I occasionally watch all kinds of videos on YouTube and I noticed a weird fascination with monsters; apex predators specifically. Whether it’s about polar bears or crocodiles, or extinct things such as T-Rex, the prevalent theme is that humans are defenceless against such monsters and yada yada.

Bitch, please. The Inuit used to hunt polar bears. Their fur was considered particularly good material for women’s footwear, because of the soft fur. They even prayed to a polar bear god to send polar bears their way to be killed.

Crocodiles? We make shoes out of them, too. All kinds of leather accessories as well. Nice texture.

I used to wonder about human babies; their tendency to cry loudly seemed like an extremely anti-survivalist strategy in leopard country. It would attract all the predators from miles away. And then it clicked – no, the leopards wouldn’t be attracted, because a crying baby means lots of adult humans with sharp sticks. Bad, very bad. Humans like leopard fur, it’s very soft.

There’s only one “apex predator” in the world today, and it awarded other, lesser predators a protected status, because we think they are cute and interesting to have around. If a Megalodon was found to still exist, it would not be an apex predator, but a protected, endangered species. If humans wanted to hunt it for shark fin soup or something, we could drive it to extinction by Tuesday.

If T-Rex happened to get resurrected, it would be instantly endangered from poachers who think its teeth are great for piano keys or something, and its testicles are an aphrodisiac. An African elephant isn’t that much smaller than a T-Rex, and it’s endangered, not from T-Rex or Allosaurus, but from dumbass poachers armed with AK-47s.

Think about that. T-Rex would be hunted to extinction by people who are interested in what steaks made of its meat taste like, and they’d like to have trinkets carved from its bones. Whales are huge and what not, and we entertain ourselves with stories about monster whales, and we almost drove them to extinction because their oil was considered extremely useful before petroleum industry was a thing.

Big things are just endangered species to us; no matter how big. We put them under protection and know each by name. It’s the small things that are a danger to us, paradoxically; mosquitos, ticks, viruses, bacteria, fungi.

The only big things that are stupid enough to hunt humans are those whose populations weren’t reduced to only those who ran in panic after hearing a human baby crying.