人类几乎毫无防御能力。为什么野生动物不再攻击我们?（三）
Humans are practically defenseless. Why don''t wild animals attack us more?
译文简介
我总是对“人类是脆弱的”这类问题感到困惑。
正文翻译
Humans are practically defenseless. Why don't wild animals attack us more?
人类几乎毫无防御能力。为什么野生动物不再攻击我们?
原创翻译：龙腾网 https://www.ltaaa.cn 转载请注明出处
人类几乎毫无防御能力。为什么野生动物不再攻击我们?
原创翻译：龙腾网 https://www.ltaaa.cn 转载请注明出处
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“It's usually not healthy for wild animals to try to engage with the tyrant.”
There are some exceptions. In Sri Lanka I was told that a wild mongoose will often simply show up at a house near the jungle and essentially announce that it is now part of the household.
People and mongooses get along well; not only do they keep snakes and other vermin away (not an insignificant task, it you live near the outskirts of town), but they are also very friendly and loving and make good pets.
“野生动物试图与暴君接触通常是不健康的。”
也有一些例外。在斯里兰卡，有人告诉我，野生猫鼬通常只会出现在丛林附近的房子里，基本上宣布它现在是家庭的一部分。
人和猫鼬相处融洽。它们不仅可以防止蛇和其他害虫(这不是一项微不足道的任务，因为你住在城郊附近)，它们也很友好、有爱心，是很好的宠物。
It makes sense. It’s the same sort of thing as how dogs and cats came to be domesticated by humans. We don’t have mongooses in this part of the world, but pets that keep vermin away are certainly useful anywhere.
它是有意义的。这和狗和猫如何被人类驯化是一样的道理。
我们这里我们没有猫鼬，但把害虫赶走的宠物都是有用的。
“Because we are NOT “practically defenseless.” We are the worst and most ruthless tyrant that Kingdom Animalia has ever seen.”
I’ll disagree with that. We are the most efficient and effective tyrant. There are and have been more cruel and ruthless creatures then man, they just lacked the ability to be efficient at ruling the others.
Cats and dolphins/orcas make us look good, and nothing is more ruthless in general behavior then a hyena that I know of, execpt maybe some insects, like the Mantis, but they can’t control themselves at all so ruthless doesn’t really apply.
“因为我们并非‘毫无防御能力‘。我们是动物王国有史以来最坏、最残忍的暴君。”
我不同意。我们是最有效率的暴君。有并且一直有比人类更残忍和无情的生物，他们只是缺乏有效地统治其他物种的能力。
猫、海豚和虎鲸让我们看起来很好，没有什么比鬣狗的行为更残忍的了，除了一些昆虫，比如螳螂，但它们根本无法控制自己，所以无情并不适用。
Many animals are dangerous but none have the mental capacity for evil. Except the human animal. Our intellect makes us the enemy of the very environment we need to survive
许多动物是危险的，但没有一种动物具有作恶的精神能力。
除了人类这个动物。我们的智慧使我们成为赖以生存的环境的敌人。
It’s a 19th Century myth that humans’ sense of sight and smell is weak compared to the rest of the animal kingdom.
The thing that probably stops most predators from killing us, over the course of our evolutionary history, is that we see them before they see us and move or make lots of noise. Predators then have to exert more energy hunting us down and probably fight a whole group of humans.
In terms of colour perception, humans are near the top in mammals. One mammal with better colour perception than us is the tetrachromatic reindeer (who are also some of the only mammals with ultraviolet colour perception and red-green perception; some dichromatic rodents do have UV perception from their blue cone). Most mammals do not have more than two types of colour cones in their eyes.
Having better colour perception allows us to see colour patterns that are invisible or much more subtle to other animals. Almost every mammal is a dichromat with two colour rods, but humans and a handful of our closest Ape relatives are trichromats. To dogs, deer, lions, and a portion of humans, the distinction between green shades and red shades is much more subtle:
On top of that, humans also have the best daytime angular resolution of any other documented mammal (at 1 minute angular resolution, compared to 10 minutes for a cat).
