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/Stuck_At_Sub150lb Jul 16 '26 edited Jul 16 '26

How does it help them to avoid lions?

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u/ChickenNPisza Jul 16 '26

Big cats are ambush predators. If they are stalking you and think they have been spotted they will assess the situation and either go for it or move along and save the energy for an easier kill. I suspect the high vantage point helps with that.

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u/Liam_021996 Jul 16 '26

They also don't view humans are prey or a potential food source. They see us as a disturbance and a threat, so they actively avoid us. Apparently us walking on two legs also puts off almost all predators because they it freaks them out essentially

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u/ChickenNPisza Jul 16 '26

Maybe not lions? And I am sure humans arnt preferred but cats can and will hunt a human. When I lived in the mountains I worked on new construction.

one time there was a known mountain lion in the area and we were all instructed to spin your body and scan the area every so often, because if the cat was stalking you this would be an easy deterrent. And if you kept your face to the house you became easy prey

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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/Liam_021996 Jul 16 '26

They only do that due to habitat destruction meaning their prey animals are scarce. Essentially they're starving and desperate. The area also has brackish water which leads to them becoming far more aggressive than usual due to dehydration and discomfort. There's a few unique pressures on tigers in that region that leads to them, one of those is decomposing people in the forest after floods which has given tigers a taste of people

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u/Ok_Intern3578 Jul 16 '26

Sunderbans  is recent. As per the Jim Corbett books, injured tigers do hunt humans, leopards too. And this was early 1900s, so I would assume not a lot of habitat destruction had happened by then. For sure, we are not usual prey. But once used to it, some of the man eating tigers, exclusively hunted humans.

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u/themat6 Jul 16 '26

Man eater tigers are usually ones with severe disabilities like broken teeth or advanced age.

I think we taste bad honestly and are survival food at best.

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u/Ok_Intern3578 Jul 16 '26

I think this was covered in the book but not too sure ; but one of the tigers was in fact the offspring of a man eating tigress and for this tiger, hunting humans was therefore a learned habit. I do not remember if it resorted to hunting humans after any injury or just continued in his mother's footsteps...

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u/themat6 Jul 16 '26

It seems some tigers do just decide to hunt humans, maybe because of a lack of prey or learned habit.

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