For many urban dwellers, large animals like bears or tigers are only glimpsed during a visit to the local zoo. Or they’re viewed on the zoo’s live camera doing tame activities like sunning themselves or enjoying an icy treat on a warm day.
As they aren’t part of everyday life for many people, the idea that these animals could be man-eating predators can seem hard to fathom. One anthropologist described it as a “bizarre realization” for people to consider they aren’t always at the top of the food chain.
Humans aren’t often prey, but that doesn’t mean we occupy the top spot on the food chain. Instead, scientists have been using global data to analyze typical consumption habits. They’re finding that not only are humans not at the top of the hierarchy — we aren’t even close.
What Is a Food Chain?
The basic idea of the food chain is a who-eats-who type of mapping with the ultimate predator at the top of the hierarchy. Starting in the 1940s, scientists began developing a more complex system involving trophic levels that divided all plant and animal life into distinct categories of plant life, herbivores, primary and secondary carnivores.
