A massive quantity of meat wanders the planet in the form of human flesh yet almost none of it cycles back into the food chain to nourish other creatures. Most animals eventually become food for other animals but humans have escaped this process.??Well, that is, most of us have.
Man-eating predators still occasionally attack and eat farmers, herdsmen, hunters and other people who live in their midst. Places where humans and man-eating predators cohabitate, however, are disappearing quickly as alpha-predator populations shrink.
In his book \Monster of God: The Man-Eating Predator in the Jungles of History and the Mind,"" author David Quammen travels to four countries to find man-eating predators and to talk to people who live in their midst.
In ""Monster of God"" Quammen combines science with the adventure of travel. He investigates the status of alpha-predator populations, enters the lives and the homes of the people who live among them and retells some extraordinary tales.
In one particularly harrowing account he retells the story of a woman who survives an attack by a saltwater crocodile.??The crocodile attempts to drown her using the ""death roll"" before she miraculously escapes.
The saltwater crocodile of northern Australia is one of four man-eating predators Quammen singles out for close examination in his book.?? The remaining three include the Asiatic lion of eastern India, the brown bear of Romania and the Siberian tiger of eastern Russia.
In his quest to find these man-eaters Quammen encounters conflicting attitudes about them. He meets people who consider man-eaters dangerous and inconvenient, people who think they are only valuable when they are profitable and finally people who think they are important and ecologically vital.
Quammen considers all of these opinions but by the end of the book clearly aligns himself with the last camp. Quammen believes that the plight of the world's alpha-predators is a tragedy and would like to see that there is a place for them in our future.
Unfortunately his investigation leads to a bleak conclusion about the future of alpha-predators. With the exception of the saltwater crocodile, the alpha-predator populations he examines are either in decline or distressingly small. Quammen cites a report, for example, estimating that only 240 to 250 Siberian Tigers exist in all of the Soviet Far East.
If the human population grows to 10.8 billion by 2150, as the Population Division of the United Nations projects, then there will be no more wild man-eating predators, Quammen predicts.
Quammen offers some profound insights and questions. For millions of years humans have struggled with man-eaters over the top of the food chain. Even as they devoured our grandparents and our children, we managed to coexist with man-eaters. Although man-eaters still occasionally prey on Homo sapiens, the struggle is over.??Humans have seized the position as the highest of all predators and the existence of man-eaters now lies within our hands.
As we eat greedily at the world's remaining resources will we leave room for the worlds last great predators? Will our lives remain unchanged if God's monsters no longer exist?
