From the “Surely this is satire. Sadly, no” department comes this wild claim from Newsweek and writer Nayanika Mathur
Excerpts:
The reasons why big cats turn on humans are complex and can be specific to individuals. But they can no longer be explained outside the context of climate change. Biodiversity depletion, habitat loss, extreme weather events, and a greater struggle over natural resources are affecting how animals live across the entire Indian subcontinent, and indeed the world. We should look to the case of Avni not for the peculiar baiting method, but rather for what her life and death tells us about the climate crisis.
…
It is becoming increasingly difficult for us to deny or look away from the effects of climate change. The climate is changing, bringing with it not just dry river beds or extreme weather events but big cats into cities, too. When leopards walk almost to the gates of New Delhi, or lounge on golf courses in Gurgaon, this isn’t an animal that is merely lost or straying.
…
When a tigress keeps hanging around people and, unfortunately, develops a taste for human flesh, this isn’t just one aberrant big cat. Avni and other big cats are symptomatic of what climate change is doing to our present. Categories and distinctions that we took for granted—such as tiger land versus human land—no longer apply, if they ever really did.
Another way to understand the climate breakdown, through the life of Avni and other big cats with similar fates in India, is as an irretrievable collapse of the commonsensical.
Nayanika Mathur is an associate professor in the anthropology of South Asia at the University of Oxford.
the man-eating lions of Tsavo are proof of this
1898
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsavo_Man-Eaters
proof of what ?
What makes a Prof. of anthropology an expert on the behaviour of large feline species? However, he certain should be able to explain to us the ” irretrievable collapse of the commonsensical.”
Maybe too much CO2 getting to our brains !
Looks like the once world renowned university of Oxford is going full moron too.
Isn’t it Oxford University?
He or She ?
https://theconversation.com/profiles/nayanika-mathur-695684
Is there any other kind of tiger, besides a “man-eating” tiger ?
I mean tigers get hungry, and if “man” presents as an easy meal…..
What was the condition of the cat?
Was it starving and underweight and so extended it’s hunting range in search of prey?
OR…Was it healthy and moving into a new zone with less competition for prey?
Historically, there are two animals that routinely hunt humans. Crocodiles are the other one. Nothing new here at all.
Crocs do not ”hunt” humans.
Not according to this rag:
https://www.thesun.co.uk/archives/news/131572/theres-new-evidence-crocodiles-are-actively-hunting-humans/
I am suspicious since there was no genuine evidence to support it or links to any studies.
But it does challenge your assertion
There is a parallel to CAGW. It is the low fat hypothesis. It became official government policy. It was based on bad science. Dissenters had their careers wrecked. link
It is widely accepted in the mainstream media that climate skeptics are in the same camp as flat Earthers. It was the same for anyone who doubted the low fat hypothesis. It has almost nothing to do with science because it is now ideology.
The media and most politicians have learned no lessons from the low fat fiasco.
Climastrology and nutritional science are two sides of the same coin. Nutritional guidelines are a farce and the worsening health of the population after they were adopted are evidence of that.
commieBob,
“It is widely accepted in the mainstream media that climate skeptics are in the same camp as flat Earthers.” I disagree. Climate skeptics are in the same camp as holocaust deniers, according to the CAGW faithful. Flat Earthers are quite benign by comparison.
I’m fond of flat earthers. They are very entertaining.
Has anyone heard an explanation to my question: Given flat earth why do the clouds arc down to my apparent horizon and why don’t I end up driving into the clouds?
I can accept habitat loss and urban and farm developments encroaching further into existing habitat as reasons for higher tiger attacks. And dry river beds becoming more common is far more likely the result of both ground water pumping (lowering water tables) and to increasing river water diversions to supply growing populations and agriculture. CC is irrelevant in all of that.
But of course with editors tasking them to write about a politicized climate agenda, the science illiterate journalist will make ignorant articles and wild claims about CC.
