B
broxbourneDELETE
Guest
I was reading a non-fictionbook last night called "Man the Hunted" (D. Hart and R.W. Sussman, 2005, Westview Press) and came across an interesting passage:
"It was quickly apparent as we gathered material for this book that entire volumes could be filled with gory exploits of man-eaters garnered from newspapers and magazines around the world. These bloody events are commonly given high profile in newspapers, and they often make the front page in a city that is thousands of miles from the predation itself. For example, 'India Fighting Plague of Man-Eating Wolves,' screamed a headline on the front page of the New York Times in 1996. Would this situation really be relevant to the average Times reader? Or, more precisely, would it be more relevant than an article about 300 million citizens in India who suffer from malnutrition (a tragedy that does not appear in headlines in New York or anywhere else in the United States)? Certainly, in today's world events from car accidents, heart disease, cancer, toxic chemicals in our environment, malnutrition or starvation, and warfare hugely outnumber deaths from predators. Even in areas of the world where predation on humans happens regularly, the paucity of predators compared to the ever-expanding human numbers make the impact of predators on overall humna population miniscule. When current-day predation is posed as a mortality factor to a global population in excess of 6 billion, the precentage of humans killed by wild animals may not even be worth recording.
So why the heightened media coverage? Might it be that we are fascinated by a deep recognition of what predation by other species has meant in our long evolutionart history? Hans Kruuk, a famous animal behaviorist and authority on predators, feels that our revulsion, our curiosity, our fascination with gory stories of man-eaters is based on a hardwired instinct that these events are very scary to our whole species -- scarier than many of the more obvious killers in our midst. After all, we evolved for millions of years being hunted and eaten by other animals, but we have only had to fear automobile accidents for 100 years (just a few generations). Tigers, bears, and wolves touch off much deeper neural pathways than Toyotas, Fords, or Volkswagens."
Anyway, pity the fools who drive around w/ no seatbelts and child restraints. Maybe in a million years humans will fear cars ... (like we should?)
"It was quickly apparent as we gathered material for this book that entire volumes could be filled with gory exploits of man-eaters garnered from newspapers and magazines around the world. These bloody events are commonly given high profile in newspapers, and they often make the front page in a city that is thousands of miles from the predation itself. For example, 'India Fighting Plague of Man-Eating Wolves,' screamed a headline on the front page of the New York Times in 1996. Would this situation really be relevant to the average Times reader? Or, more precisely, would it be more relevant than an article about 300 million citizens in India who suffer from malnutrition (a tragedy that does not appear in headlines in New York or anywhere else in the United States)? Certainly, in today's world events from car accidents, heart disease, cancer, toxic chemicals in our environment, malnutrition or starvation, and warfare hugely outnumber deaths from predators. Even in areas of the world where predation on humans happens regularly, the paucity of predators compared to the ever-expanding human numbers make the impact of predators on overall humna population miniscule. When current-day predation is posed as a mortality factor to a global population in excess of 6 billion, the precentage of humans killed by wild animals may not even be worth recording.
So why the heightened media coverage? Might it be that we are fascinated by a deep recognition of what predation by other species has meant in our long evolutionart history? Hans Kruuk, a famous animal behaviorist and authority on predators, feels that our revulsion, our curiosity, our fascination with gory stories of man-eaters is based on a hardwired instinct that these events are very scary to our whole species -- scarier than many of the more obvious killers in our midst. After all, we evolved for millions of years being hunted and eaten by other animals, but we have only had to fear automobile accidents for 100 years (just a few generations). Tigers, bears, and wolves touch off much deeper neural pathways than Toyotas, Fords, or Volkswagens."
Anyway, pity the fools who drive around w/ no seatbelts and child restraints. Maybe in a million years humans will fear cars ... (like we should?)