Directly related pattern recognition, the human eye has the fastest cycles per degree of visual acuity of any mammal which vastly increases the spatial processing capacity of our visual system and increases the amount of information going to our brain (Data from Hayes et al., 2007):
人类的视觉和嗅觉与动物王国的其他动物相比是羸弱的，这是19世纪的谬传。
在我们的进化史上，阻止大多数捕食者杀死我们的原因可能是，我们在它们看到我们之前看到了它们，它们的移动等活动会发出很多噪音。这样一来，捕食者就不得不使出更多的力气来追捕我们，可能还要和一大群人类作战。
在对颜色的感知方面，人类在哺乳动物中位居前列。有一种哺乳动物比我们对颜色的感知能力更强，那就是四色驯鹿(驯鹿也是唯一一种能感知紫外线和红绿颜色的哺乳动物。一些两色啮齿动物的蓝色视锥细胞也可以感知到紫外线)。大多数哺乳动物的眼睛里是没有两种以上的视锥细胞的。
有了更好的颜色感知能力，我们就能看到其他动物看不见或更微妙的颜色模式。几乎所有哺乳动物都是两色视觉，但人类和少数与我们最接近的类人猿是三色视者。对狗、鹿、狮子和部分人类来说，绿色阴影和红色阴影之间的区别要微妙得多:
原创翻译：龙腾网 https://www.ltaaa.cn 转载请注明出处
最重要的是，人类在白天的分辨率也是其他有记录的哺乳动物中最好的。
与模式识别直接相关的是，在任何哺乳动物中，人类眼睛的每一级视觉敏度的周期是最快的，这极大地提高了我们视觉系统的空间处理能力，增加了进入大脑的信息量。
If you take a dog on a walk, and you are paying attention to the world around you, odds are you will see an animal way before your dog does. Your dog will smell an animal before you do though. The only time my dogs have ever sighted an animal before me I was on my phone, or the animal was low to the ground (e.g., under a car) and I couldn’t see the animal at human-height.
We aren’t blind-deaf disembodied brains compared to other animals. Human eyes are very powerful and decrease the likelihood of being ambushed. They further decrease the likelihood of a predator picking off a human alone by giving a human ample time to raise the alarm.
If Zebras and Antelope had as good of eyesight as humans, Lions would probably starve to death. The amount of time between each feeding would increase to the point that they would be exerting more energy to kill a zebra than they gain from eating one.
The eyesight of other mammals is, on average, poor. Hunters go off in the woods wearing orange vests so that other hunters don’t accidentally shoot them, and they still sneak up on deer.
人类的视觉感知之所以好是因为我们的大脑很好，这是笛卡尔、弗洛伊德和维多利亚时代的观点。不管我们的大脑有多大，如果我们的视觉灵敏度更差，我们一开始就只会看到更少的图景。
如果你带着狗出去散步，你会关注你周围的世界，很有可能你会比你的狗更早看到动物，而你的狗会比你先闻到动物的气味。我的狗狗在我之前看到动物的唯一一次，是在我打电话的时候，或者动物离地面很低(比如，在汽车下面)，在人类高度我看不到的动物。
与其他动物相比，我们的大脑并非又盲又聋。人类的眼睛非常强大，可以降低被伏击的可能性。通过给人类足够的时间来发出警报，它们进一步降低了捕食者单独杀死人类的可能性。
如果斑马和羚羊有和人类一样好的视力，狮子可能会饿死。每次喂食间隔的时间会增加到这样的程度:它们杀死一只斑马所消耗的能量比吃掉一只斑马所获得的能量还要多。
其他哺乳动物的视力一般都很差。猎人穿着橙色背心进入森林，这样其他猎人就不会不小心射中他们，但他们仍然可以偷偷接近鹿。
是的，她有一把步枪，但人类会在普通步枪射程之外看到她(这就是她服装的意义)。
I’ve been getting hundreds of comments I agree with saying:
BUT TOOLS!!!
Yes. Tools help humans too, to beat a dead horse that is mentioned in every other answer to this question one more time.
When I wrote this answer though, I was also thinking of humans without tools and even prehistoric times before proto-humans developed tools. Humans have been around a lot longer than tools.
I have also been getting hundreds of comments I disagree with saying:
Humans take revenge on animals. This is why animals don’t hunt humans.
This would require animals to have inter-generational transmitted knowledge of human vengeance, and a psychological model not only of themselves, but a model of the anticipated behaviour of humans if a human dies.