This ignorant-level 10 Alarmism is only going to get worse. Not better in the coming 18 months. The Climate Scam is failing across the world, not because the science is mostly a fraud, but because the economic price demanded by the Climate Alarmists is far too high when China and India are doing nothing to curb their emissions until at least 2030.
Besides everything we know Trump is doing to ignore the climate scam …
– Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro just fired the head of a government-backed climate forum, after the group organized states to work around the right-wing federal government’s ambiguous positions on climate change. And Bolsonaro is likely to pull Brazil out of the Paris Agreement.
– France has had to pull back its gas taxes under the Yellow Vest protests.
– Boris Johnson is set to become UK PM and finalize Brexit, as a slap to globailization.
– Australia just defeated Labour’s pro-climate change candidates to continue to a push for continued coal and iron ore mining for their economy.
And the US’s Energy Dominance economy keeps steaming ahead. Dark days for an alarmist. All they’ve got left in their toolbox now is more spittle-spewing shrieking, wailing, and gnashing of their teeth.
Habitat loss is a genuine environmental impact of mankind.
And it is a big influence on the behaviour of tigers.
They wouldn’t seek such dangerous prey as man if they had their usual food available.
But as usual, climate change smothers out real environmental concerns.
Well, we’re not going to let the tigers run things!
“They wouldn’t seek such dangerous prey as man…” Man dangerous? We can hardly run, we have no claws, our teeth are substandard to defense, and we’re relatively weak. I’d say we’re easy and safe prey. The only drawback to eating one of us is others with firearms. Are you suggesting that lions might know this?
Tigers hunting humans is not something new. Nor is the “sudden discovery” that leopards will walk freely into town looking for prey. Leopards have been doing that for a very, very long time.
Any human is easy prey, because generally speaking, we aren’t really hunters any more and anyone in the elephant grass without a rifle is a target. It is NOT something new, nor does it have to do with “low fat”. It does have to do with turf, boundaries, and opportunity, which humans ignore.
Yea Sara, tigers and leopards preying on people in India is certainly nothing new. Jim Corbett and others wrote several books about hunting known man eaters.
What has changed is the population of India went from about 300 million in 1947 to 1.3 billion today. So there are just a lot more “prey animals” available.
And a lot more people not allowed to have defenses that the tigers would respect.
Today’s lesson in biology from an associate professor in the anthropology.
BTW, this is the climate scientists basic argumentum ad ignorantium:
‘But they can no longer be explained outside the context of climate change.’
“We can’t explain it, so it MUST BE climate change.”
Libtard: I can read cats’ minds.
Cat: (“Got any tuna?”)
Libtard: She’s thinking about climate change right now.
When leopards walk almost to the gates of New Delhi, or lounge on golf courses in Gurgaon, this …means they are not being hunted and have lost their fear of humans
Absolutely. And the Drop Bears are getting much worse down here too.
But of course. Everyone knows AGW is our 42.
Life, the universe, and everything. Of course.
+42
And it was of course the World’s most powerful puter, Deep Thought, that came up with that brilliant formula for life, the universe, & everything, 5 x 9 = 42! 😉
If climate change can force walruses to plunge to their deaths off cliffs it follows that more tigers could become man eaters.
Climate change – Cats and dogs living together!
Why do tigers eat humans?
Because they can.
Tastes like chicken?
I thought humans tasted like pork.
Idi Amin says humans taste “salty, like leopard.”
He should know.
It’s good to glimpse Newsweek ever couple of decades and see that I missed nothing….nothing at all.
Please save humanity from these people!
Read the bio of the article’s author:
https://theconversation.com/profiles/nayanika-mathur-695684
This is yet another example of a person, highly educated in specific areas, with activist interests, latching superficially onto the climate-alarm scam, in order to further their career.
Without doing any in-depth research on climate change in particular, these sorts of people just accept the party line and then extend it erroneously through their own specific specialties.
