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Comment by elbrownos | Hacker News Reader

We like to flatter ourselves that human flesh is super tasty and drives predators into a feeding frenzy. Why should it be?

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It's not necessarily tasty, but it isn't super fast, we're not venomous, poisonous, spiky, or armored, we can't smell very well, our claws and teeth are relatively ineffective, our young are pretty defenseless for several years and we only have a few of them...we need all the inventiveness and precautions we can come up with to not be the easiest meal in the forest. Predators don't really care about tastiness, they just need to feed.

...just soft and pink.

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/58/64/15/586415bb9...

With all this in mind we still made it to the top of the food chain(not using the scientific term). What we lack in physical prowess we more than make up for in intelligence and our ability to use tools.

Not just intelligence but also endurance when traveling long distances.

Basically intelligence + long distance running = ability to track prey.

I don't believe that it is a matter of being "super tasty", but rather, one of not wanting to inform predators of an easy to access food supply.

This sounds a lot like why horse mares will eat the placenta from their foals after giving birth. Foals are born able to run, but they're nowhere near as strong as a mature horse.

I was under the impression they ate it because of all the vital nutrients that the placenta had, but I dont think anyone had conclusive evidence except in an evolutionary biology hand-wavy way.

If that were the case we should expect health problems from horses that go too long between pregnancies, yes? Otherwise the nutrients are not "vital."

Whence do you suppose the nutrients in a placenta originate?

Actually everything in this thread is a just-so story. It's pretty silly to pick out one specific rare behavior as even relevant to evolutionary fitness. How would any of this be tested?

I dunno, if you have been gestating a foal, you might be a little undernourished at the end of the process, so a placenta's worth of nutrients might then be "vital."

Well that all depends on what kinds of sauces you have at your disposal.

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