Q: Which animal is the most harmful of all?

Krishna: Common men think it is the wild animals that are harmful.

Sometime back  we had a discussion on a social media site. There several students and youngsters said Tigers, Lions, Snakes, Sharks, Hippos, Elephants, Crocodiles, Cheetahs are very harmful and that is whey they try to kill them.

Some said mosquitoes are harmful and that is why all mosquitoes should be killed. 

Others said all bats should be killed as they harbour harmful viruses ( Covid -19 effect!).

Okay, then I asked " what about the man?"

"What?", they retorted, "How can human beings be harmful? We kill all the above animals because they try to kill us".

"Right", I said, "If I show even human beings as harmful, what would you do?"

"That is impossible," was their unanimous assertion!

So, here is my evidence:

People, not the climate, found to have caused the decline of the giant mammals (1)

For years, scientists have debated whether humans or the climate have caused the population of large mammals to decline dramatically over the past several thousand years. A new study confirms that climate cannot be the explanation.

About 100,000 years ago, the first modern humans migrated out of Africa in large numbers. They were eminent at adapting to new habitats, and they settled in virtually every kind of landscape—from deserts to jungles to the icy taiga in the far north.

Part of the success was human's ability to hunt large animals. With clever hunting techniques and specially built weapons, they perfected the art of killing even the most dangerous mammals.

But unfortunately, the great success of our ancestors came at the expense of the other large mammals.

It is well-known that numerous large species went extinct during the time of worldwide colonization by modern humans. Now, new research reveals that those large mammals that survived also experienced a dramatic decline.

By studying the DNA of 139 living species of large mammals, scientists have been able to show that the abundances of almost all species fell dramatically about 50,000 years ago.

For the past 800,000 years, the globe has fluctuated between ice ages and interglacial periods about every 100,000 years. If the climate was the cause, we should see greater fluctuations when the climate changed prior to 50.000 years ago. But we don't. Humans are, therefore, the most likely explanation.

So far, some of the most important evidence in the debate has been fossils from the past 50,000 years. They show that the strong, selective extinction of large animals in... Therefore, the extinction of animals can hardly be linked to climate.

1. Juraj Bergman et al, Worldwide Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene population declines in extant megafauna are associated with Homo sapiens expansion rather than climate change, Nature Communications (2023). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-023-43426-5

It's a cliche, but (aside from mosquitos) the most deadly animal is ourselves (2,3)!

Homicides account for an estimated 431,000 human deaths a year, making us by far the deadliest mammals. Our capacity for advanced tool use above and beyond that of all other animals has in some ways been our downfall, leading as it has to complex weapons that we use to kill each other.

And this is not to mention the destructive impact our activities have had on the natural world, resulting in climate change, which is already estimated to cause over 150,000 deaths annually.

Climate change affects human health and safety in many ways, affecting the cleanliness of our water and air, our food security, and the frequency of natural disasters. It can also increase the frequency of diseases, including ones mentioned in this list, such as malaria.

Anthropogenic global warming (AGW) is a theory explaining today's long-term increase in the average temperature of Earth's atmosphere as an effect of human industry and agriculture (4).

AGW is the leading cause of several deaths, directly or indirectly.

The WHO estimates that between 2030 and 2050 climate change will cause approximately 250,000 additional deaths per year due to malnutrition and disease.

After mosquitoes, human beings are the most dangerous animals on this planet, accept that!

Among all the species, the Homo sapiens are considered the most dangerous animals on the planet by some. They have destroyed more ecosystems than any other animal. Humans may be frail and weak in comparison to other large wild animals but they can be extremely cruel. 

Man has an advanced brain to use for the creation of deadly tools, machines that can fly faster and farther than any bird, bat, and insect. The technology can make the planet uninhabited for most current major forms of life.

If we look at human history, they have always killed, destroyed, and manipulated one another for personal benefits whether it be emotional or material.  Humans have minds and hands that are enough for the destruction of themselves or the planet if not used in a correct manner. Some examples of destruction in the world include Global warming, depletion of the ozone layer, air pollution, deforestation, plastic pollution, etc., etc. 

And most human beings refuse to accept their role in all this and get reformed! We all have become so selfish and jealous of our own species that we are happy to hurt someone for our own motives.

We need to understand that destroying nature will end up destroying mankind. We know the fact that men are the enemies of man. Nature is declining globally and the rate of species extinction is accelerating. Before it's too late, humans should realize what they are doing and become conscious because, in the end, we need to bear the consequences and pay for what we have done to nature. If we don't take the correct step at the correct time we may end up losing our extinction along with the planet.

