Persistence hunting

Persistence hunting (sometimes called endurance hunting or cursorial hunting) is a hunting technique in which hunters, who may be slower than their prey over short distances, use a combination of running, walking,[1] and tracking to pursue prey until it is exhausted. Grey wolves, African wild dogs, spotted hyenas, lungless spiders, and humans are adapted to using this hunting strategy. A persistence hunter must be able to run a long distance over an extended period of time.

Humans are the only surviving primate species who practise persistence hunting. In addition to a capacity for endurance running, human hunters have comparatively little hair, which makes sweating an effective means of cooling the body.[2] Meanwhile, ungulates and other mammals may need to pant to cool down enough,[2] which also means that they must slow down.[3]

Persistence hunting is believed to have been one of the earliest hunting strategies used by humans.[3][4] It is still used effectively by the San people in the Kalahari Desert, and by the Rarámuri people of Northwestern Mexico.

Human persistence hunting

Persistence hunting in human evolution

Further information: Endurance running hypothesis

Persistence hunting was likely one of a number of tactics used by early hominins,[3][5] and could have been practised with[6] or without[7] projectile weapons such as darts, spears, or slings.

As hominins adapted to bipedalism they would have lost some speed, becoming less able to catch prey with short, fast charges. They would, however, have gained endurance and become better adapted to persistence hunting.[3][4][8] Although many mammals sweat, few have evolved to use sweating for effective thermoregulation, humans and horses being notable exceptions. This coupled with relative hairlessness would have given human hunters an additional advantage by keeping their bodies cool in the midday heat.

Current practice

The persistence hunt is still practised by hunter-gatherers in the central Kalahari Desert in Southern Africa, and David Attenborough's documentary The Life of Mammals (program 10, "Food For Thought") showed a bushman hunting a kudu antelope until it collapsed.[9] It is thought that the Tarahumara natives of northwestern Mexico in the Copper Canyon area may have also practiced persistence hunting.[10] The procedure is not to spear the antelope or kudu from a distance, but to run it down in the midday heat, for about two to five hours over 25 to 35 km (16 to 22 mi) in temperatures of about 40 to 42 °C (104 to 108 °F). The hunter chases the kudu, which then runs away out of sight. By tracking it down at a fast running pace the hunter catches up with it before it has had enough time to rest in the shade. The animal is repeatedly chased and tracked down until it is too exhausted to continue running. The hunter then kills it at close range with a spear.

Persistence hunting has even been used against the fastest land animal, the cheetah. In November 2013, four Somali-Kenyan herdsmen from northeast Kenya successfully used persistence hunting in the heat of the day to capture cheetahs who had been killing their goats.[11]

There is evidence that Western peoples, in the absence of hunting tools, have reverted to persistence hunting, such as the case of the Lykov family in Siberia.[12]

Parforce hunting

The techniques of persistence hunting have developed on various levels in different parts of the world. From the middle ages, we know of the technique as parforce hunting taken from the French par force meaning 'with force'. In parforce hunting, the game is run up and exhausted by using a combination of mounted hunters and packs of dogs. When it is down, a selected hunter approaches and kills it with a hunting dagger and no firearms are used whatsoever. It was often seen as honorary to be allowed the final deathblow. This hunting method was adopted widely across Europe by the royalty and nobility and large deer parks are still around, as living witnesses of this specific hunting sports former popularity.

See also

References

Notes

  1. ↑ Frey, Rodney "Homo Erectus, Persistent Hunting, and Evolution", 2002
  2. 1 2 Schmidt-Nielsen, Knut (April 1997). "Temperature Regulation". Animal Physiology: Adaptation and Environment (5th ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 275. ISBN 978-0-521-57098-5. OCLC 35744403. Retrieved 2016-03-16.
  3. 1 2 3 4 Carrier, David R. (August–October 1984). "The Energetic Paradox of Human Running and Hominid Evolution". Current Anthropology 25 (4): 483–95. doi:10.1086/203165. JSTOR 2742907.
  4. 1 2 Liebenberg, Louis (2008). "The relevance of persistence hunting to human evolution". Journal of Human Evolution 55 (6): 1156–9. doi:10.1016/j.jhevol.2008.07.004. PMID 18760825.
  5. ↑ Grant S McCall, Before Modern Humans: New Perspectives (2014, ISBN 1611322227), page 238
  6. ↑ Geoffrey Franklin Miller, Evolution of the Human Brain (1993)
  7. ↑ Edward S. Sears, Running Through the Ages, 2d ed (2015, ISBN 1476620865), page 14
  8. ↑ http://www.publicanthropology.org/archives/current-anthropology/current-anthropology-1980/current-anthropology-1984/[]
  9. ↑ "Food For Thought" (PDF). The Life of Mammals. BBCi.
  10. ↑ McDougall, Christopher, Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen, New York, 2009.
  11. ↑ "Kenyans chase down and catch goat-killing cheetahs date=15 November 2013". BBC News.
  12. ↑ Mike Dash (28 January 2013). "For 40 Years, This Russian Family Was Cut Off From All Human Contact, Unaware of World War II". Smithsonian. Smithsonian Institution. Retrieved 16 March 2014. Lacking guns and even bows, they could hunt only by digging traps or pursuing prey across the mountains until the animals collapsed from exhaustion.

General

External links

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