End of the Megafauna by Ross D E MacPhee

Author:Ross D E MacPhee
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 2018-10-30T16:00:00+00:00

Since Kruuk’s original work, a number of additional investigations of surplus killing have been conducted that tend to support and extend his ideas. For example, a study on introduced predators (dingoes and foxes) in Australia noted that “surplus killing events appeared to reflect ineffective anti-predator defenses by prey species when encountering a novel and efficient predator to which they have had no evolutionary exposure.” Dingoes were introduced 5000 to 6000 years ago, foxes only a century and a half ago; both have had serious impacts on Australian wildlife. In the observed surplus killing events, dingoes tended to concentrate on the young of stock animals, perhaps because the latter are docile by nature and therefore easy marks (see chapter 10). Foxes are much more indiscriminate, killing anything within their preferred prey size range.

Kruuk also argued that, among predators, a possible evolutionary function of excess hunting is that it creates accessible surpluses for their kin—in other words, it is a form of social behavior that helps to ensure the continuance of the predator’s genetic endowment. Allowing that earlier humans might have acted like other predators in this regard and killed beyond their immediate needs, a rationale for overkilling could be that it provided, at least in principle, surpluses that could be utilized by the hunters themselves or their relatives later on. But can overkill really be regarded as just an amped-up version of surplus killing? The complexities of human behavior make it difficult to reach a conclusion. Martin did briefly consider surplus killing in a paper cowritten with David Steadman of the University of Florida, but their conclusion was that it had little relevance for explaining Quaternary extinctions except, possibly, for some island losses—to which we shall now turn.

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