Atleast wild animals kill when they are threatened or hungry. But human beings, although are more intelligent, also kill for  pleasure (game or hunting - they hunt tigers, lions, birds etc.), to keep pets, to party, to have great products for personal use (like tiger  cheetah and snake skins), for misuse of bones, horns etc. 

 Heard about seal clubbing, where they simply attack a seal by clubbing it to death with a long stick with a blade on the end? Some people  get enjoyment out of collecting dolphins, dragging them onto the beach, and then stabbing them, and they love the sound they make when they are stabbed and they let them bleed out! Whaling and fishing as sport? I can go on and on like this. 

Humans have wiped out around 1,400 bird species—twice as many as previously thought—with major implications for the ongoing biodiversity crisis, a new study has found. Many of the world's islands were previously untouched paradises, but the arrival of people to places like Hawaii, Tonga and the Azores led, over time, to far-reaching impacts including deforestation, over-hunting and the introduction of invasive species. Consequently, bird species were wiped out.

While the demise of many birds since the 1500s has been recorded, our knowledge of the fate of species before this relies on fossils, and these records are limited because birds' lightweight bones disintegrate over time. This conceals the true extent of global extinctions.

Researchers now think 1,430 bird species—almost 12%—have died out over modern human history, since the Late Pleistocene around 130,000 years ago, with the vast majority of them becoming extinct directly or indirectly due to human activity.

The study, led by the UK Center for Ecology & Hydrology (UKCEH) and published in Nature Communications, used statistical modeling to estimate the undiscovered bird extinctions.

The world may not only have lost many fascinating birds but also their varied ecological roles, which are likely to have included key functions such as seed dispersal and pollination. This will have had cascading harmful effects on ecosystems so, in addition to bird extinctions, we will have lost a lot of plants and animals that depended on these species for survival.

In 1997,  researchers estimated that “between one-third and one-half of the land surface of the Earth has been transformed by human action and that more atmospheric nitrogen is fixed by humanity than by all natural terrestrial resources combined, more than half of all accessible surface fresh water is put to use by humanity, and about one-quarter of the bird species  on Earth have been driven to extinction” . Other researchers agree. Today, humans make up nearly 36% of the total biomass of all mammals. Domesticated mammals (cows, sheep, horses, etc) add another 60%; all the remaining mammals, the wild ones: the lions, elephants, bears, etc. form only 4%. Think about that! Of all the mammals, only four percent are not in the service of humans; all the rest are under human management, for our convenience, not necessarily our need (5).

Humans may dominate mammalian biomass but they are only 0.03% of the total biomass of the Earth (Bar-On et al., 2018). As of 2012, about 41% of Earth’s ice-free lands were being used for human infrastructure needs: e.g. farms, ranching, logging, industry, cities, suburbs (Barnosky et al., 2014) and there is virtually no part of the Earth that is free of human effects.

It is obvious that we are using more than Earth can sustainably provide or renew, and Earth’s life support systems are starting to fail. This is termed overshoot  and reflects the time when the population’s demand on an ecosystem  exceeds the ability of the ecosystem  to respond. Wherever we look, we see threats to human security arising from overshoot. It is already characterized by serious global ecosystem  instability . Something has to give.

The above paragraphs summarize a world whose life-supporting systems are deteriorating. Physical and biological limits ultimately govern human life and society and the current situation of breaching these limits and increasing the stresses on Earth’s physical and biological systems cannot last. Breaking the limits breaks the planet.

Human existence depends on an acknowledgement of its dependence on nature. Humans, now more than ever in human history, must live their lives with the active and aggressive acceptance of this dependence in all their actions, plans, aspirations, teachings and beliefs.

We are destroying a lot on this planet making it more unsustainable.

Global warming can also be because of excess use of cars ( as show off), travel in private planes, building lots of houses, unnecessary use of beauty products, excess use of costly and synthetic clothes, using internet and other technology for useless chatting and pleasure.

Need I add more here? We kill for our greed too!

The Earth has enough resources to meet the needs of all but not enough to satisfy the greed of even one person.

Some humans are really bad at being human - Scott Mescudi.

Now tell me aren't human beings more dangerous than most animals? 

Footnotes:

2. https://www.discoverwildlife.com/animal-facts/deadliest-animals-to-...

 3. https://www.sciencefocus.com/nature/what-animals-kills-the-most-people

4. https://www.sciencealert.com/anthropogenic-global-warming

5. https://socialsci.libretexts.org/Bookshelves/Political_Science_and_...(Lautensach_and_Lautensach)/03%3A_Why_Human_Security_Needs_Our_Attention/3.4%3A_In_What_Ways_Are_Humans_the_Most_Dangerous_Species

6. https://researchnews.cc/news/23277/Study-uncovers-major-hidden-huma...