this post was submitted on 10 Nov 2023
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[–] [email protected] 184 points 11 months ago (4 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 100 points 11 months ago (9 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 40 points 11 months ago (4 children)
[–] [email protected] 20 points 11 months ago (1 children)
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[–] [email protected] 7 points 11 months ago

I think we do that too ... at least a small percentage of us ... with dead ducks .. and with our own dead

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 11 months ago (1 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 11 months ago (3 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 11 months ago

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...

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[–] [email protected] 58 points 11 months ago (3 children)

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.

This is false. We already pose a very real, credible threat to us.

[–] [email protected] 33 points 11 months ago

And we're so deadly that we're sure to get us too. We're just that deadly

[–] [email protected] 18 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Humans are a government conspiracy.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 11 months ago (1 children)
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[–] [email protected] 17 points 11 months ago (1 children)

The odds of humanity wiping out humanity are pretty low. The odds of humanity wiping out human civilisation is pretty fucking high though.

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[–] [email protected] 23 points 11 months ago (5 children)

“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:

  • We’re the only animal on the planet that can scale stable social groups into millions while being individually complex. Some glitch of ours broke cranial limitations of the group size that other primates adhere to.
  • We are the only animal to have developed languages with complex grammars. While other animals can exhibit complex signaling systems, and possibly learn grammars we develop, we effortlessly develop and learn grammars that allow us to express novel thoughts without waiting for evolution. Hell, our children develop throwaway languages as a side-effect of playing with each other.

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.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 11 months ago (3 children)

We are omnivorous vindictive social apes. Don’t take that description lightly.

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.

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 11 months ago

Dislike this animal.

[–] [email protected] 126 points 11 months ago
[–] [email protected] 103 points 11 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 25 points 11 months ago (1 children)

"The planet is fine! The people are fucked." - Carlin

[–] [email protected] 16 points 11 months ago (4 children)

"climate change reversal: don't do it for the fluffy little bunnyrabbits, do it so you can continue stuffing sustainably sourced pringles into the catcher's mitt you call a face." -Ben Croshaw, with explicit permission to be quoted

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[–] [email protected] 69 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (7 children)

Been reading the Deathworlders book(s). Basically a FOSS series of novels. Sounds like it would devolve into bad fan fiction. 1,500 pages in and I'm still diggin' it.

Humans come from a "level 12" planet. Sapience isn't thought able to evolve on a level 10, too dangerous. Too serious on every front; Gravity, weather, temperature extremes, microorganisms, parasites, predators, radiation exposure, all that.

First chapter is a human on a space station trying to get processed through emigration when the baddest-ass aliens of all lock on and board. He beats one to death with its own arm. Basically like a chimp in a preschool of giant, soft children.

Gets hilarious when the same guy is finally back home bartending and, as Earth watches in awe, those same aliens invade a Canadian hockey game.

Epubs and such are readily available.

https://deathworlders.com/

[–] [email protected] 34 points 11 months ago (1 children)
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[–] [email protected] 30 points 11 months ago (1 children)

That's like The Damned series by Alan Dean Foster.

Basically alien societies naturally formed without the type of infighting and barbarism humans started with, so the entire idea of war to them was extremely foreign and uncomfortable until they were attacked. They formed an alliance to push back the empire trying to conquer them, but they lacked the will or martial ingenuity to really hold the empire back. Then they come across humans, and the first (random) human they come across accidentally severely injures their ambassador. So they offer humans heaps of technology and resources for soldiers. They don't offer membership (because we're absolute nightmares) if I remember correctly, but Earth is fine with that. People volunteer in droves to see the galaxy and fight in wars where they are so overpowered it feels like they put in a cheat code.

The series is about... well, what happens to our society when our main export is unstoppable death and destruction. Hence "The Damned."

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[–] [email protected] 22 points 11 months ago (1 children)

This premise and the HumanityFuckYeah is what originally brought me to Reddit. There's a lemmy for it, too, but it isnt as active

https://lemmy.world/c/hfy

Maybe if we get more interest we can build it up!

[–] [email protected] 10 points 11 months ago

Hi there! Looks like you linked to a Lemmy community using a URL instead of its name, which doesn't work well for people on different instances. Try fixing it like this: [email protected]

[–] [email protected] 15 points 11 months ago (2 children)

FOSS series of novels? Is that another term for a web serial? A free novel or story posted in chunks online?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 11 months ago (1 children)

If this is a serious question it’s most likely a group writing collaboration of some kind, playing off the idea of the the way free and open source software is a collaborate effort.

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[–] [email protected] 67 points 11 months ago (5 children)

After seeing It Follows, the idea of a slow predator that never stops is quite terrifying. I would never be at peace again.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 11 months ago

Alternatively after seeing IT Follows - I am not whoring it up enough. That's the only way to stay safe.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 11 months ago (4 children)

We're the Terminators of the animal kingdom. We're slow and deliberate, able to stalk our prey for days or weeks at a time, and can often come back from injuries that would be a death sentence for other animals.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 11 months ago (7 children)

Do you recommend this movie? I could use a good horror flick for the weekend

[–] [email protected] 9 points 11 months ago

Yes. I enjoyed it.

