Many primate species have alarm calls that are specific for different predators. When our hamburger-size ancestors lived in trees, it was extraordinarily valuable to be able to respond immediately to the potential presence of a predator. We should be grateful for having escaped-and yet we haven’t really escaped, because our bodies are burdened by our long history of trying to get away. Those are lousy odds, but most of us have escaped such risks by living in houses and cities and living where our ancestors killed off the most dangerous predators, be they tigers, cave bears, or giant, carnivorous kangaroos. That’s a death-by-python rate of 1 in 20. Of the 120 men whose stories were considered for the study, six had been killed by a python. The Agta tend to be not quite so excited Greene and Headland found that one in four Agta men had been attacked by a reticulated python. Harry was excited to find that the Agta lived among a high density of pythons. Harry Greene, a herpetologist at Cornell University and one of a handful of my colleagues more likely to be eaten by a wild animal than to die of old age, and Thomas Headland, an anthropologist, recently conducted a study of Agta hunter-gatherers in the Philippines.
Even today, where humans live alongside predators, both children and adults get eaten.
When our species evolved, human children were special only in as much as their hairlessness made them slightly easier to digest.
In those few places where large predators are still common, primates, especially cute baby ones, are eaten with great frequency and alacrity.
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