We have become less and less comfortable as a society with the act of predation. We eat a chicken nugget without a thought, but recoil at the idea of actually killing a chicken. Yet our fascination with the act of the kill is still there. There is a reason why most public aquariums post signs stating the exact time at which the sharks will be fed. I think that our fascination with the act of predation is something completely natural. If cows made and watched documentary films then I think that they would tend to favor hour-long ‘world of grazing’ specials. We are inherently enthralled by acts of predation because we ourselves have evolved as predators and it has been in our best interest to pay attention to how a hunt takes place in order to learn from it. Watching a kill take place could also tend to ring a little bell in the back of our heads somewhere that says dinner could soon be on the way.
The question of whether it is right or wrong for human beings to hunt and kill our food comes down to a question of whether nature its self is (or can be) right or wrong. Most of the natural world here on Earth amounts to a soap opera of predation that has been airing for a few billion seasons. One bacterium engulfs another. A coral colony attacks its neighbor one night and devours it. The marlin eats the tuna. The human shoots and butchers a deer. The act amounts to the same thing in every instance.
If predation is wrong, then nature is wrong. The billions of years of life and death and evolution that resulted in our very existence is wrong.
Our very existence as a species without predation is unthinkable. Predation gave us life.
As Christopher McDougall points out in his book, ‘Born to Run,’ we became modern humans in large part because we became predators. We have a lot of anatomical features that don’t make sense any other way. We are unique among living primates in that we have an Achilles tendon. An Achilles tendon is only really good for long-distance running. You don’t need one to walk or to sprint (as other apes demonstrate). Ditto our unusually large gluteus maximus muscles. We are finely tuned to be long-distance runners. And what good is running long distances? We can’t sprint fast enough to escape predators. But over marathon distances we can outrun even a racehorse. As a few indigenous tribes are still demonstrating, our bodies are very good at running down four legged prey until it collapses from exhaustion.
The physiological adaptations that allow us to do this are profoundly complex. Our tendons are especially springy compared to other primates. Our hearts and lungs are capable of amazing efficiency. We can sweat and regulate our bodies temperatures to avoid overheating. That kind of evolution doesn’t happen for nothing.
The title of McDougall’s book, ‘Born to Run,’ tells half of the story. The other half is that we were born to kill.
It stands to reason that our bodies should be tuned to perform at their best when provided with a diet similar to the one that they evolved to provide. That is a diet with a lot of meat. Not necessarily a lot of grain-fed beef or pork, but still a lot of meat.
As a hunting instructor and guide, I have introduced a great many adults to hunting. Most of my students have been people who never hunted anything in their lives. Many of them led very ordinary urban or suburban existences. Not one single student of mine has ever shown him or herself incapable of gutting or butchering an animal when the time came. Within 10 minutes of making the first incision it is invariably smiles all around. And when I have taken students on guided hunts and given them the opportunity to make their first kill, the result is invariably elation.
I am no psychologist, but anecdotally I will say that human beings seem very much emotionally inclined to respond positively to the act of killing for food. It is our nature.
A dog kept in an apartment and walked on a leash day after day might be very pleased with its existence. But if one day that dog gets loose in the woods and catches scent of a rabbit, you would observe the happiest two minutes of its entire life.
Predators kept in zoos often exhibit signs of serious depression. They have everything that they physically require, but they pace in circles all day long or lick themselves raw. This behavior improves when the animal is given live food to pursue, or at least has to exercise its hunting behavior in order to get the food.
It has been a mere instant in evolutionary terms since we developed agriculture and settled lifestyles. A flash in the pan with little to no evolutionary changes in our bodies during that time. Like the dog in the apartment or a lion in a cage, we can get by without hunting. But I believe that many of us will be at our happiest and healthiest with predation as a part of our lives.
We are not outside of nature. The fact that we are self-aware and make tools and do terrible things to the environment does not free us from nature or from the millions of years of predation by our ancestors that resulted in our present form. The idea that we should live without occasional violence against prey animals flies in the face of everything that we observe in the natural world.
This is not to say that we should delight in suffering. We should strive for the quick kill and we should express real gratitude for the sacrifice on the part of the prey in order to provide us with food and to express our nature. If nature is good then we should be grateful for it.
It is difficult to reconcile our modern (and good) distaste for causing any kind of suffering with the very real role that predation has played in our minds and bodies. That’s nature for you. We come up with our systems and ideals and models, while nature simply is what it is and does what it does with no regard for the convenience of our beliefs.
In spite of everything that I absorbed growing up in a culture where pigs are raised in stainless steel prisons and wild geese are gently executed in gas chambers, I find a fundamental satisfaction in tracking down my prey, killing it and eating it. I’m hungry and there is a deer or a goose or a squirrel and so I eat it. Sometimes nature is that simple.
[Photo used under Creative Commons license, courtesy of Daveparker01.]
