It is a recognized fact that humans have long become the masters of our world. But few people consider how long, difficult and bloody a journey mankind has gone through to achieve this status. To achieve this status, humans must be able to "eat" all their opponents without being "eaten" themselves. Therefore, the reality in life is that humans can eat (or even become extinct) any ferocious animal, but very few animals can eat humans. This seems to go against the general idea, because many people subjectively believe that there are many animals that can eat humans in this world. This is mostly influenced by various legends, stories and myths. In fact, according to relatively scientific and reliable materials, there are generally only a dozen or so species of "human-eating" animals in the world. They are: mammals - lions, tigers, leopards, jaguars, white bears, brown bears, wolves; reptiles - crocodiles, Nile crocodiles, reticulated pythons, anacondas; fish - tiger sharks, man-eating sharks, Sawtooth salmon; others - octopus, squid.
To talk about man-eating animals, we have to start with them. They have always been the main enemy of mankind, among which tigers are the most powerful. According to statistics, at the beginning of this century, the number of people eaten or killed by tigers in India every year was between 850 and 1,000. Among the eight subspecies of tiger, the number of man-eating tigers produced by the Indian Bengal subspecies far exceeds that of other subspecies, and they are mostly found in northern India near Nepal. This shows that man-eating tigers are not only abnormal tigers, but also subject to regional, social and temporal influences. In areas where wildlife is abundant and where human pressure is low, such as Northeast my country, Siberia, Central Asia, etc., man-eating tigers are extremely rare or even non-existent. But in South China, it has happened before.
In the 1950s, the world’s wild animal resources were declining sharply, and tigers were no exception. The zoological community later discovered that there were not many tigers left in the world, and loudly called for "protecting tigers." After the 1960s, each subspecies was successively designated as a protected animal. Even the Bengal tiger, which is famous for eating humans, is included. Due to the sharp decline in the number of Bengal tigers, the threat to humans is no longer what it used to be. There are far fewer cases of killing people, but man-eating tigers still exist. For example, a telegram sent from New Delhi on February 4, 1981 said: "Tiger in a game reserve adjacent to the Nepal border has devoured at least 62 people in the past two and a half years, causing 'many villagers to abandon their homes. Forced to seek shelter far away from animal sanctuaries'"
Leopards (commonly known as golden leopards) are much less of a threat to humans than tigers. Man-eating leopards like man-eating tigers are very rare and seem to be unheard of in China, but they are not absolutely non-existent. Also in India, three were discovered in the 1920s. There was a man-eating leopard that ate 125 people in three years and was shot dead in May 1926. In Kumang, a city in northern India that is famous for its Bengal tigers, two vicious leopards killed or ate more than 500 people. There is no such extreme example in our country. In addition, the size and physical strength of a leopard is far inferior to that of a tiger. Therefore, as long as a person has a strong fighting spirit and dares to fight with it, he will not necessarily lose to it. On the contrary, he may knock it down or run away. There are many examples of this. .
As for African lions, they are comparable to tigers in terms of physical strength and powerful claws. However, the scarcity of man-eating lions today is about the same as that of man-eating leopards. The famous "man-eaters of Tsavo", a pair of male lions dragged away and ate 28 road construction workers in a few weeks, bringing the East African railway project to a halt. This has long become a historical story. The "Majili man-eating beast" active near Victoria Falls has eaten 37 people in a row. This happened in the last century. To this day, news about man-eating tigers is still occasionally heard, but news about man-eating lions has not been heard for many years. Needless to say, those living in national parks and game reserves in Africa have already "peacefully coexisted" with humans. Even lions living in other vast areas generally do not attack humans unless they are overpowered, let alone Cannibalism.
The jaguar, native to Central and South America, is the third largest animal in the cat family. The male can weigh two to three hundred kilograms. It is the only beast in Central and South America that can eat humans. Of course, man-eating tigers are also very rare, and their numbers are far less than those of Asian tigers.
Among the bears, only brown bears and white bears are highly carnivorous, and they are also the largest carnivores. They are willing and able to eat humans if given the chance.
