What If Animals Hunted Humans?

What If Animals Started Hunting Humans?

As human beings, we're sort of . . . USED to existing at the top of the food chain. Sure, we realize that there's danger around us, but we're no longer in the same position as our ancient ancestors, fighting for our lives against the elements and the unknown. But what if that all changed?

This is Unveiled, and today we're answering the extraordinary question; what if animals started hunting humans?

Well, for starters, animals DO hunt, kill and sometimes even devour members of our species. The main difference is that usually the reasons behind these attacks are fear, provocation, or extreme hunger. Animals don’t stalk us for sport, or out of malice. This doesn't make the attacks that DO occur any less shocking or violent, but, for lack of a better expression, it's just the circle of life. It's in their nature for animals to behave in this fashion.

The key to the question at hand, then, relies upon a hypothetical: that the animal kingdom somehow collectively decides to hunt us all down, either for food, the thrill of the kill, or perhaps even revenge!

There already exists a simple and self-explanatory term to describe an animal that makes human meat part of its diet. They’re called “man-eaters,” and among them are the most dangerous apex predators in the world. It's these species that would likely pose the biggest immediate threat.

African lions already sometimes prey on humans, dragging farmers from fields and other victims right from their beds. Statistics are scarce, but between 1990 and 2005, lions in Tanzania killed 70 people a year on average. Historically, tigers have been even more prolific human killers, with one Bengal tigress, the Champawat Tiger, single-handedly claiming 436 victims. Leopards have been no slouches either, racking up similarly shocking kill counts. Such attacks have been attributed to close cohabitation with humans, changes in habitat, or crippling injuries. But imagine if these wild cats suddenly started going out of their way to hunt us down!

Wolves, bears, and mountain lions would also pose formidable threats. Imagine wolf packs and cougars haunting the outskirts of our towns, venturing further in each night, while grizzlies prowl our front yards. We’d have to build fences and walls around our towns and cities, but good luck if you’ve landed THAT job! And fences wouldn’t stop snakes, which would still slither through or under, and right into our homes.

We’d have to protect our weakest and youngest at all costs. Wolves and even wild chimpanzees have been known to prey upon infants or small pets, should they be left unattended. Meanwhile, scavenging animals such as dingoes, coyotes and hyenas are known to boldly attack humans, especially children, if they're hungry enough to warrant the risk. If they became active human hunters, children could be most at risk.

Of course, if we're going to imagine that animals have decided to hunt us, what’s to stop this question from going further into a “Planet of the Apes” type scenario? What if animals somehow developed higher intelligence, igniting a species war across the globe? It’s a fanciful thought, but also terrifying. With “higher” intelligence, the idea of animals killing for revenge, spite or other motives now becomes plausible and even probable. So does the prospect of animals using tools to do so - or even turning our own weapons against us. Given our physical disadvantages compared to our animal brethren, would we even stand a chance?

One thing is for sure, we’d have to fight smarter, and not harder, in order to counter the evolutionary advantages afforded to our animal enemies. We may not have sharp teeth or claws, but we do have our opposable thumbs, organizational skills, and technologies. We’d have to draw on every advantage to defend ourselves against the hunting raids of lions, tigers, and bears! Location would be key, with many environmental areas probably becoming off-limits. Can you imagine trying to escape from a frenzy of sharks, or a pod of killer whales, on their home turf? Swamplands would pose similar risks, thanks to crocodiles and alligators. On the up side, at least some of these animals would be restricted to their natural habitats.

Even these threats pale however in comparison to something smaller, yet deadlier: the mosquito. The prospect of mosquitoes intentionally infecting us with malaria, or some other devastatingly infectious disease would be disastrous. The results would likely rival the Black Death in Europe as a pandemic of the highest order, decimating humanity's numbers in no time.

There’s also good news though! Our domestic dogs and feline friends would probably stick by us, due to millennia of domestication. We better hope so, anyway, because we’d need their help to detect and fend off the other animals hunting us down. And if man’s best friend did decide to turn on us, well, the enemy would already be in our homes . . .

If any scenario, it's almost certain that extinction rates would rise astronomically. In our struggle to survive, we’d no doubt decimate animal populations around the world. This would have a ripple effect throughout the ecosystem, and the impact would have to be studied for years before it was fully understood. And that isn’t taking into account the possibility that the animal kingdom would be shaken up by new hunting patterns, thanks to a heightened sense of sport, thrill and pleasure.

The long and short of it is that if animals started hunting humans, we’d struggle to survive, and our eventual victory would be far from assured. The end result could likely end up looking close to something found in a post-apocalypse movie, a la “Mad Max” or "A Boy and His Dog," where life is a never-ending battle for survival. We would have to take full advantage of what evolution has gifted us over time, while simultaneously taking lessons from the lives of our ancestors, where living as both predator and prey was nothing new.

The playing field being level, then, it would all come down to one, chilling but realistic mantra: survival of the fittest. And that's what would happen if animals started hunting humans.