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Is a man with a gun the strongest predator on earth?


John Harmonic

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Is a man with a gun or weapons considered the most powerful/strongest predator on earth. I mean with a weapons man seems to be unstoppable against any other animal in the wild? All it comes down to is skill of weaponry so also add SKILLFUL for one of the tools of the human predator as well the weaponry.

Man can also go toe to toe with diseases and micro organisms via medicine slowly destroying it over time if a human was to be infected with it somehow.

Man can also skillfully crush small bugs with bare hand and also catch snakes and bag them bitches.

That's all I can think of for now with human abilities. What else do you think we can do? And restating my question once more are we the strongest predators on earth?

Predator.jpg

Edited by John Harmonic
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I'd have to vote for the mosquito as the greatest predator of concern for humans. The are responsible for something like 750,000 deaths per year.

From the perspective of krill, I imagine baleen whales are pretty scary.

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3 hours ago, John Harmonic said:

I mean with a weapons man seems to be unstoppable against any other animal in the wild?

Middle of the ocean, you with an AR-15 and a full clip, orca swims up from below. You get stopped.

I would avoid using absolute terms like "unstoppable" when it comes to complex organisms and the behavior between them.. 

Environment is too much of a factor to claim we're the top predator. In most environments, with our tools, we're pretty incredible. But outside our prime zones, there are many creatures that can survive better, or escape us if we're hunting them, or even kill us if we corner them. 

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3 minutes ago, Phi for All said:

Middle of the ocean, you with an AR-15 and a full clip, orca swims up from below. You get stopped.

You beat me to it. I was literally type that same when you posted. 

A human alone anywhere with a AR-15 wouldn't be absolutely safe. Armed hunters have been killed by bears and large cats. Alone a human isn't the most difficult animal out there to sneak up on. Groups provide humans more protection than a gun. 

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12 minutes ago, Ten oz said:

You beat me to it. I was literally type that same when you posted. 

A human alone anywhere with a AR-15 wouldn't be absolutely safe. Armed hunters have been killed by bears and large cats. Alone a human isn't the most difficult animal out there to sneak up on. Groups provide humans more protection than a gun. 

I was just thinking the same. Not long ago read about 2 rifles and a couple pairs of boots being found in an African game reserve... 2 ivory poachers became lunch for a pride of lions that sneaked up on them, it was suspected.  :D It was not regarded as tragic.

Edited by StringJunky
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An adult african bull elephant would be hard to deal with using an ar-15 especially if he knew you were there, it's said an african elephant can sneak up on any human and use you like a whisk broom. From a distance a human with a high powered rifle is hard to beat but even the odds a little and the human is dog food... Tigers regularly hunt humans as food in some areas, if a tiger was hunting you i doubt any weapon would make much of a difference when he ambushes you. crocodiles eat people with some regularity as well, many animals can ambush a human armed with an nuclear device and the human is food unless he has a dead man's switch... In which case he is still dead.. A kodiak bear would be a tough kill if it ambused you as well... 

 

s-l300.jpg

Edited by Moontanman
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  • 2 months later...
  • 4 weeks later...

I didn’t realize this was a serious question until I started reading some of the seriousness put into the answers. So, after some thought....

A man with a shovel who dug the hole a man with a gun just stepped, or fell into. Mostly because if you see the man with a gun you can take steps to avoid him. If you don’t see the hole big enough to fall into there isn’t much you can do. The military taught me not to react to the hole small enough to step in into, because it was the reaction that drove the spikes home.

Then there was my ex-wife. Okay, I didn’t even see that coming. Though in all fairness she gave me plenty of warning, so I should have seen it coming...but it does seem to point out that the most dangerous predator is the one you ignore, or don’t see without regard to how they are armed.

The military training lingered too long. I should have reacted somewhat differently than to ignore her the first time I stepped in it. Some flowers, and an  apology, maybe?

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On 10/4/2018 at 12:25 PM, Moontanman said:

An adult african bull elephant would be hard to deal with using an ar-15 especially if he knew you were there, it's said an african elephant can sneak up on any human and use you like a whisk broom. From a distance a human with a high powered rifle is hard to beat but even the odds a little and the human is dog food... Tigers regularly hunt humans as food in some areas, if a tiger was hunting you i doubt any weapon would make much of a difference when he ambushes you. crocodiles eat people with some regularity as well, many animals can ambush a human armed with an nuclear device and the human is food unless he has a dead man's switch... In which case he is still dead.. A kodiak bear would be a tough kill if it ambused you as well... 

Specifically, the question said predator.

A human being actively hunting an African elephant is probably going to win. Even a human hunting a tiger could probably beat it if he had a gun. Crocodiles eat people, but that doesn't mean hundreds more of them are killed by humans every year. And if a human is hunting with a nuclear device, then it's not the question of a "human with a gun". A kodiak bear is also no match for a human hunting it.

 

Obviously, if you just drop a human into a flat open plain with these animals, the animals will probably win. But it's not the question. The question is during a hunt. A hunt where humans are vastly smarter then the prey. A human could think that the African elephant will charge him when he open's fire, and simply hide somewhere before opening fire. Somewhere the African elephant won't be able to charge him easily. A tiger can ambush a human, but then the human simply keeps on the high ground and waits to ambush the tiger instead. When your killing range is over a four hundred times that of the tiger, it's easy to set up an ambush that covers a huge area, instead of the one little area the Tiger could do. Crocodiles too, are actively hunted by humans with guns. The humans almost always win. And even a Kodiak bear would face the same problems as the tiger. 

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