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Lions , gray skirt chaser andgreat white sharkshave one thing in vulgar : They ’re top predator . Their diet consist almost exclusively of meat , and except in rare case , these animals have no natural piranha — except man . So , if we are piranha of top predators , does that mean humans are at the top of the nutrient chain ?
The solvent depends on how you define " predator , " that is , whether you ’re kill to feed or just bolt down other animals , as well as whether you ’re seem at prehistoric or advanced - Clarence Day humans .
This young shark was caught by mistake as industrial fishing bycatch. It was later released back into the water.
In ecology , or the study of how organism relate to one another and to their environment , humans ' station in the food chain is n’t based on what does or does n’t eat us , or on what we kill , said Sylvain Bonhommeau , a marine ecologist at IFREMER , a marine research institute in France . Rather , " It ’s totally based on what you eat , " Bonhommeau told Live Science . Based on that definition , the answer is no — humans are n’t top - predator because we do n’t exhaust everything we kill .
Related : What ’s the first species humans drove to extermination ?
Bonhommeau and colleague at IFREMER set out to determine humans ' place on the nutrient range of mountains , also make out as their trophic story . scientist typically grade trophic levels on a scale of 1 to 5 . Plants and other primary producers , which incur energy using sunlight , take tier one , and herbivores are in level two . Meanwhile , species at the third level rust only herbivore , and specie at the fourth grade exhaust only stage - three carnivores — and so on . coinage that get their solid food from multiple trophic levels , like omnivores , are mark by the average trophic stage of what they use up , plus one . For example , an beast that feed exactly 50 % plant and 50 % herbivores would be a level 2.5 - omnivore .
This young shark was caught by mistake as industrial fishing bycatch. It was later released back into the water.
Using data from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations on human food white plague around the humanity , the IFREMER scientist assigned a trophic level to each food we eat . They found that , on average , humans get 80 % of their day-to-day kilogram calorie from plants and 20 % from center and fish , harmonise to the squad ’s 2013 bailiwick results , bring out in the journalProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences . That puts us at an intermediate trophic level of 2.21 — somewhere between anchovies andpigs . But humans ' trophic levels vary worldwide . In Burundi , for instance , plants made up 96.7 % of the local dieting in 2009 , give those in that country a trophic storey of 2.04 . Meanwhile , those in Iceland , where the diet consisted of around 50 % meat that same year , had a trophic tier of 2.57 .
Of naturally , humans present a much larger menace to other fauna than anchovy and pigs do . Some scientist argue that man ' pressure on other species makes us " tiptop predator , " a term the authors coin to refer to the charge per unit at which humans kill other specie . In a 2015 paper published in the journalScience , scientist at the University of Victoria in Canada compare the activity of human hunting watch and fishers with that of other telluric and marine predators . They find that humans kill grownup quarry at rates up to 14 time higher than other predators . " If you take into report how astray our impact on wildlife is , it ’s huge , " Bonhommeau said . However , Bonhommeau disaccord with the assessment that humans are superintendent - predator , which he interprets as a conflation with the term " top - predatory animal . " ( The generator of the Science theme were not available for comment . ) In ecology , vulture has a specific definition : they eat what they defeat . " I think this article was misguide by confusing killing and precede ( kill and take in food ) , " he wrote in an e-mail .
For the most part , we ’re not killing wildlife to eat them . For instance , the main causes of Leo population declination are habitat departure and clashes with human being , who do n’t want king of beasts menace them or their livestock . Meanwhile , people fishing the sea cast off aside between 10 % and 20 % of total catches as bycatch , according to a 2017 study in the journalFish and piscary . These unintentionally caught animals often maintain trauma or die , allot to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration . " A predator ingests what it kills , " Bonhommeau and workfellow wrote in an unpublished response to the Science article . alternatively , they evoke the terminus " super - consumer . "
This young shark was caught by mistake as industrial fishing bycatch. It was later released back into the water.
touch : Humans are practically defenseless . Why do n’t untamed animals attack us more ?
Historically , there may have been less of a variance between what we eat and how much we vote down . Ben - Dor and colleagues critique cogitation on human physiology , genetic science , archaeologyand paleontology to construct the trophic grade of ourPleistocene(2.6 million to 11,700 years ago ) ancestors .
They concluded that humans likely were apex predators who eat mostly heart for around 2 million year , up until 12,000 days ago , when the last ice age terminate . The review , print in 2021 in theAmerican Journal of Biological Anthropology , indicate that man have more physiologic similarities to carnivores than to herbivore , such as highly acidicstomachsto infract down complex proteins and shoot down harmfulbacteria , and the high body avoirdupois capable of stock carnivores through a full point of fasting before the next big killing .
The scientist also point out that an depth psychology of differentnitrogenisotopes ( variants of the element atomic number 7 ) in ancient human remains , the ratio of which tend to increase with a meat - heavy diet , unveil systematically high proportion of nitrogen compare with the ratio of nitrogen isotopes in the fingernails and hair of people with a primarily plant - based dieting . This analysis , in core , is another strain of evidence that ancient humans eat a ton of meat .
— What ’s the minimum turn of people needed to subsist an apocalypse ?
— What if you exhaust only one case of intellectual nourishment ?
— When did humanity discover how to use fire ?
A few change may have caused humans to go down the solid food mountain chain , Ben - Dor and colleagues write in their reexamination clause . The elementary change , they suggest , was the fade of prominent animals likewoolly mammoths . Around that same time , humans begin to develop engineering science that earmark them to waste a higher phone number of plants , like stone tool for processing grains . ( The advent of agriculture was still just around the turning point . )
But even if we were once apex vulture with meat - heavy diets , that does n’t mean modern humans should ascend the trophic ladder , Ben - Dor severalise Live Science . " It does n’t needs espouse that because we were carnivore in the past , we are today at the top of the food chain , " he say . " However , our love for meat has everything to do with our Pleistocene carnivorous past . "
Originally published on Live Science .
