Originally Posted by :
Getting there means a gruelling 40km (25-mile) trek through the jungle, from the nearest road, not to mention navigating croc-infested rivers. But when he arrived he found apes without their normal fear of humans. Chimps near the road flee immediately at the sight of people because they know the consequences of a hunter's rifle, but these animals were happy to approach him. "The further away from the road the more fearless the chimps got," he added.
Mr Hicks reports that he found a unique chimp culture. For example, unlike their cousins in other parts of Africa the chimps regularly bed down for the night in nests on the ground. Around a fifth of the nests he found were there rather than in the trees.
"How can they get away with sleeping on the ground when there are lions, leopards, golden cats around as well as other dangerous animals like elephants and buffalo?" said Mr Hicks.
"I don't like to paint them as being more aggressive, but maybe they prey on some of these predators and the predators kind of leave them alone." He is keen to point out though that they don't howl at the moon.
"The ground nests were very big and there was obviously something very unusual going on there. They are not unknown elsewhere but very unusual," said Colin Groves, an expert on primate morphology at the Australian National University in Canberra who has observed the nests in the field.
Prof Groves believes that the Bili apes should prompt a radical rethink of the family tree of chimp sub-species. He has proposed that primatologists should now recognise five different sub-divisions instead of the current four.
Mr Hicks said the animals also have what he calls a "smashing culture" - a blunt but effective way of solving problems. He has found hundreds of snails and hard-shelled fruits smashed for food, seen chimps carrying termite mounds to rocks to break them open and also found a turtle that was almost certainly smashed apart by chimps.
Like chimp populations in other parts of Africa, the Bili chimps use sticks to fish for ants, but here the tools are up to 2.5 metres long.
Siberian tigers have been known to hunt brown bears. Although I'm guessing not the biggest males.
Yep, I’ve read about this. Apparently Russian brown bears grow a bit larger than Grizzlies on average so that is an impressive kill.
Only counter I have for that is that tigers are notorious ambush hunters. There’s likely very little chance the bear even saw the tiger coming.
EDIT: Just saw your link. Makes more sense.
Originally Posted by :
Given the time of the year the bear was killed, the most likely scenario is that the bear was a very old specimen that had been unable to put on enough fat to hibernate during winter times. A weakened old bear could have been seen as a potential target for the tiger to ambush. It is believed that the tiger who may have performed the kill is a local male known as Odyr.
It is also important to emphasize that while this feat is very impressive and presents the first reliably documented of its kind, it doesn't showcase a one-way relationship. Male brown bears too have killed adult female tigers and young males. It's possible that a male brown bear in its prime age and health would be a much more difficult target for a male tiger, and given the size disparity could turn the tables in favour of the bear on a face-to-face confrontation. Brown bears are known for displacing tigers, including males, of their kills as well
Originally Posted by seamonster:
Can't take a vegetarian silverback seriously. They just sit around all day eating plants (communists).
But this fucking thing is evil and would murder and eat a grizzly.
I’ve learned a great deal in this debate. Lot of interesting info.
Apparently Grizzlies have 1,000 PSI bite force. Polar bears 1,200.
Interestingly, gorillas have 1,300 PSI bite force. To go along with like 3.5” canines. It’s actually weird that they don’t use their teeth more effectively in fights.
Also, before the latest Ice Age, Grizzly bears range covered basically the entire western portion of North America, all the way up from Alaska/Canada down to Mexico and going as far East as Missouri. According to Wikipedia their range stopped about halfway through Missouri so you boys in KC might have been Yogi poop 40,000 years ago. [Reply]
So in addition to Grizzlies ranging all over the western side of the continent, there was a point in time in which they coexisted in America with short-faced bears, the American lion (larger than African lions), American cheetah, woolly mammoths and saber-toothed tigers.
Depending on when you believe humans first made their way to the Americas, prehistoric man could have seen all of these animals in the same environment.
Originally Posted by ThaVirus:
So in addition to Grizzlies ranging all over the western side of the continent, there was a point in time in which they coexisted in America with short-faced bears, the American lion (larger than African lions), American cheetah, woolly mammoths and saber-toothed tigers.
Depending on when you believe humans first made their way to the Americas, prehistoric man could have seen all of these animals in the same environment.
**** all that lol
I've never read anything about how common these creatures were and how common humans were. How often did humans encounter mega-carnivores? It would seem that a human with a spear, or even ten humans with ten spears wouldn't last long against a pride of American lions or a pack of dire wolves. I'm wondering if the humans had to take great pains to avoid areas where creatures like that roamed, or if it was a rare enough phenomenon that when it happened the humans simply joined the fossil record.
It seems that our ancestors did encounter bears based on our mutual love of cave dwellings. Somehow our people with pointy sticks seemed to give as good as they got, right? Or is that why teepees and mud huts and brick houses were invented?
There seems to be a lot of evidence that humans hunted mammoths, which is kind of astounding. It seems like a waste of risk and energy to hunt something so large that it'll putrefy before you can eat it, not to mention that the smell of a dead mammoth would likely draw every carrion eater within a day's walk. But they obviously knew more than I do about it, so it must've been a good idea.
