Big cats do most hunting at night, so sleeping in the trees but wandering around on foot looking for food during the day seems like a good life strategy. Fendin

Big cats do most hunting at night, so sleeping in the trees but wandering around on foot looking for food during the day seems like a good life strategy. Fending off the smaller daytime predators was probably within a walking ape's ability via sticks and stones. I suspect they had to use sticks and stones for such, because they were otherwise physically wimpy creatures: relatively small jaw & teeth and no significant "claws". As they perfected defense with sticks & stones eventually they probably started using it for offense, and self-breeding for skill with tools, leading to modern humans. (Modern chimps even occasionally use tooth-sharpened sticks for hunting tree mammals.)