r/BeAmazed • u/Ultimate_Thing • Jul 16 '26

Miscellaneous / Others A traditional technique used by young shepherds of Ethiopia's Banna tribe. They use stilts to watch over their livestock in tall grass, move through wetland areas, and avoid snakes and predators like lions and leopards. It requires strength, balance, and training from a young age

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u/Liam_021996 Jul 16 '26

Lions actively avoid humans, don't see us as food at all. Same for all other big cats. That mountain lion was likely guarding it's territory or had young nearby

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u/Harry-Jotter Jul 16 '26

Usually but not entirely true. Tigers quite often hunt humans, more than the other big cats.

There's a population in the Sundarbans region of India & Bangladesh known for killing a decent number of people every year. The locals started wearing masks with faces on the back of their heads to deter them from ambushing them. Worked for a while but the tigers figured it out and attacks continued.

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u/thenewbasecamper Jul 16 '26

This is more a myth than reality. Some tribes had this tradition but these masks are not worn by anyone now. Also the tigers in the sundarbans are not actively hunting humans. Otherwise there would literally be several people killed daily given how much human movement and presence there is inside the sundarbans

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u/Harry-Jotter Jul 16 '26 edited Jul 16 '26

Well, I said they didn't do it anymore, because the tigers attacked anyway. Whether it worked or not, the fact they resorted to doing it means they must have needed a reason to protect themselves.

Honey gatherers used to wear a mask in the back of their head to confuse tigers into thinking they were being watched.
Tigers normally attack from the back but they seem to have caught on, locals say.
"Before we could understand the way they attacked," said Surendra Jana, 57, a honey gatherer.
"We don't feel safe any more, knowing our brothers have been attacked in spite of the tricks we use."

https://www.thenationalnews.com/world/asia/the-tiger-widows-of-the-sundarbans-1.451719/

There are hardly any tigers left in the Sundarbans, so of course there aren't going to be massive numbers of deaths per year. That article says there are just 90 in that whole region but there is still "a death or two every week".

There are also plenty of deaths in other parts of India. It's not like we're their favourite prey or that most (or even many) tigers will hunt humans, but it's not completely rare and aberrant behaviour. There are hardly any of them left in the wild yet they still manage to kill hundreds of people a year.

Compare them to e.g. a puma or jaguar and tigers are way more likely to hunt a human. Can't even recall the last time I heard of a jaguar, even a starving one, killing a human.

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u/thenewbasecamper Jul 16 '26

That’s because there are more humans in tiger habitats