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[Descan]

I wonder if humans were super-predators for long enough in Africa, for animals to evolve to take into account our hunting of them?

If so, considering that we've mostly migrated into cities and stopped interacting with nature on a day-to-day basis outside of pets and city wildlife, I wonder if the ecosystem is suffering because of our absence?

That'd be rich. An environmental problem we caused by NOT killing animals.

[Dutchling]

Didn't humans cause massive extinctions among large mammals everywhere they migrated?* So I'd say yes

*source: random forum post with pretty graphs from many moons ago

[Owlbread]

In this country we must periodically cull the deer population with hunters because the deer have no natural predators besides man. I do however oppose recreational hunting as I actually consider it to be a kind of non-consensual sadism, though that depends on from where the hunter is deriving pleasure.

[Dutchling]

We have the same problem. Without wolves there is no natural predator so we have to kill a bunch of... deer I they were?... every winter or watch them starve.

In a decade or two we hopefully have wolves again though <3

[Owlbread]

We have been considering reintroducing wolves, the problem is that farmers are very, very much against it.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Which is silly, as all statistics show that losses to wolves are a miniscule fraction of livestock losses.

[Descan]

I'd have to seriously reconsider moving to Scotland if people decide to re-introduce the Pleistocene mega-fauna in to North America.

'Cause mammoths and sabre-tooth tigers, guiz. How can I turn my back on those? D:

[Digital Hellhound]

You definitely don't want to turn your back on the latter. That's when they pounce and gore you to death.

[Sheb]

Dutchling: the mainstream theory is that the reason Africa still has much of its megafauna is because they had time to co-evolve with humans.

As for place where we cause problems by not killing, I know of one park in Zimbabwe where the protection of elephants caused them to change their grazing patterns causing massive erosion on the river banks. Although to be honest it's as much because of the change in the way they were killed (They're now culled from afar and don't associate the death with human because park officials need to keep them tame for tourists) as in the fact that hunting was banned.

[Owlbread]

We need to resurrect those enormous beavers that used to roam the land before the Celts killed them all. We need all the beaver we can get out here.

[Max White]

Mel Gibson might have won if he had a huge beaver to ride.

[Owlbread]

A huge beaver to ride is the answer to Mel's problems.

[Edmus]

Didn't Australia have mega  fauna back in the day?
I read an article this monday that suggested we introduce elephants to Australia to eat the African grass and fill the ecological hole the old mega fauna left.
--edit--oh awesome, humans hunted them to extinction too.

[Jimmy]

We still have large mammals that inhabit the fringes of suburban developments and mostly scavenge off the leftovers of human society.

We call them bogans.

[sneakey pete]

well... this will be an interesting 3 years

however, this is rather more interesting in the near term. Electoral reform on the cards perhaps? supposedly its not uncommon for ballots to disappear, its just that normally they don't make a difference in the results.