in danger until after Whitey went back to Africa?
Were these animals living further inland than the Humans in the past? Were they simply living in some sort of balance?
It’s pretty much because of the invention of guns and motor vehicles. During human’s early evolution there would have been no real concern or need to kill most African animals (or at least none that was really worth the effort). At that point any interaction with other wildlife would’ve either been hunting or trying to keep from being the hunted. When you have to constantly focus on getting your next meal and protecting yourself and your clan, you don’t have much additional energy for sport hunting.
Later on, during tribal societies, hunting for sport wouldn’t have been all that common, either. Kill a lion and brag about it for the rest of your life, that’s about it.
Active and detrimental hunting would’ve only began when the particular animal parts became valuable, such as ivory tusks, rhino horns, ‘medicinal’ organs, big cat skins, and so on. Hell, poaching is a huge business for the locals, and combine that with "sportsman" (aka fat lazy morons with a rifle and an air conditioned van who like a pretty corpse on their wall) in recent decades, and you get massive declines in animal population.
So mostly, yeah, it was a matter of balance. Humans killed a few animals, animals killed a few humans and that was it, both populations were controlled but in no danger of eradication. Now you get scores of dying animals daily and relatively few fatalities in the growing human population.
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Chelsea C December 14th, 2009, 11:56 pm
It’s pretty much because of the invention of guns and motor vehicles. During human’s early evolution there would have been no real concern or need to kill most African animals (or at least none that was really worth the effort). At that point any interaction with other wildlife would’ve either been hunting or trying to keep from being the hunted. When you have to constantly focus on getting your next meal and protecting yourself and your clan, you don’t have much additional energy for sport hunting.
Later on, during tribal societies, hunting for sport wouldn’t have been all that common, either. Kill a lion and brag about it for the rest of your life, that’s about it.
Active and detrimental hunting would’ve only began when the particular animal parts became valuable, such as ivory tusks, rhino horns, ‘medicinal’ organs, big cat skins, and so on. Hell, poaching is a huge business for the locals, and combine that with "sportsman" (aka fat lazy morons with a rifle and an air conditioned van who like a pretty corpse on their wall) in recent decades, and you get massive declines in animal population.
So mostly, yeah, it was a matter of balance. Humans killed a few animals, animals killed a few humans and that was it, both populations were controlled but in no danger of eradication. Now you get scores of dying animals daily and relatively few fatalities in the growing human population.
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