evidence: The human species really is unlike any other predator on the planet, especially when it comes to our choice of prey. Across the animal world, predators focus their efforts on juveniles. Humans, by contrast, are far more likely to be killing big strapping adults, particularly among carnivores on land and fish in the ocean. [...] In some cases, such as with herbivores on land, they found that humans kill adult prey at about the same rate as non-human predators do. But the harvest of adult carnivores by humans was nine times that of other large carnivores, which were mostly killing each other through competition. In the oceans, the situation is even more dramatic. Marine predators harvest about 1 percent of adult biomass each year. Humans take a median of 14 percent—and as much as 80 percent or more in extreme cases. [...] The human species was able to become a superpredator through technology, which has allowed us to escape the limits usually found in predator-prey relationships. Better weapons mean that hunting and fishing are relatively safe activities, at least compared with animal hunts. Use of powerful boats and better nets means people can access deep oceans where our bodies would not survive. People can purse prey at high speed with cars and airplanes. Industrial-scale processing and refrigeration and freezing allow a human to take far more individual prey than they alone could eat. And consumers don’t have to live or work anywhere near the site where the prey lives.