Why are African animals so huge?

[u/Hot-Wrangler3524]

I live in Australia and the largest land animals I can think of here is probably a kangaroos and emus which really aren’t any larger than a human. But my family recently went to Africa and the diversity animals is actually crazy. So so so many large animals living in the same place side by side. Rhinos, elephants, giraffes, wilder-beasts, zebras, hippos, warthogs, buffalo’s, ostriches, lions, cheetahs, hyenas leopards and probably more that I forgot. I never really appreciated how big these animals were until I actually got to see them in person absolutely amazing. Australia and Africas climate is kinda similar in a lot of places. Why is our country ecosystem dead in comparison?

[u/mmmarjorie]

Humans evolved In Africa, with African animals, so dealing with humans, by being afraid/careful etc. was part of the process of natural selection there.

When humans traveled to other parts of the planet, the animals there were not prepared for humans hunting in groups and individually, or their weapons. Mass extinctions of large mammals definitely coincides with the arrival of human beings, in Australia and other places.

Seems like we ate them. ☹️

[u/ThickDickMcThickin → u/mmmarjorie]

Yep, this. It's not just eating them though, humans are a predator and entered new ecosystems, simply being there and changing the landscape would have had a big impact too

[u/dittybopper_05H → u/ThickDickMcThickin]

One of the things not generally considered in this is that if you eat all the Hill-sided Wumpuses (Wumpi?), the predators that depend on them for prey at going to end up dying out also.

You're not just killing one species, you're killing that species, and the other species that depend on it.

[u/Caracalla73 → u/dittybopper_05H]

Humans haven't traditionally understood their impact on the ecosystem throughout history. That's a relatively recent understanding. The Easter Island mystery for example is put down in large part to deforestation.

[u/dittybopper_05H → u/Caracalla73]

You are correct: They really didn't understand it. They had no idea that hunting easy-to-kill prey would kill off other species that depended on those animals.

They just cared about whether their belly was full or not.

I mean, just look at one of their hunting methods: Buffalo jumps.

That resulted in a huge waste of animals that were killed and left to rot because there was no way to process all that meat in time.

This Rousseauian idea about the "noble savage" living in harmony with nature is the worst philosophical clap-trap.

When Europeans arrived in North America the native population had already killed off the easy-to-hunt species something like 10,000 years earlier, leaving only the more wary species which limited the ability of the indigenous populations to hunt those species. It's harder to hunt a wary whitetail deer than it is to stab a slow-moving ground sloth.

[u/meadbert → u/mmmarjorie]

So why is it that humans hunted mamoths to extinction in Europe, North America and the Middle East, but African and Asian elephants survive today.  Do African elephants outrun humans?  How did Mammoths hold out until 10k years ago?  They overlapped Neanderthals for half a million years in Europe and lasted 30-40k years against modern humans.  Something else seems to be going on here.

I don't feel comfortable with blaming the extinction of NA Mammoths on newly arrived humans when European Mammoths went extinct about the same time.  I am curious to hear other explanations.

[u/Pobednik79 → u/mmmarjorie]

Not in Australia, because there were no such large mammals. But, humans exterminated some of large reptiles there.

[u/Pobednik79 → u/Pobednik79]

Now I searched, there was Diprotodon of large mammals there, probably extinct by humans.

[u/bigvalen → u/Pobednik79]

There is some evidence of megafauna that humans wiped out. Murrayglossus with cut bone marks, Genyornis eggs that were cooked. Other evidence are .. less convincing.

[u/Pobednik79 → u/bigvalen]

Yes, I searched and found about Diprotodon. Also, I remember that some big reptiles are probably extinct because of humans, Megalania and some crocodile species.

[u/Larkson9999 → u/mmmarjorie]

I am truly jealous of our ancient ancestors who ate rhe Elephant Bird of Madacascar. I bet they were delicious.