In fact, there are quite a few records of white bears and brown bears (especially those from western North America) cannibalizing people, but most of them occurred before this century, when human firearms were still very backward. White bears and brown bears that weigh more than 1,000 kilograms are of course very dangerous, and some will be eaten. After entering this century, when the natives (Eskimos, Indians) also have modern weapons, white bears and brown bears no longer dare to provoke humans, but can only rely on protection regulations to survive. As for China’s domestic brown bears (including the “human bears” in the northeast and the “horse bears” in the southwest and northwest), although there are rumors of cannibalism, there is always a lack of reliable evidence.
Wolves can also eat humans, there is no doubt about it. But the relationship between wolves and humans is, as the saying goes, "a straw that beats a wolf to scare both ends." This probably refers to a single traveler who encounters a lone wolf, and thus develops a psychological state of "fear of both ends". But if he has a gun or a big knife in his hand, he need not be afraid; on the contrary, if there are not one wolf but several, they will dare to pounce on him. Analyzing the wolf's "philosophy", it seems that one is "bullying the weak and fearing the strong", and the other is "win with more". After entering the 20th century, human beings' self-defense capabilities have been greatly strengthened, so the "philosophy" of wolves cannot be applied everywhere, and the problem of wolves cannibalizing people has basically become a thing of the past. Nowadays, only in very rare cases (such as people who are lost in the boundless forest or the snow-filled wilderness) will people be eaten by wolves.
While several species of man-eating beasts are being forced out of the cannibal stage, crocodiles seem to have not had enough of human punishment and want to continue the competition. In fact, this only shows that reptiles have low intelligence and are far less intelligent than beasts (although they are extremely adaptable and were ferocious beasts in the dinosaur era). But not all crocodiles eat humans. Among the more than 20 species of crocodiles, only two are truly "man-eating crocodiles", namely the Gulf crocodile found in Southeast Asia and the Nile crocodile found throughout Africa. In addition, the Milky Way crocodile, which is found in southern North America, and the Black Crocodile, which is found in northern South America, are not as ferocious as the Gulf crocodile and Nile crocodile, and they have no tradition of eating people. Therefore, it is said that they can only eat people. can be considered an exception.
When talking about the crocodile, one cannot help but recall Han Yu’s "Essay on Sacrifice to the Crocodile". This famous article written in the 9th century AD clearly shows that more than 1,100 years ago, a considerable number of man-eating crocodiles lived in the evil stream near Chaozhou, Guangdong. Crocodiles have been extinct in my country since the Ming Dynasty, but there are still a considerable number of them from Vietnam to northern Australia and southern New Guinea, and to Sri Lanka and the east coast of India. Reports of killing humans and animals are still common.
The living areas of Gulf crocodiles are mainly coastal estuaries, while Nile crocodiles live widely in rivers and lakes, so there are more victims (especially women and children). It is generally believed that Nile crocodiles are more dangerous than lions. According to surveys, African women often go to rivers and lakes to wash vegetables and collect water for cooking, which creates a lot of opportunities for crocodiles lurking near the water.
Pythons can’t eat people, and to be honest, I have some doubts. Theoretically, the largest pythons should have the ability to eat people, but in fact, there are too few truly reliable records of cannibalism. Most of the legends about giant pythons swallowing people are vivid and serious, but in fact they are often unsubstantiated. In our country, there are many legends about pythons swallowing people, but how many of them are official records and can stand the test of science? The same goes for foreign countries. The situation of pythons and crocodiles is very different. Crocodiles lurk in the water, posing a difficult fall hazard to people who have to go to the water's edge. Most pythons live in dense forests. How many people can go to the dense forests for free? How many people go there without carrying weapons or being vigilant? How many of them travel alone and not together? Therefore, the chance of a python attacking a person is extremely rare.
