this post was submitted on 10 Nov 2023
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I stole this from somewhere:
We are the only superpredator known to exist. Our best friends are apex predators we allow to live in our homes and treat like children, and we are sufficiently skilled at predation that we have allowed them to give up hunting for survival.
We accidentally killed enough of the biomass on the planet that we are now in the Anthropocene era, an era of earths history that marks post-humanity in geological terms. We are an extinction event significant enough that we will be measurable in millions of years even if we all died tomorrow.
We are the only creature known that engages in group play fighting. Other animals play fight, but not in teams. This allowed us to develop tactics, strategy, and so on, and was instrumental in hunting and eventually war.
We are sufficiently deadly that in order for something to pose a credible threat to us, we have to make it up and give it powers that don't exist in reality. And even then, most of the time, we still win.
Orcas train in packs, and have been observed passing learned behavioral traits onto others.
I can only hope they one day rise out of the sea to destroy us all.
Ducks fuck dead ducks.
Who doesnt
FucksWithDucks is this you?
I think we do that too ... at least a small percentage of us ... with dead ducks .. and with our own dead
Mallards will mallard.
M'lardy tips feathora
They also are the only apex predator that refuses to eat us. Orca overall will eat anything, but each individual orca pod has their own unique diet. This means that if a polar bear is found by the "wrong orcas," (from the polar bear's perspective) the polar bear gets eaten. Yup that's right. The largest and deadliest land predator is prey for orcas. That being said, if an injured seal is near the "right orcas," since seal isn't on their menu, they'll either totally ignore the seal, or maybe bump it towards the shore. Humans are off their menus, and we don't know why. The last recorded Orca attack in the wild happened in the late 1800s and if the records are to be believed, the human in question was doing everything they could to piss off that orca. The orca in question bit the human, tasted what it had bitten, and immediately let go. The human got a gnarly scar, but kept his arm. (This doesn't apply to Orcas in captivity that we gave massive psychological trauma to.)
My theory is that around 200,000 to 250,000 years ago, just as we were getting started as a species, an orca decided to kill a sick, injured, and or young human, and the response that we gave them terrified the orcas that saw it so much that they told all the other orca that you don't eat the hairless apes. They will kill everyone that tries.
Maybe we just taste bad? Other predators like tigers and leopards also usually don't eat humans unless they are injured and can't chase any other prey.
Get harpooned. They exist only because we allow them to exist.
I hope they learn to sink cargo ships, supertankers, and yachts with kamikaze attacks; only allowing passage for middle class pleasure vessels should their entire pod be sufficiently fed as tribute.
Unless they can somehow tow large pieces of rock or ice into the paths of cargo ships and supertankers, there's no way they'll manage to sink those fuckers.
Some of the biggest ships and their sizes
When orcas figure out how to take seamines or hijack smaller ships you are going to feel pretty silly.
Holy fuck, 5 football fields long
They've been sinking boats off the Iberian coast (possibly for fun, possibly for vengeance) for a few years now, so at least some seem to be trying...
i am confident that if orcas took to land they would recognize that a few psychopaths are responsible and that most people just want to watch orcas jump out of the water and have fun
I am not sure that cageing them and forcing them to do "tricks" for our amusement is going favourably with them on the "humans = psychopaths" scale
THUMBS OF ORCAS!
Sneakers for Whalegernon
Oh man. Appreciate it. Couldn't fix my missspell. :(
This is false. We already pose a very real, credible threat to us.
And we're so deadly that we're sure to get us too. We're just that deadly
The odds of humanity wiping out humanity are pretty low. The odds of humanity wiping out human civilisation is pretty fucking high though.
Eh, it's not like we haven't destroyed entire civilizations before for all manner of stupid reasons. What could possibly go wrong? /s
“Superpredator” is not a scientific term. It was used as an “overconsumer” in one publication, as far as I can find, but that meaning doesn’t fit the narrative of your copypasta.
And we definitely don’t maintain domestication of other predators through our predatory ability. On the contrary, domestication and cultivation of other species is what allows us to domesticate carnivores.
We are omnivorous vindictive social apes. Don’t take that description lightly.
We also have two real superpowers:
Everything else is a consequence.
PS: Blue-green algae would like a word about that “extinction event” claim. PPS: Leave hydrogen unattended for long enough, and it will start arguing on the internet.
That could also easily describe Chimpanzees. I realize they are one of our closest cousins, but still. The vindictive part especially. Those guys will literally tear your face and limbs off.
As people like Jared Diamond have pointed out, we are chimpanzees.
As I understand it, we are closer to Orangutans than Chimps. Probably a good thing, since Orangutans are far less angry than Chimps AFAIK
Chimps are our closest (living) relatives. We both evolved in central/east Africa, while orangutans live in Southeast Asia. Also, chimps are actually two species - the large, aggressive common chimpanzee and the smaller, much less aggressive pygmy chimpanzee. Humans and chimps together form the group Hominini.
What does algae have to do with extinction events? It seems like you're using that as a sort of "gotcha!" line, but I don't see the connection.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Oxidation_Event
Algae caused the first one.
Sorry I wasn't scientific enough
Dislike this animal.