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by jjkaczor 1 day ago
Depends on the environment - in that book for example, Arctic wolves were not the cause of large (in physical size - the caribou) prey animal population decline, even though the "feelings" of the average person was that they must be the reason.

Outside of fiction, wolves are not ravenous beasts that hunt everything and anything in sight.

Predators do tend to go for the weak/sick, older or younger/inexperienced targets - they aren't stupid.

1 comments

You're looking at the problem from the 5,000 foot view.

Prey is whatever is at risk of being consumed. I have made no attempt at classifying wolves behavior in my comment.

Edit: I do take the prey/predator relationship very seriously, I wrote about what I do here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46462101

By that logic - every living being on the planet is - or can be prey for something else - and I am not disagreeing with that.

But that 5,000 foot view of mine is more related to the original blog author using predator/prey as an analogy - it breaks down quickly when applied to humans.

Nice comment! (I used to hunt - but not as intimately as your experience - you have a very skilled and serious background)

> You're looking at the problem from the 5,000 foot view.

As they should be. Because the analogy between wolves and Gypsies on the level of predator-prey is clearly completely broken (Gypsies are not predators and the majority population is not prey). And the only level where it works is the irrational fear far beyond their real threat that both wolves and Gypsies instill in some members of the society. Which has lead to near extinction of wolves - damaging ecosystems that depend on them - and (among other things) a genocide of Gypsies.

I haven't experienced gypsies first hand, but from the youtube perception that I see, they definitely DO prey on tourists at land marks.

Unless there is a youtube/social media conspiracy, i think the analogy stands.

I have "experienced" Roma people including having lived close to a large Roma group (same street), going to school with them etc and it's a complete nonsense to blame and persecute the whole ethnic group. In general, in the year 2026 we should know better than to assign collective guilt. It always creates more issues than it purports to solve.

If you really want to understand an issue in depth, don't use propaganda videos as education.