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[–] [email protected] 63 points 11 months ago (13 children)

I believe in nature, humans are regarded as persistence hunters. Which is to say we have incredible stamina and perseverance while hunting. Other creatures can run faster than us, but only for short stints, relatively speaking, as long as we can keep track of them, we can continue to pursue prey for hours or days without significant external assistance (food, water, rest, help from others, etc).

So regardless of what we may be trying to kill, if we continue to keep our focus on it, we can absolutely find and kill it, given a long enough timeframe.

This also explains marathons, quite frankly. I don't see too many animals just running for dozens of kilometers without a reason to do so. Many can't run that far, and those that could, generally never would... Unless they're running from us, I suppose.

Something like the cheetah, is very very fast in short duration, but after a few minutes of running at full speed, it's thermal regulation tends to fail and it is biologically required to stop or it will overheat and die.

Add to that our intellectual capacity for planning, the creation of tools to assist us, strategy, teamwork, and all the things that are associated with intelligence and we're basically a killing machine, if we choose to be....

Amazingly, we're also the only species that we know to exist that feels bad about eating our prey. I've never seen a lion have an existential breakdown after killing off a gazelle so it can eat, yet there's entire subcultures of people who refuse to cause any harm to their food. Have you people not understood the "circle of life"? Did you not watch the lion king?

Whatever. Go live your life. Weirdo.

[–] [email protected] 49 points 11 months ago (19 children)

The problem with eating meat is not the eating meat. I don't give a fuck if someone eats meat from an animal that hasn't suffered, that was free and in its natural habitat. I don't know if I would myself because after 15 years of not eating meat I don't think I'd still like it, but it's not unethical. The problem is the untold amount of widespread suffering and cruelty of beings with emotions and sentience and attachments and capacity for both physical and emotional pain that is industrial livestock farming.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 11 months ago (1 children)

The climate costs of feeding animals for us to eat do make eating meat inherently harmful to the planet.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 11 months ago (3 children)

The land requirements for our current animal agricultural production is the same size as North American. That's not sustainable. I say that as someone whose never gone a day without eating meat.

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[–] [email protected] 19 points 11 months ago

I've also heard theories that our empathy is actually a hunting tool. If we were to lose our prey, say in the brush around a water source, we could put ourselves in its mind. From there, we could empathize and predict their actions, and so follow them, even without tracks. From the prey's perspective, they finally lost us and escaped, they are exhausted and overheating, but alive. Suddenly the predictor re-emerges, and the chase is back on.

Vegetarianism being a fairly unique human trait suddenly makes sense, from this perspective. A lion doesn't really need to get into the mind of their prey, and so empathising with them is actually a negative. For humans it was a critical tool. It's only secondary that we turned it on each other, allowing for super-tribes to function.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 11 months ago

i mean that's more down to us being intelligent and social while also liking to eat meat, if elephants hunted they'd probably face similar moral quandries

dolphins are psychos though

[–] [email protected] 16 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (3 children)

I don't know if your second to last paragraph is a meme, but all humans reject immoral behaviors that occur in the wild, not just vegans. Lions also commit infanticide so their genetics carry on and competing male lions don't, it makes sense biologically. Yet humans don't commit this behavior because we know it's wrong. Dolphins rape other dolphins, which again for the furthering of your own genetics makes sense. You should implant your seed in as many helpless victims as you can, and yet again, humans don't do this because we know it's wrong.

Pretending like vegans are the weird ones because we're simply consistent about our morality is wild. Non-vegans even get upset at the idea of eating dogs or cats, so it's not even like they're universally in favor of torturing and slaughtering helpless animals, only the ones that have been objectified by whatever culture they live in.

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[–] [email protected] 51 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (2 children)

Fun fact: The tables can get turned on us too. Moose and elephants have both been documented stalking humans who angered them for days trying to ambush and kill them for example.

In fact, the saying goes that you only need to make a stalking carnivore think you're too much trouble for the amount of nutrients you have to get away since they're just hungry, but if you're being stalked by a herbivore, that means they're genuinely trying to kill you simply because they hate you.

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[–] [email protected] 47 points 11 months ago (4 children)

My brother in Christ, we are the Terminators

[–] [email protected] 30 points 11 months ago (5 children)
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[–] [email protected] 8 points 11 months ago (3 children)

Zombies, Fey, any weird shit in our fiction comes from "What if what we are to animals, but to us?"

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[–] [email protected] 34 points 11 months ago

Turns out we were the snail all along!

[–] [email protected] 23 points 11 months ago (1 children)

You can run, but can you never escape us.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Unlike you fly that works pretty well.

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