[lenkite]

"Did you know that just a couple of thousand of years ago there were more elephants than humans in sub Saharan Africa? "

This does not appear surprising. Elephants were perfectly adapted to that environment and able to fend off dangerous predators. Humans - several thousand years ago - were not as dangerous. And thus used to be the prey of necessity for older, limping lions in the past. The old big cats could no longer catch a fleeting gazelle but the slow, clumsy humans made an acceptable substitute - even if the meat tasted like bad pig. Even in the last millennium, thousands of humans were devoured by man-eating cats.

[defrost]

> but the slow, clumsy humans made an acceptable substitute

The humans that made thorn bush corrals and teamed up with spears when one yelled lion?

They're not as easy for big cats as many might think, even today you can see barefoot humans with spears facing down cats and cats shying away from the sound of humans.

Only old slightly mad cats gave humans a go, and they rarely lasted long until people teamed up and took out the man eaters.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJZR68KSIgY

> Even in the last millennium, thousands of humans were devoured by man-eating cats.

That's, like, one or two a year ... comparable to drowning and other accidental fatalities.

In reality, outside the drama of Rudyard Kipling story, it's a rare bit of drama for big game hunters to have an actual man eater to go after.

[lenkite]

My bad - a correction on my side: it was more like tens of thousands of humans killed by man-eating big cats. Thousands of humans were killed every few years in the last millennium - it was not a small number by any means.

Big cats don't face groups - they are ambush predators. Some man-eaters have murder counts reaching several hundred just by their lone selves. Even late as the early 1900's, a tigress in India stalked and killed 436 people. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiger_attack#The_Champawat_Tig...