Does it make sense? I mean, you can’t get the human back so what’s the point in killing the animal?
Alot of animals (tigers come to mind) develop a taste for humans after their first one. I remember reading about one particular tiger (I think it was in Nepal but i could be wrong) that ate nothing but humans. I think with sharks though its mostly to protect tourism (“We killed the beast! You can go back in the water now!”) or, on a rare occasion, possible revenge. Kill that rogue tiger but leave the sharks alone.
No, no, no! It’s because when they kill them before they eat humans, they aren’t as tender…
Seriously though, I doubt that animals “develop a taste for humans” or that there was a tiger “who ate nothing but humans.” Do you imagine we taste sooo much better than anything else? It’s more likely that land animals, like sharks, may not see humans as food until the first time they feel threatened enough to kill one. At that point they may suddenly realize, “Hey, that wasn’t so tough!” and from that point on, they see us the same as any other prey.
A piece of advice I’ve heard on dealing with sharks when you’re diving is to stay upright in the water, so they don’t confuse you with a fish. This implies that they don’t recognize you as something on their menu, and don’t know what to do with you. With big cats, etc. you never seen one that is startled and feels “cornered” by a passing deer because they know what to do with a deer or anything else on four legs. Bipeds are confusing until they “find out” they’re edible.
I’m a bear.
You come in between me and my cub, or disturb my fishing, and I kill you.
Damn, that was easy. Much easier than fishing or foraging. I think I’ll just do that from now on.
It could be argued that, on the list of things most predators can catch and eat, humans are way at the easy end. We can’t run as fast as most predators, can’t climb trees as fast, got no claws, no poison sting, we don’t taste bad, no sharp spiny parts to get past… the list goes on and on… Most predatory animals aren’t experimental eaters. If they’ve never eaten something, they probably won’t. Once they’ve eaten something and it was way easier to catch than, say, a gazelle, their tastes will change.
What do you mean we got no sting? It’s just that ours are usually made of jacketed lead, and powered by gunpowder.
Some of us are easier targets than others.
Still, a bear would rather eat what he finds in our trash than us.
However, humans in wetsuits can look like pinnepeds (seals and sea lions), and those are part of many sharks’ regular diets. Vertical floating by a pinneped is a natural resting position (“bottling”). I certainly would not recommend diving in sea lion/ seal areas.
Here in Florida, they do kill alligators suspected of eating humans, as well as those that people have admitted to feeding (very illegal). [Local news did an undercover expose of tourboat operators that were feeding gators ‘so they’d come close and the tourists could get a close look at them’. Quite a few people busted on that one.] After being fed by humans, the gator loses its natural aversion to humans and will approach a person or boat, expecting to be fed. Nuisance gators (those that are living in someone’s retention pond and not causing problems) are usually trapped and moved to another pond.
Thanks for the rational answers. I always thought it was a “punishment” thing. Now I’m not as outraged by it.
I heard that if you see a shark, you should punch it in the nose, and it will leave you alone.
Yeah right.
Jackknifed:
A little more useless information on the subject:
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I recently saw a special on wolves re-introduced to yellowstone. Wildlife managers will shoot a wolf who kills livestock. Apparently once the wolf has acquired a taste for cows, they will teach the other wolves in the pack about steak tartare.
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There mountain lions in the San Bernadino mountain range. Attacks by these are very rare. However, every now and then one will wander down to Ettiwanda and kill a dog, or, in some cases, a small child. I am told by park rangers that once they have killed once, they tend to return, so the mountain lions are located and killed.
So, yes, wild animals really can acquire a “taste” for people.
Guin, AFAIK, the nose of a shark contains a large concentration of nerves, and so it might leave you alone. Of course, we have large concentrations of nerves in our noses, too, and it might be enough to get anyone bothering you to leave you alone by punching them in the nose. But, it might not. I don’t want to take the chance with a shark.
*From http://www.5tigers.org ‘The Tiger Information Center’…
Also…
I couldn’t find a cite for the problem tiger that ate nothing but humans but I didn’t look very hard. I don’t think it’s even extremely rare for something like that to happen, but anyway…tigers and other animals can definately develop a ‘taste’ for humans, weather its how we actually taste or we’re just fun to catch.
Maybe we’re just doing a little selective breeding…
241 posts and thats the first time i’ve fucked up on the vbcode. Damn.
… and just how do you know that?
Also I think that the reason is that the tiger (or whatever) will make the association that humans = food where before it was humans = ? while antilope = food. This is what I thought what then ment by develope the taste for ment.
I know that, Necros. I just heard it somewhere.
I don’t plan on going anywhere near shark infested waters in the future, however.
As far as tigers and some leopards go, some in fact seem to specialize on humans. Some individual maneaters in India have killed more than 500 people over the course of many years. (See Jack Corbett’s Maneaters of Kumaon for a fascinating account by a very skilled hunter who was often called on to hunt down maneaters when others had failed.) Most big cats are afraid of humans, but occasionally one will attack - perhaps because it’s desperate due to injury or age - but then learn that humans are exceptionally easy prey, and then feed almost exclusively on humans. Obviously such individuals have to be hunted down. This doesn’t seem to happen so often with lions, although the famous Maneaters of Tsavo, two lions in Kenya in the late 1800s, killed hundreds of people and stopped the building of a railroad for a time. (The story was made into a very bad movie a few years ago; IIRC it was called The Ghost and the Darkness.)
When wild animals kill and eat humans I think the main motivation for killing them is to protect the human population in case it becomes habitual. I think that’s pretty reasonable.
Sometimes zoo or circus animals kill a careless keeper or some idiot who has deliberately entered their cage. If they are killed, it is usually for PR or in the heat of the moment. I recall a couple of cases in NY. In one a couple of Siberian Tigers at the Bronx Zoo killed a keeper who had been careless and disobeyed the safety rules, and they were allowed to live. In the other, some moron jumped into the cage with the Polar Bears at the Central Park Zoo at night and they killed him. When the cops arrived, they shot the bears because, they said, they couldn’t tell if the guy was still alive or not and wanted to rescue him. A lot of people protested that the bears should not have been killed as they were innocent.
It has been theorized, mainly by the antropologist Louis Leakey, that the fact that lions don’t often eat people, even though we are usually pretty easy prey, is that we taste bad to them (Although one may occasionally develop a taste for humans, just as some people like Limburger Cheese.) Leakey said “Man is not cat food.” But I don’t think this has ever been proven one way or another.
Of course…you have a cite for this. Right?
Actually, sharks don’t like the taste of humans, but they don’t realize you’re a human until they’ve taken a big bite out of ya, and then they proceed to rid themselves of that “icky taste” in their mouth.