Human position on the food chain

[Montero]

So there is someone I know who likes to go on about how humans evolved to be top of the food chain so there is no way he'd stop eating meat.
And now, thanks to Get Pocket, I have seen an article looking at the actual science of food chain positions and where humans really are.....

Where Do Humans Really Rank on the Food Chain?

We're not at the top, but towards the middle, at a level similar to pigs and anchovies

getpocket.com

 

[.matthew.]

On a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 being the score of a primary producer (a plant) and 5 being a pure apex predator (a animal that only eats meat and has few or no predators of its own...

This seems like a ridiculous criterion to use.

To be truly at the "top of the food chain," in scientific terms, you have to strictly consume the meat of animals that are predators themselves.

Why should only eating other predators put something at the top of the food chain? Placing humans mid-table purely because we also eat vegetables is literally the dumbest way to end 2020 I can imagine

If anything, the fact that we hunt and eat practically anything should bump us further up the list.

 

[Ursa major]

It is clear that, to get that bizarre result, they've made a schoolboy error by not including all the species we've wiped out entirely....

 

[Venusian Broon]

This seems like a ridiculous criterion to use.


Why should only eating other predators put something at the top of the food chain?

Erm...Because thats the actual definition of a food chain?

Definition of food chain

1: an arrangement of the organisms of an ecological community according to the order of predation in which each uses the next usually lower member as a food source

Now, although we could eat tigers, lions or polar bears as a regular food source, I don't think any human society in history would have thought that a great idea. Not only would the risk of death be high, there just isn't many of them about. So better to go for something nicer, that exists in larger numbers and was safer. Like a big herd of gazelles, goats or deer etc.. Or perhaps chow down on some plants.

Therefore we don't predate on apex level creatures for food. We did and do hunt them to protect ourselves and our livestock, or for sport unfortunately. But that's nothing to do with a food chain.

 

[.matthew.]

Erm...Because thats the actual definition of a food chain?

Which I'm saying is a terrible definition. It makes the whole thing completely irrelevant to all discourse.

Also, do you imagine most predators attack prey animals for any other reason than we do? Do wolves only eat bears? All life goes for the easy meal, and since wolves, bears, and sharks will also eat stuff lower down the 'chain' does that automatically lower them as well? By that logic, there wouldn't be anything at the top of the chain.

But for the rational argument. We eat everything (including sharks and bears etc), nothing eats us (unless they find the carcass or are nearly dead from starvation), so we're clearly the top predator. Just because we also eat stuff lower down the 'chain' doesn't change anything and that entire study was just another waste of money spent on useless scientists who contribute nothing.

Overly harsh perhaps, but I stand by it

 

[Montero]

I think the point is, that there is a difference between the scientific definition of a food chain and world domination. We are not dominating the world by eating everything else. It is one of those scientific definitions that non-scientists have adopted and adapted - like paradigm shift being a management buzzword. Survival of the fittest is another mis-used one where thrusting business-types use it as a reason for being ruthless and backstabbing. However out in the natural world there is actually an innate sense of fairness and understanding of quid pro quo which we as a social species do in general understand but sometimes like to toss out and then justify doing so by it saying science has shown it to be unnatural. Science has now discovered more about animal behaviour and shown that co-operation, reciprocity and even fairness to be far more common than previously thought.

Here is a film about a sense of fairness in capuchin monkeys

and an article on cougars showing social behaviour and reciprocity.

National Geographic Society Newsroom

Ideas and Insight From National Geographic

blog.nationalgeographic.org

 

[Biskit]

nothing eats us

A huge number of things eat us, just not necessarily all in one bite.

 

[Robert Zwilling]

Eating is just one parameter that describes life. The big cats used to be at the top of the heap, but a tiny little piece of lead and a spyglass have put them on the road to oblivion. Co-operation is completely underrated. Once the use of tools becomes prevalent, it becomes survival of the trickiest, and that survival is good to go only so long as the batteries hold out. I would say that food chains and pyramids are one dimensional human constructs made to fit human perceptions. Microbes eat people from the inside out all the time. Everything is connected by interlinking food circles. When a piece disappears, the circle recombines, patches the gap over, or what's left of it links in to other circles.

 

[Montero]

@Robert Zwillig - funny you should say that, I was just thinking about fleas. By one definition fleas could be the top of the food chain.
Domestic cats get fleas so presumably tigers do. There's an interesting internet by-way to follow - do tigers get fleas? And do zookeepers have to give them a really gigantic dob of spot-on flea killer on the back of their neck?

 

[Robert Zwilling]

Yeah, they get the same fleas, they get the same stuff, probably a big dab does it, as a plastic collar wouldn't last 10 seconds around their neck if they didn't want it there.

Fleas, ticks, mosquitos, anything that bites, also injects more than just the stuff that makes us sick. Because it doesn't make us sick we don't notice it. They are riding herd on vast populations of animals, fighting for their existence every moment and surviving, as everything wants to eat, swat, or smash them. All the while feeding off the hosts, injecting genetics into the hosts, transferring genetic material from one host to another. Top of the world!

 

[RJM Corbet]

We farm and grow our own food. We are in control?

 

[Montero]

My understanding is that being in control doesn't mean being at the top of the food chain, as the food chain is a scientific term that is defined in a specific way.

 

[Ursa major]

There's one animal that can never truly be at home at the top of the food chain...





...and that's the lynx....

 

[HareBrain]

Why is there no groan emoji?

If we eat sharks and sharks eat us, who's top then?

 

[Venusian Broon]

If we eat sharks and sharks eat us, who's top then?

Well, you say we eat them...but mostly we just cut off the fins and turn that into soup. (And of course the fins when prepared are almost tasteless, so really what's the point!?) Then throw a lot of the rest of the carcasses away.

 

[Wayne Mack]

As long as we rank above the chocolate chip cookie, does anything else matter?

 

[HareBrain]

As long as we rank above the chocolate chip cookie

*has idea for horror novel*

 

[hitmouse]

Where is bubble gum in all of this?

 

[Venusian Broon]

Where is bubble gum in all of this?

Clinging to pavements as we speak.

 

[Ursa major]

Where is bubble gum in all of this?

Sounds like it'll be where we choose to put it....