On Top of the Food Chain

 

He’s got a point, hasn't he? Tigers weigh around 250 kg on average, have 3 inch long teeth, and can bite with a force of 75 kilograms per square centimeter (If you don’t know how much that is, it’s a LOT), plus the claws. If there is an animal that threatens a tiger, that is surely something to be scared of. But what is it?

Well, can you think of any animal that has been the cause of tigers almost going extinct?


Us, of course.


We have all read about the food chain in third grade science. The textbooks always said lions and tigers were at the top of the food chain. But that isn’t exactly right, is it? We have a tendency to consider us not animals, and therefore not include us in the list. But the truth is this: it is not the biggest cat or the king of the jungle that’s on top of the food chain. It’s us. We are at the top of the food chain. In fact, we are so far above the chain that the chain almost looks horizontal to us.


Because the food chain is not just about who eats who. It’s actually about who can kill who. And in the case of humans, it is almost ridiculous. Can you kill a rat? Yeah. Can you kill a tiger? Takes a bit more effort and it’s illegal, but yeah, people do it all the time. We are so far up the hierarchy that the difference between a rat and a tiger is just a matter of equipment.


Is this something to be proud of? I don’t think so. It is just the path that evolution took for us. But this has some problems of it’s own. Actually quite a lot of problems.


Maybe even all our problems are caused by this.


This problem is reflected in the above mentioned third grade textbook. We don’t see ourselves as predators. It makes sense, seeing that tigers evolved from slightly different species of big cats, who themselves evolved from predatory species. But we became predators in a very unexpected (and slightly unfortunate) set of events. We evolved from primates that were omnivorous but not really predatory. The binocular vision that was supposed to help us jump branches became a deadly tool for precision hunting. Accidental invention of cooking led to a massive increase in brain size and here we are. Totally unexpected and almost sudden. Sudden enough for us to not realize how deadly and dangerous we have become. A tiger had time to adjust to its predatory skills and instincts. We never had that luxury.


So here is the problem: we are a species with the skills of the best predator on the planet, but the instincts of prey.


What does this mean? What is a predatory instinct, and what is a prey instinct? Well, you never see a tiger looking around nervously while drinking from a pond. It’s the deer that do that. Prey are always afraid, always nervous, insecure, on the lookout. They are constantly in the fear of being attacked, because they know they don’t have what it takes to fight back. So the moment they see a tall grass move, or hear a sound, they run away. That’s the skill they have. And this works okay. Sometimes the grass moves just because of the wind, but the deer don’t take chances and they run away anyway. There is a harmony here.


We don’t disturb that harmony, we break that harmony. Since we used to be prey for a very long time, we still think like prey. We are afraid and insecure, we always keep looking over our shoulder, watching out for a threat, not realizing that we are the threat. Tigers don’t notice when the grass moves. But we do. When we notice, we become nervous and our prey instincts kick in. And like the deer, we use our skill. Except our skill isn’t just running away. We shoot at the grass. Sometimes it’s a tiger, sometimes it’s just the wind. And sometimes it’s another deer. But whatever it was, we've killed it.


Since we are predators, we have the capacity to destroy what we fear. And since we think we are prey, we fear almost everything.


Thus comes the emotional need to direct our fear towards a higher power. Thus come human insecurities. Thus comes the concept of “Let’s hit them before they hit us” and the concept of “What if it goes wrong”.


Typical of humans, isn’t it? Always rushing stuff. If only we had taken some time.

Mozhi, (16 June, 2021)