This is glorified ignorance to the max.
Again, please save humanity from these people! Think of the minds of the children.
Understood. Everything and anything must be explained “within the context of climate change” for a journalist not to lose her job and to make money.
Just a wild-assed guess: I bet the author knows nothing (zero, nada, zilch) about big cats.
The last time I read Newsweek…..
It was during Bubba Clinton’s Zippergate. Juanita Broaderick had come out with her story of forcible rape by Bubba Clinton.
Newsweek had a comment to the effect of: “There is absolutely no proof, but it does sound like our boy Bill.”
A joke. About the “man” they made President with their partisan propaganda. Rape. Yuk, Yuk. Their boy, a rapist. A real joke. At least when he did Monica with a Cuban cigar, she was compliant.
(I wonder what happened to that cigar. He told her that he was going to save it for later. He was going to a meeting with Yasser Arafat. I wonder if he gave it to Yasser?? THAT sounds like our boy Bill!)
When Newsweek was sold for $1 (yes, one dollar) I thought that the buyer was cheated.
George Monbiat? Occasional-Cortex? LOLOL!
There is a reason it’s also known as NEWSWEAK.
Read ‘Man Eaters of Kumaon’ by Jim Corbett.
Tigers were eating humans well before the current obsession with climate change.
Corbett said that human encroachment on wild areas and the reduction of prey was a major reason for Tigers to become man eaters.
Tigers that were old with deteriorating teeth found humans easier to catch than sambur deer or wild pigs.
StephenP – I fully endorse your recommendation that people who want to know more about why tigers, or leopards, take to eating people should read Jim Corbett’s books. Corbett knew far more about tiger behaviour in the wild than today’s climatista academics. Particularly impressive was the way he hunted down man eaters which had sometimes killed upwards of a hundred victims on foot, alone, at night and insisted on never taking more than five rounds with him to ensure he was careful in his aim. He saved probably thousands of lives. The main thing was that he emphasised that tigers would not normally attack a human being unless injured or too old to hunt their normal prey. A mouthful of porcupine quills was often the cause of a tiger resorting to hunting abnormally, tigers apparently liking porcupine snacks.
Corbett is a great read and understood the fauna and flora in which he lived and worked better
than many of today’s experts. He also expressed the view that the peasants who lived in the villages and worked the fields which were troubled by man eating tigers and leopards were the most courageous and brave people in the world. Not much of an arrogant colonialist attitude there then.
I read that book when I was 9 or 10, over and over.
An important educational book for a budding zoologist.
“The reasons why big cats turn on humans are complex and can be specific to individuals. ”
Humans are slow, stupid, and taste OK.
Has this expert established which type of human tigers prefer? I have my favourite jelly babies – red, green and in top spot, black.
Chomping their heads off first is the best. Do tigers have a preference and if so how do they munch their way through their anthropogenic lunch? I think we should be told.
Well, duh – EVERYTHING not of benefit to humans or other large, photogenic vertebrates is caused by climate change! In fact – news flash – death itself is caused by AGW.
We poor dumb knuckle-dragging/Neanderthal/fundamentalist (WTF?) skeptics are just too slow to get the message.
Newsweek should be concerned about Tigers.
Tigers eat lazy dimwitted prey first, because they are easiest to catch, and least aware of their surroundings.
Journalist’s beware. You are on the menu.
And I don’t have to outrun the tiger; I just have to outrun the journalist. Maybe I can trip the journalist up by throwing facts.
Words fail me…can we please move on from AGW lies and do great things? There are so many real issues to tackle, and one to forget- that one is a blatant power grab by leftist elites. Elites who without exception got rich beyond measure using capitalism and now want to take us back 500 years to the time of serfs and lords.
If this is the case, Sasquatch should be showing up a lot more
The effects of climate change, numer 9999: CO2 damaged academic brains
I see. One needs moral clarity to lie about climate change.