Comment by fooker
14 days ago
Yes, wolves are pretty intelligent and social compared to zebras.
They understood the core concept of ‘do not bite the hand that feeds you’ instinctively.
14 days ago
Yes, wolves are pretty intelligent and social compared to zebras.
They understood the core concept of ‘do not bite the hand that feeds you’ instinctively.
Zebras understood the concept that "this guy can out-think you. If you behave predictably, you'll regret it. If you behave unpredictably, he may regret it too."
There's this theory that's why there are so few domesticable animals in Africa: that they co-evolved with humans, and the ones who behaved predictably and weren't willing to randomly hurt you for no apparent reason at their own expense, were eaten by our ancestors.
There's generally a lot more large wild animals in Africa than anywhere else in the world.
It's essentially the same theory: The large animals in Africa coevolved with humans, and so developed the ability to survive in their presence.
Half a million years ago, there were large animals pretty much everywhere else on Earth too. They very consistently disappeared right around when humans showed up.
That actually brings up an interesting topic: are they (still) there because human populations are comparatively lower?
Africa has some very fertile regions but except for some like the Nile Valley most of them couldn't really compete well with the Yellow River Valley, the Ganges Valley, etc.
Just for comparison, the population of Africa around 1900 was around 100 million, out of which Egypt had 10 million, Ethiopia 10 million, Nigeria 30 million, and 1-2 other population centers around 10 million each. So 70 out 100 million people were bunched up in maybe 5% of the territory.
In the meantime, just India had about 300 million people in 1900 :-) India within from 1500 to 1900 probably had more humans living in it than Africa from the beginning of mankind to 1900.
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> the ones who behaved predictably and weren't willing to randomly hurt you for no apparent reason at their own expense, were eaten by our ancestors.
This doesn't make sense to me. Sure, an an animal that is generally a belligerent asshole will discourage humans from trying to tame it, but why would it discourage hunting? If anything, it would encourage hunting the bad animal to extinction, no? Humans successfully hunted Mammoths and other large game even in the stone age, so I don't see how having a bad temper would help.
My guess is that while humans are great hunters, apes aren't, and that our distant ancestors would be a lot more dependent on prey behaving as expected and not, say, suddenly charge at you suicidally.
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