I am open-minded enough to agree some animals are smart enough for that, but certainly not bears, for instance. Bears cannot even figure out to use wildlife overpasses to avoid getting killed by cars:
编辑：
我收到数百条我同意的留言：还有工具！
我同意。确实，工具也可以帮助人类，这个问题下每一个其他答案中都有被提到。
当我写下这个答案时，我也想到了没有工具的人类，甚至在原始人类发明工具之前的史前时代。人类比工具存在的时间要长得多。
我也收到了上百条我不同意的评论: 人类报复动物。这就是为什么动物不捕食人类。
这就要求动物具备人类复仇的代代相传的知识，以及一个心理模型，不仅是关于它们自己的，而且是关于如果一个人死了，人类的预期行为的模型。
我很开明，同意有些动物足够聪明，但有些肯定不是，比如熊。熊甚至不知道使用野生动物立交桥来避免被汽车撞死:
Hallstrom et al. (2008) found bears were killed in traffic collisions at a rate that increased or decreased proportional to traffic, despite the construction of dozens of wildlife crossings throughout Alberta, Canada. You are telling me bears are smart enough to know that if they kill a human, it’s a death sentence, but aren’t smart enough to walk on that to cross the road.
Predatory animals going extinct due to human activity is a relatively new thing on the time scale. The first species, to my knowledge, that this is speculated to have happened to is sabre tooth tigers (or Smilodons).
However, most scientists believe Smilodons went extinct due to their food sources dying off (perhaps due to humans eating their prey), not because humans hunted Smilodons to extinction (see Chimento et al., 2019).
There isn’t any evidence wolves were hunted before 8,000 years ago (Mech et al., 2003) and they obviously occasionally ate humans before then. The reason humans started hunting wolves was mainly to protect livestock.
In parts of the world where humans did not become nomadic herders, like North America, wolf populations continued thriving until European herders showed up.
Another species of animal which frequently eats humans is the crocodile. They eat 1,000 humans per year and have not been hunted to extinction.
Most humans avoid being eaten by crocodiles not through tools but by seeing them and avoiding water with crocodiles in it. Conversely, most humans who get eaten by crocodiles fail to see a crocodile, go in the water, and then munched on.
Hallstrom等人(2008)发现，尽管在加拿大阿尔伯塔省建设了几十个野生动物通道，但熊死于交通碰撞与交通流量成正比。你是说熊足够聪明，知道如果它们杀了人，就等于判了死刑，但它们还没聪明到走在那上面过马路？
由于人类活动而灭绝的食肉动物在时间尺度上是一个相对较新的事情。据我所知，推测发生这种情况的第一个物种是剑齿虎。然而，大多数科学家认为，剑齿虎的灭绝是由于它们的食物来源消失(可能是由于人类吃了它们的猎物)，而不是因为人类狩猎使剑齿虎灭绝(见Chimento et al.， 2019)。没有任何证据表明狼在8000年前被猎杀(Mech et al.， 2003)，在那之前它们显然偶尔会吃人。人类猎杀狼的原因主要是为了保护牲畜。
在世界上一些人类还没有成为游牧民族的地方，比如北美，狼的数量持续繁荣，直到欧洲牧民出现。另一种经常吃人的动物是鳄鱼。它们每年吃掉1000人，还没有被捕杀到灭绝。大多数人避免被鳄鱼吃掉不是通过工具，而是通过看到它们和避开有鳄鱼的水域。相反，大多数被鳄鱼吃掉的人都没有看到鳄鱼，直接下水毫无防备。
I have gotten a few comments saying:
Human eyes face forward, therefore they exist for hunting because we are natural predators.
Every primate has forward-facing eyes and so do Koalas. Our eyesight is good for depth perception not for offensive or defensive reasons, but because we spent most of our evolutionary history in trees where depth perception was very important.
Coincidentally, having good depth perception also helps everywhere except in underground dens or caves, and is excellent for constructing partially-obscured images (e.g., part of a leopards face as it stares at you through tall grass).
Additionally, animals that are upright on two legs can spin so having eyes on the side of the head isn’t as important. A human can turn much faster than a deer or a gazelle.
One herbivorous group of animals, Kangaroos, also tend to have forward-facing eyes. Like humans, they can spin to face the sound of an approaching predator without taking 10 steps using four different legs.
