Hunting is the human practice of seeking, pursuing, capturing, and/or killing wildlife or feral animals. The most common reasons for humans to hunt are to obtain the animal's body to consume their meat and useful animal products (fur/hide, bone/tusks, horn/antler, etc.), for recreation/taxidermy (see trophy hunting), although it may also be done for other purposes such as removing predators dangerous to humans or domestic animals (e.g. wolf hunting), to eliminate pests and nuisance animals that damage crops/livestock/poultry or spread diseases (see varminting), for trade/tourism (see safari), or for ecological conservation against overpopulation and invasive species (commonly called a cull).
Recreationally hunted species are generally referred to as the game, and are usually mammals and birds. A person participating in a hunt is a hunter or huntress; a natural area used for hunting is called a game reserve or hunting range; and an experienced hunter who helps organise a hunt and/or manage the game reserve is also known as a gamekeeper.
Hunting activities by humans arose in Homo erectus or earlier, in the order of millions of years ago. Hunting has become deeply embedded in various human cultures and was once an important part of rural economies—classified by economists as part of primary production alongside forestry, agriculture, and fishery. Modern regulations (see game law) distinguish lawful hunting activities from illegal poaching, which involves the unauthorised and unregulated killing, trapping, or capture of animals.
Apart from food provision, hunting can be a means of population control. Hunting advocates state that regulated hunting can be a necessary componentWilliams, Ted. "Wanted: More Hunters," Audubon magazine, March 2002, copy retrieved 26 October 2007. of modern wildlife management, for example to help maintain a healthy proportion of animal populations within an environment's ecological carrying capacity when natural checks such as natural predators are absent or insufficient, or to provide funding for breeding programs and maintenance of natural reserves and conservation parks. However, excessive hunting has also heavily contributed to the endangerment, extirpation and extinction of many animals."Red List Overview". IUCN Red List. International Union for Conservation of Nature. Retrieved 8 September 2010. Some animal rights and anti-hunting activists regard hunting as a cruel, perverse and unnecessary blood sport. Certain hunting practices, such as canned hunts and trophy tours (especially to poor countries), are considered unethical and exploitative even by some hunters.
Marine mammals such as whales and pinnipeds are also targets of hunting, both recreationally and commercially, often with heated controversies regarding the morality, ethics and legality of such practices. The pursuit, harvesting or catch and release of fish and aquatic cephalopods and crustaceans is called fishing, which however is widely accepted and not commonly categorised as a form of hunting. It is also not considered hunting to pursue animals without intent to kill them, as in wildlife photography, birdwatching, or scientific-research activities which involve tranquilizing or tagging of animals, although green hunting is still called so. Hunting supplements the gathering of plants and mushrooms in foraging societies. The collection of local arthropods such as insects for food, common in such societies and still in practice today, occupies a middle ground between hunting and gathering but is seldom regarded as hunting, though some do so; this applies also to the netting and trapping of arthropods for scientific or hobby purposes.
Skillful tracking and acquisition of an elusive target has caused the word hunt to be used in the vernacular as a metaphor for searching and obtaining something, as in "treasure hunting", "bargain hunting", "hunting for votes" and even "hunting down" corruption and waste.
Etymology The word hunt serves as both a noun ("the act, the practice, or an instance of hunting") and a verb ("to pursue for food or in sport"). The noun has been dated to the early 12th century, from the verb hunt. Old English had huntung, huntoþ. The meaning of "a body of persons associated for the purpose of hunting with a pack of hounds" is first recorded in the 1570s. "The act of searching for someone or something" is from about 1600.
The verb, Old English huntian "to chase game" (transitive and intransitive), perhaps developed from hunta "hunter," is related to hentan "to seize," from Proto-Germanic huntojan (the source also of Gothic hinþan "to seize, capture," Old High German hunda "booty"), which is of uncertain origin. The general sense of "search diligently" (for anything) is first recorded c. 1200.
Types Recreational hunting, also known as trophy hunting, sport hunting or "sporting" Big game hunting Big Five game (lion, elephant, African buffalo, African leopard, black rhinoceros) Bear hunting Bison hunting Boar hunting Tiger hunting Reindeer and caribou hunting Deer hunting/stalking Elk hunting Medium/small game hunting Fox hunting Mink hunting Coon hunting Hare coursing Squirrel hunting Fowling Waterfowl hunting Shorebird hunting (snipe, woodcock, curlew, sandpiper, plover) Upland hunting (quail, pheasant, dove, grouse, turkey) Pest control/nuisance management Predator hunting Wolf hunting Jackal coursing Coyote hunting Bobcat hunting Varmint hunting Rabbiting Rook shooting Culling Commercial hunting and traditional sustenance hunting Seal hunting Whaling, dolphin drive, dugong hunting Alligator hunting Kangaroo hunting Other Falconry Green hunting Poaching Trapping
History
Lower to Middle Paleolithic
Hunting has a long history. It predates the emergence of Homo sapiens (anatomically modern humans) and may even predate the genus Homo.
