But once we are attacked by parasites, we often still stand a chance. With predators, most of our adaptations relate to avoiding encounters in the first place, for the simple reason that by the time we encounter a predator, it tends to be too late. Parasites and pathogens have also shaped our bodies in ways that are affecting you now. These fight-or-flight responses sped up the heart, increased blood flow to muscles, caused hyperventilation (to get more oxygen for quick reaction), and made us more likely to respond quickly to a predator by searching for it, hiding, running away, or for the truly brave, throwing a stick and then running away.īut it wasn’t just predators that influenced our evolution. When we saw or heard a sign of danger-a movement in the grass, a strange shadow-hormonal reactions screamed out inside our bodies. In addition to inventing words for these predators, we also responded in other ways. The first primate nouns were almost certainly those embedded in calls that meant, “Oh shit, big cat!” “Oh shit, giant eagle!” or “For the love of god, did you see the size of that snake?” In this way, predators may have had a positive impact on who we are now, having given us the precursors of language, or at the very least, cussing. 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.

Giant big mac saber