在人类进化史上的任何一个时刻，不管有没有工具，如果人类被食肉动物吃掉的次数超过我们繁殖后代的次数，我们就会灭绝。工具显然在使人类超越食肉动物方面发挥了作用。
我收到了一些评论：人类的眼睛朝前，所以它们是为了狩猎而存在的，因为我们是天生的捕食者。
每一种灵长类动物都有朝前的眼睛，考拉也是。我们的视力能很好地感知深度，不是因为进攻或防御的原因，而是因为我们在进化历史的大部分时间里都在树上度过，而深度感知在这里非常重要。
巧合的是，良好的深度感知在任何地方都有帮助，除了在地下洞穴里，而且对于构建部分模糊的图像(例如，豹子的脸的一部分，因为它盯着你穿过高高的草丛)是很有用的。此外，用两条腿直立的动物可以转身，所以眼睛长在头的单侧并不那么重要。人比鹿或瞪羚转身更快。
袋鼠是一种食草动物，它们的眼睛也倾向于朝前。和人类一样，它们可以转身面对捕食者靠近的声音，而不用用四条不同的腿走10步。
Recently i was walking in the forest with my gsd, and he didnt even notice a deer.
最近，我和我的gsd（德国牧羊犬）在森林里散步，他甚至没有注意到有一只鹿。/笑哭
Did you mean “dog”? Dunno what a “gsd” is.
But yeah, I’ve been there, done that. At 2 am I was walking my fiancée’s Schnoodle and came across a skulk of foxes. Four or five foxes in the park, staring at me. I could see them in the dark under the moonlight.
I stood there for two minutes, trying to get them on video, shining my iPhone’s camera with the video on. The most I got was their eyes reflecting back at me in the camera.
Minutes of standing around, the Schnoodle finally smelled the foxes and started whining, then yelping, then barking, then snarling, then yelping some more.
Compared to most animals, humans are walking around with a pair of night vision telescopes on our heads.
你是说“狗”吗？不知道gsd什么意思。
但是，是的，我也经历过。凌晨2点，我带着我未婚妻的狗狗Schnoodle出门散步，遇到了一群狐狸。公园里有四五只狐狸，盯着我看。我能在月光下的黑暗中看到他们。我在那里站了两分钟，试图把他们拍下来，打开我的iPhone相机的视频。我得到的最多的是他们的眼睛在镜头里对着我。
站了几分钟后，Schnoodle终于闻到了狐狸的味道，开始呜呜，然后吠叫，越来越大声。与大多数动物相比，人类走路时头上戴着一对夜视望远镜。
German shepherd dog
Gsd是德国牧羊犬的意思。
Interesting. Never heard that acronym before.
有趣，之前从来没听说过。
I read many years ago a theory that the “exchange of superior senses” between humans and dogs was a reason for domestication; IOW, it’s as much a motive for dogs to share their lives with humans as for humans to share theirs with dogs. Dogs are certainly the most successful canids.
许多年前，我读过一个理论，认为人与狗之间的“高级感官交流”是驯化的一个原因。换句话说，这是狗和人类相互分享生活的动机。狗显然是最成功的犬科动物。
Just as an interesting contrast: while humans have great vision compared to other mammals, we have poor vision relative to birds. The comparison is humiliating.
While it's not universal to all birds, many of them see a larger range of colors (UV), deeper information about colors (four layers instead of three), sharper acuity, better fast-motion tracking, better slow-motion tracking, and some even manage to see magnetic field direction. Even our night vision is outclassed by a lot of birds, including diurnal ones.
It's a good thing that we're simply too big to be prey for any of them.
这是一个有趣的对比:与其他哺乳动物相比，人类的视力很好，但与鸟类相比，我们的视力很差。这种比较是很丢脸的。
虽然并不是所有鸟类都能看到的，但它们中的许多能看到更大范围的颜色(紫外线)，更深层的颜色信息(四层而不是三层)，更敏锐的灵敏度，更好的快速运动跟踪，更好的慢动作跟踪，有些甚至能看到磁场方向。甚至我们的夜视能力也被很多鸟类超越，包括白天的鸟类。
好事是，我们太大了，不可能成为它们的猎物。
Also, don’t underestimate our ability to throw and pick up obxts. Even without our intelligence, simply throwing rocks is a lethal skill and simple weighted sticks can allow us to inflict serious damage while keeping our entire body away from the potential predator.
此外，不要低估我们扔东西和捡东西的能力。即使没有我们的智慧，简单地扔石头也是一种致命的技能，简单的挥舞棒子可以让我们制造严重的伤害，同时让我们的整个身体远离潜在的捕食者。
Very interesting, thanks. The other thing that’s so effective about our eyes is how high up they are. There are only a few land animals with eyes placed so far off the ground - elephant, giraffe, Some ostrich, moose, etc. And all of those except the ostrich are much bigger than us and need a lot more calories. Walking upright puts our good eyes way up, and positions us to see predators and prey before they see us, and to get to them or away from them using a lot less energy.