Look at the man-eating animals among fish. Of course, the first thing that makes people think of sharks is sharks. Among the hundreds of species of sharks, there are star sharks less than one meter long, basking sharks and whale sharks several feet long. Of course, small ones cannot eat humans, but extremely large ones (such as whale sharks, which are up to 20 meters long and weigh tens of thousands of kilograms), can’t eat humans either, because they cannot open their large mouths and do not have sharp teeth, so they can only suck small fish and shrimps. and plankton.
There are less than 10 species of sharks that are dangerous to humans, and only two of them can truly be called man-eating sharks. One is the famous man-eating shark, and the other is the equally powerful giant tiger shark. The former, also known as the great white shark, has a body length of 11 to 12 meters; the latter, also known as the tiger shark, has a body length of up to 9 meters.
They are found in all oceans in the eastern and western hemispheres, but they mainly live in tropical and subtropical coastal waters. Several famous bathing beaches in our country are located in the north, so there are almost no man-eating sharks visiting them.
Mitchell Hedges, an internationally renowned hunter who specializes in hunting large fish in tropical oceans, once recorded many incidents of shark attacks on sea bathers. The most chilling thing is that once on the beach in Honduras, thirty or forty villagers took a sea bath. A father took his two sons not far from the shore. Suddenly a son cried out and sank into the water, and the water turned red. My father and brother rushed to the rescue. The child reappeared and raised his hands, and as they took the hands there was only the sound of gnashing underwater. When he pulled it up, he found that only his head and arms were missing, and his entire body from the chest down had been bitten off by the shark. Afterwards, Mitchell Hedgers helped the villagers capture the tiger shark, disembowel it, and found the child's body inside.
Mitchell Hedgers also experienced another incident on Half Moon Island offshore Honduras. One day, two fishermen who were proficient in water skills suddenly disappeared. There was no wind and no waves on the sea, and their small boat was floating on the water. Mitchell and the Islanders searched for a day with no results. Xia suspected that a large shark had made a sudden attack, but there were no traces left on the boat. I tried to bait tiger sharks near the accident site for several days, but failed, so I had to leave it as an unsolved case.
Many days later, he went to that place to try again. Suddenly he saw a man rowing desperately in a small boat far away on the sea. After rowing for a while, he raised the oar and struck randomly. After the man came ashore, he stumbled back and forth like a drunkard. After being helped into the room and lying on the bed, he waved his arms wildly and uttered nonsense. He was obviously frightened and went crazy. Mitchell gave him a shot of morphine and put him to sleep for the night. When he woke up the next day, his ancestral home was completely restored, and then he told his story. It turned out that when he was driving the small sailboat leisurely back, he saw a large black thing suddenly appeared in the mirror-flat water, swimming towards the small boat, changing colors as it swam. He was petrified. In an instant, a tentacle as thick as a human leg reached into the boat, trying to catch him. He struck hard with the paddle and the tentacles retracted. After struggling for a hundred or two hundred meters, the thing caught up again. At this time, he saw the eyes of the "monster" as big as lanterns, and its tentacles stretched out onto the boat again. He hit it with all his strength, but unexpectedly another one stretched out right after. In desperation, he picked up a harpoon carried on the fishing boat and thrust it between the two eyes with all his strength. Suddenly, lumps of black liquid appeared in the sea water, and the "monster" shrank into the sea and disappeared. . After hearing the fishermen's statements, Mitchell understood that there was a large octopus causing trouble in the sea outside the island, and the mystery of the disappearance of the two fishermen not long ago was also solved.
But you don’t necessarily have to be a particularly large animal to eat humans. There are several species of small fish called sawfish or sawfish in rivers in South America, with body lengths only 20 to 60 centimeters. At least four of them are very dangerous to humans. Despite its small size, it is the most powerful thing in South American rivers. Regardless of whether it is a cow or a horse (and the same goes for humans), if it is attacked by a group of sawtooth salmon in the river, it will be completely eaten in a short time. Their teeth are as strong as steel chisels and can crush the hardest bones. As long as they detect movement in the water, especially if they smell a bit of blood, they will fly over from a distance, like a group of crazy demons, so the natives of South America fear them more than any beast.