04-28-2017, 10:07 AM
(04-27-2017, 10:06 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: I understand 'endurance predator' means one that can keep on running. There are lots of ways a predator can become dangerous to prey, or how prey can defend themselves. One human strength in the hunter-gatherer era was long distance running. We're good at marathons. There are lots of species who can out sprint us, but if we can keep to the trail there aren't a lot of species that can keep going for the long haul.
Dogs are one of them. Like us, dogs are pack hunters, and their scent scent allows them to follow many a trail that humans would lose. Humans with any sort of weaponry, be it as simple as thrown rocks and clubs, can do the killing part well. For a time, that strategy and team was impressive.
Wolves stage their attacks so that a deer runs a gauntlet of killers. As one wolf (dogs are still wolves) approaches exhaustion, another is waiting. The deer eventually tires, and the other wolves (or dogs) have their feast as they come to eat the deer. Our dogs don't get to form packs with other dogs, but the extended human family has much the same structure of a wolf pack that a dog can fit into almost by instinct. Dogs are still wolves. Their domestication has made them no less lethal -- just more predictable.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.