The oldest undisputed evidence for hunting dates to the Early Pleistocene, consistent with the emergence and early dispersal of Homo erectus about 1.7 million years ago (Acheulean).. While it is undisputed that Homo erectus were hunters, the importance of this for the emergence of Homo erectus from its australopithecine ancestors, including the production of stone tools and eventually the control of fire, is emphasised in the so-called "hunting hypothesis" and de-emphasised in scenarios that stress omnivory and social interaction.
There is no direct evidence for hunting predating Homo erectus, in either Homo habilis or in Australopithecus. The early hominid ancestors of humans were probably frugivores or omnivores, with a partially carnivorous diet from scavenging rather than hunting. Evidence for australopithecine meat consumption was presented in the 1990s.1992 trace element studies of the strontium/calcium ratios in robust australopithecine fossils suggested the possibility of animal consumption, as did a 1994 using stable carbon isotopic analysis. It has nevertheless often been assumed that at least occasional hunting behaviour may have been present well before the emergence of Homo.This can be argued on the basis of comparison with chimpanzees, the closest extant relatives of humans, who also engage in hunting, indicating that the behavioural trait may have been present in the Chimpanzee–human last common ancestor as early as 5 million years ago. The common chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes) regularly engages in troop predation behaviour, where bands of beta males are led by an alpha male. Bonobos (Pan paniscus) have also been observed to occasionally engage in group hunting, although more rarely than Pan troglodytes, mainly subsisting on a frugivorous diet. Indirect evidence for Oldowan era hunting, by early Homo or late Australopithecus, has been presented in a 2009 study based on an Oldowan site in southwestern Kenya.Plummer, T.W., Bishop, L., Ditchfield, P., Kingston, J., Ferraro, J., Hertel, F. & D. Braun (2009). "The environmental context of Oldowan hominin activities at Kanjera South, Kenya". In: Hovers, E. & D. Braun (eds.), Interdisciplinary Approaches to Understanding the Oldowan, Springer, Dordrecht, pp. 149–60. Tom Plummer, "The Hard Stuff of Culture: Oldowan Archaeology at Kanjera South, Kenya" , Popular Archaeology, June 2012.
Louis Binford (1986) criticised the idea that early hominids and early humans were hunters. On the basis of the analysis of the skeletal remains of the consumed animals, he concluded that hominids and early humans were mostly scavengers, not hunters, Blumenschine (1986) proposed the idea of confrontational scavenging, which involves challenging and scaring off other predators they have made a kill, which he suggests could have been the leading method of obtaining protein-rich meat by early humans.Blumenschine, Robert J. (1986) Early hominid scavenging opportunities: Implications of carcass availability in the Serengeti and Ngorongoro ecosystems. Oxford, England: B.A.R.
Stone spearheads dated as early as 500,000 years ago were found in South Africa.Monte Morin, "Stone-tipped spear may have much earlier origin", Los Angeles Times, 16 November 2012 Wood does not preserve well, however, and Craig Stanford, a primatologist and professor of anthropology at the University of Southern California, has suggested that the discovery of spear use by chimpanzees probably means that early humans used wooden spears as well, perhaps, five million years ago.Rick Weiss, "Chimps Observed Making Their Own Weapons" , The Washington Post, 22 February 2007 The earliest dated find of surviving wooden hunting spears dates to the very end of the Lower Paleolithic, about 300,000 years ago. The Schöningen spears, found in 1976 in Germany, are associated with Homo heidelbergensis. .
The hunting hypothesis sees the emergence of behavioral modernity in the Middle Paleolithic as directly related to hunting, including mating behaviour, the establishment of language, culture, and religion, mythology and animal sacrifice. Sociologist David Nibert of Wittenberg University argues that the emergence of the organized hunting of animals undermined the communal, egalitarian nature of early human societies, with the status of women and less powerful males declining as the status of men quickly became associated with their success at hunting, which also increased human violence within these societies. However, 9000-year-old remains of a female hunter along with a toolkit of projectile points and animal processing implements were discovered at the Andean site of Wilamaya Patjxa, Puno District in Peru.
Early humans progressively invented tools and techniques for trapping animals. The earliest spears were crafted from wood, with tips toughened by burning. By 15,000 BC, hunters employed wooden and bone spear-launchers to enhance force and distance. These devices were frequently adorned with carvings of creatures.
Upper Paleolithic to Mesolithic
Evidence exists that hunting may have been one of the multiple, or possibly main, environmental factors leading to the Holocene extinction of megafauna and their replacement by smaller herbivores.
Humans are thought to have played a very significant role in the extinction of the Australian megafauna that was widespread prior to human occupation.
Hunting was a crucial component of hunter-gatherer societies before the domestication of livestock and the dawn of agriculture, beginning about 11,000 years ago in some parts of the world. In addition to the spear, hunting weapons developed during the Upper Paleolithic include the atlatl (a spear-thrower; before 30,000 years ago) and the bow (18,000 years ago). By the Mesolithic, hunting strategies had diversified with the development of these more far-reaching weapons and the domestication of the dog about 15,000 years ago. Evidence puts the earliest known mammoth hunting in Asia with spears to approximately 16,200 years ago.