| > 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. |
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...