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> It should not be surprising that humans find it fun to do something that we did for survival for most of our evolutionary history. People did not hunt tigers
by chimeracoder 3y ago
> It should not be surprising that humans find it fun to do something that we did for survival for most of our evolutionary history.
People did not hunt tigers for "most of our evolutionary history". In fact, it's quite recent that people have hunted tigers at all, and even then it's more of an outlier than a standard practice.
Tigers are difficult and dangerous to hunt, and they're not healthy to eat regularly, nor is their meat particularly attractive (despite the named "tiger meat", which is actually raw beef).
Furthermore, contrary to mass media depictions, tigers rarely attack humans unless provoked, and they avoid human settlements as well. So even as a matter of safety and defense, hunting tigers is a rarity.
Until, of course, you start destroying large swaths of their habitat by mass-clearing old-growth rainforest in order to produce enough food to keep up with the usurious demands of a colonial occupier. At that point, yes, you do start to combat tigers more directly.
- swalling 3y agoThere are larger predators like lions featured heavily in cave paintings and other forms of the earliest human art for a reason. We have never hunted predators like bears and big cats as a primary food source, but a willingness to defend humans and our food with hand weapons is actually a skillset actively practiced until very recently in societies like the Maasai. The Human Planet docuseries has a pretty incredible scene where hunter gatherers coordinate to steal a kill from an entire pride of lions. It makes you see why people on the other side of the world in highly industrialized societies would find it to be an adrenaline rush to hunt the biggest, baddest looking animal they can find (not that I do this personally). You're completely right that the desire to hunt a tiger isn't really logical or necessary, I'm just pointing out that it is not psychologically aberrant that some people (mostly men) would find it satisfying to do things like that as a thrill-seeking activity.
- z3phyr 3y agoTigers are much larger and stronger than Lions in general.