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Comment by nkrisc | Hacker News Reader

> Was there difference in hunter-gatherers in europe/asia/americas compared to africa? Why hadn't the ancient elephants, giraffes, etc been hunted to extinction?

Consider that African megafauna have co-existed with early hominids and eventually humans for millions of years. They may have simply adapted to human predation successfully enough to survive, as one factor.

Whereas in North America and elsewhere you have the sudden (on the evolutionary time scale) arrival of Homo Sapiens who are likely already very skilled and advanced hunters among a population of prey animals that have never experienced such a predator.

It’s also possible that in tandem, climate change was less severe in Africa than elsewhere over the last 50k years.

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>Consider that African megafauna have co-existed with early hominids

It is this imho Animals in Africa are more scared by the sounds of people than lions.

https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/news/2023/october/human-voice...

And the bigger ones like Hippos are hyper aggressive to humans, allegedly they kill more people than any other African animal.

Interesting though, that seemingly unlike North America's Mammoths and Mastodon's, African Elephants never became a concentrated target for hunting enough to be driven into extinction.

Though that may just argue that they were unable to adapt to climate change in NA fast enough rather than being hunted to extinction.

On some islands off the Northern coast of BC, there are dwarf deer that locals just walk up to, and smack on the head with a baseball bat. Right or wrong, it sort of highlights the point.

Right, we're a native species to Africa, so its whole ecosystem evolved with us.

I think of this when I hear about "poachers" killing animals in African nature reserves. How often is that hunter gatherers who been there for thousands of years, and whose hunting is/was really part of the ecosystem?

Comparing hunting with rudimentary weapons to hunting with modern firearms is insane

Not to mention modern mobility

Plus cameras and drones

Wild hogs seem to handle it pretty well

They also start breeding at < 2 years, can have multiple litters per year of 10+ piglets. Rhinos mature at 5 years (10 for males) and the gestation period for a single calf is 15 months.

Open season has been now called for wild "super" hogs in some areas, and that makes a difference. Pregnant sows, young hogs are now OK to kill any time in these areas.

Hunting 1000s of years ago didn't include "don't kill the pregnant animals, or children". It meant "I'm hungry" and "food".

Wild hogs are not megafauna. It would probably be equally difficult to hunt squirrels into extinction.

Seems like there isn’t a strong definition for “megafauna.”

In zoology, megafauna (from Greek μέγας megas "large" and Neo-Latin fauna "animal life") are large animals. The precise definition of the term varies widely, though a common threshold is approximately 45 kilograms (99 lb), with other thresholds as low as 10 kilograms (22 lb) or as high as 1,000 kilograms (2,200 lb).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megafauna

Not a strong definition but still sufficient to exclude squirrels and even wild pigs are on the very low end.

You raise a good point as I would have expected “mega”fauna to have implied hundreds of kilograms at least. Under 100 and as low as 10 kg seems to take away any true meaning from the label.

Whatever the definition, I am confident wild hogs and squirrels are not megafauna.

Feral != wild

Hunter gatherers who are killing Rhinos only to sell their grounded horns to some idiots in China/etc.?

That's not the only hunting banned in national parks!

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