非常有趣，谢谢。另一件对我们的眼睛很有效的事情是它们的高度。只有少数陆地动物的眼睛离地面的距离有这么远——大象、长颈鹿、一些鸵鸟、驼鹿等等。除了鸵鸟之外，所有这些动物都比我们大得多，需要更多的卡路里。直立行走使我们的视觉良好的眼睛立得更高，使我们能在捕食者和猎物看到我们之前看到它们，从而更省力地接近它们或逃离它们。
原创翻译：龙腾网 https://www.ltaaa.cn 转载请注明出处
We don’t fully utilize our senses of smell either, society isn’t structured that way.
I can smell if my brother is home. He doesn’t cook or shower in the morning, and usually goes straight from bed to door, but when I wake up, I know.
Likewise if I hear the door open, a few seconds later I know if it is just him, someone else, or someone with him.
When I am hiking, I look, listen, and smell.
我们也没有充分利用我们的嗅觉，社会结构不是这样的。
我能闻到我弟弟是否在家。他早上不做饭也不洗澡，通常是直接从床上走到门口，但当我醒来时，我知道。
同样地，如果我听到门开了，几秒钟后我就知道是他，还是其他人，还是和他在一起的人。
当我徒步旅行时，我会看，听，闻。
And of course all this ignores the fact that humans are incredibly social creatures and tool makers. And have pretty astounding healing compared to many animals.
We’re damn dangerous, even naked.
当然，所有这些都忽略了一个事实:人类是难以置信的社会生物和工具制造者。与许多动物相比，它的愈合能力相当惊人。
我们就算没穿衣服也很危险。
I'm colorblind… those two photos you posted earlier to represent what a dog would see? Those look identical to me.
我是色盲，你之前发布的两张照片代表了狗会看到什么吗?
我觉得它们看起来一模一样。
Yep. Less distinction between red~green, equal distinction between yellow~blue.
是的。红~绿的差别不大，黄~蓝的差别也不大。
One of the other secret weapons of the human species is that social cohesion. Even if one of us can't see the predator, you’re with other party members who can.
人类的另一个秘密武器是社会凝聚力。即使我们中有一个看不到捕食者，你也和其他能看得到的人在一起。
If you take a dog on a walk, and you are paying attention to the world around you, odds are you will see an animal way before your dog does.
It’s so true to the point of being annoying. I’ll notice some animal in someone’s front yard then a half a block later she’s just noticed it and will freeze and point at it. Thanks, dog. I saw that an hour ago. If the wind is at our backs my dog doesn’t notice a GD thing. The only times her senses are really useful are when it’s dark out and she has the wind. A few weeks ago on a walk she started pointing at a neighbor’s driveway. I didn’t see anything so I pointed the flashlight in the direction she was looking and there were two trash pandas dining out.
如果你带着狗出去散步，你会关注你周围的世界，很有可能你会比你的狗更早看到动物。
这是如此真实，以至于令人讨厌。我会注意到某个人前院的动物，然后过了半个街区，她也会注意到，会呆呆地盯着它。
谢了，狗狗。我一个小时前就看到了。
只有在天黑的时候，她的感官才会真正发挥作用。几周前散步时，她开始注意到邻居家的车道。我什么都没看到，所以我把手电筒指向她看的方向，那里有两只浣熊在外面吃晚餐。
I’m always perplexed at these “humans are weak” kind of questions.
People asking must be aware of that humans totally dominate the world don’t they?
We have adapted and conquered every climate and bio top possible. We climate, animal population and the eco system in a global scale. There’s plenty of documentaries depicting tribes still living in stone age conditions and thriving in their surroundings.
Yet there are people wondering how we survived for so long - personally I feel offended
我总是对“人类是脆弱的”这类问题感到困惑。
问这个问题的人必须意识到人类完全主宰了世界，不是吗?
我们已经适应并征服了所有可能的气候和生物。我们在全球范围内的气候、动物种群和生态系统。有很多纪录片描述了部落仍然生活在石器时代的条件下，并在他们的环境中繁荣发展。
然而，有些人想知道我们是如何活了这么久的——就我个人而言，我感到被冒犯了。
Is it just me, or does that colour practically scream at your retinas when you look at that Hunter's clothing? Same goes with any high contrast colours, it actually hurts to some extent.
是不是只有我这么觉得？当你看到猎人的衣服时那种颜色会吓到你?任何高对比度的颜色也是一样，它实际上在某种程度上是有害的。