Now I need to do some math. Weight estimates for mammoths are all over the board, but let's go with 13,000 pounds as an average. As a total guess, let's assume that 2/3 of that is edible bits, as opposed to bones and fur and tusks. So you've got roughly 9,000 pounds of meat.
How long will 9,000 pounds of meat last before it goes bad? We're talking ice age, so it's possible that all of nature was a refrigerator. But you've also got body heat and bacteria and stuff keeping it warm. Maybe you could still eat it after two weeks? I have no idea, so someone else can do better research.
So you have to eat 9,000 pounds of mammoth in two weeks to be fully efficient. That's 640 pounds per day.
What would a human eat? Maybe if you went with an all-mammoth paleo diet, you could eat 2.5 pounds? That's a 40-ounce steak.
So 640 pounds divided by 2.5 pounds per day means that a group of 256 people would enjoy mammoth steaks. There's no way that a hunting and gathering culture would have 256 people, right? So they would have killed this giant creature and then eaten maybe 1/4 of it? Why not kill something smaller that's less likely to pound you into neanderjelly?
Or were mammoths actually easy to kill compared to something like an oryx or a buffalo that might be more agile? And in that environment where there was a mammoth behind every tree, it's not like they were stressing the environment or competing for food. Food was everywhere compared to the number of people who needed it. So I guess wastage probably didn't matter at all. Maybe they killed mammoths just because they liked to eat the spleen or something. [Reply]
Originally Posted by Rain Man:
I've never read anything about how common these creatures were and how common humans were. How often did humans encounter mega-carnivores? It would seem that a human with a spear, or even ten humans with ten spears wouldn't last long against a pride of American lions or a pack of dire wolves. I'm wondering if the humans had to take great pains to avoid areas where creatures like that roamed, or if it was a rare enough phenomenon that when it happened the humans simply joined the fossil record.
It seems that our ancestors did encounter bears based on our mutual love of cave dwellings. Somehow our people with pointy sticks seemed to give as good as they got, right? Or is that why teepees and mud huts and brick houses were invented?
I’ve wondered this myself. How much danger did a saber-toothed tiger or short-faced bear pose to an adult male? I’d love to be a fly on a tree in ancient times.
I’m sure you’ve seen the images of Buffalo skulls stacked probably 30-feet high? We know the French were big on trading animal furs in America as well. Obviously this is a bit later time period than fresh out of the last Ice Age but still. I’d bet it was pretty common for humans to encounter massive predators with prey so numerous, if only for the fact that they’d be drawn to the smell of food we were processing.
But yeah, it definitely seems we gave it as good as we got it. For one thing, most of these large predators have a healthy fear of humans. That leads me to believe we probably killed off the more bold members of the species, only leaving the ones who feared us to procreate.
It’s funny to talk about this animal vs that animal in a fight. Humans with no weapons are so far down the totem pole, it’s hilarious. But you get 10-15 of us together, all pissed off because our neighbor’s baby got snatched by a wolf, and we become really fucking terrifying. We can run for longer distances than basically anything in the animal kingdom and we can throw stuff with surprising accuracy. Imagine getting stalked by a small army of strange, hairless Terminators wearing your cousin’s skin who can kill you before you even see them lol
Originally Posted by :
There seems to be a lot of evidence that humans hunted mammoths, which is kind of astounding. It seems like a waste of risk and energy to hunt something so large that it'll putrefy before you can eat it, not to mention that the smell of a dead mammoth would likely draw every carrion eater within a day's walk. But they obviously knew more than I do about it, so it must've been a good idea.
Now I need to do some math. Weight estimates for mammoths are all over the board, but let's go with 13,000 pounds as an average. As a total guess, let's assume that 2/3 of that is edible bits, as opposed to bones and fur and tusks. So you've got roughly 9,000 pounds of meat.
How long will 9,000 pounds of meat last before it goes bad? We're talking ice age, so it's possible that all of nature was a refrigerator. But you've also got body heat and bacteria and stuff keeping it warm. Maybe you could still eat it after two weeks? I have no idea, so someone else can do better research.
So you have to eat 9,000 pounds of mammoth in two weeks to be fully efficient. That's 640 pounds per day.
What would a human eat? Maybe if you went with an all-mammoth paleo diet, you could eat 2.5 pounds? That's a 40-ounce steak.
So 640 pounds divided by 2.5 pounds per day means that a group of 256 people would enjoy mammoth steaks. There's no way that a hunting and gathering culture would have 256 people, right? So they would have killed this giant creature and then eaten maybe 1/4 of it? Why not kill something smaller that's less likely to pound you into neanderjelly?
Or were mammoths actually easy to kill compared to something like an oryx or a buffalo that might be more agile? And in that environment where there was a mammoth behind every tree, it's not like they were stressing the environment or competing for food. Food was everywhere compared to the number of people who needed it. So I guess wastage probably didn't matter at all. Maybe they killed mammoths just because they liked to eat the spleen or something.
I’ve always wondered the same. Cultures that hunted whales too. What tf are they doing with all of that meat?
I figure that’s probably wear jerky first came from.
