Meet the hunters! Hmm, those two look oddly familiar. Where have I seen them before?
I wonder how much human hunting on Triton costs, like in real world money? Is it “sell me your first born” expensive, or is it more like a weekend at the casino expensive? (not a nice casino)
P.S. The Drunk Duck Awards are returning this year, apparently. I don't have any big voter initiative planned for this year like I usually do, and I'm sure the judges are tired of seeing my stuff get nominated anyway. But I'll put something together, eventually. Voting's still a couple weeks off. Stay tuned for more info, and if you want to volunteer, the main thread is in the forums here.
It's been said that humans are the only animal that commits murder… but that's not exactly true. In fact, it's not even remotely true. By looking at our mammal relatives, it's safe to say that lethal intraspecies violence predates humans by millions of years… and very likely goes all the way back to the first multicellular lifeforms.
A University of Grenada study investigated archaeological specimens dating back to the earliest humans and found that the homicide rate during Paleolithic times was somewhere between 3.4 and 3.9 percent. That's more than twice the rate for modern humans (2 percent), but surprisingly not the highest rate in human history. That distinction goes to the Medieval Period, where death-by-other-humans peaked at a staggering 12 percent. So, in context, I guess we've mellowed out quite a bit?
But how does that stack up to other animals? Well, among primates, we're basically average. But primates, overall, are more murder-prone than most mammals. According to the University of Granada study, only 40 percent of mammals exhibit the behavior of killing their own kind, at an average rate of 0.3 percent in a given population. So primates are exceptionally murderous… but they don't take the gold medal. That award goes to the unassuming meerkat, of all creatures, who kill each other at a rate of 19.36 percent. Nearly one out of every five meerkat deaths is at the hands (claws?) of a fellow meerkat. Here's a list of the top 30 most murdertastic mammals. It's worth noting, however, that in many of theses species, the majority of killings are of very young members, which is different from the territorial and social violence exhibited by primates, as well as predatory species like wolves and lions.
But mammals aren't nearly as bad as some insects. There is a species of ficus tree wasp in which the wingless male spends the entirety of its brief life patrolling the dark tunnels inside the tree's many figs, fighting to the death with every male it encounters. Oxford biologist W.D. Hamilton estimates there are millions of fig wasp “murders” every fruiting season in a given large ficus tree.
Comments
Please login to comment.
Login or Register${ comment.author }} at
${ comment.author }} at