People who score high on Social Dominance Orientation (SDO) “tend to find hierarchies to be inevitable and legitimate because of their predisposition to perceive the world as a ‘competitive jungle.’”   –Jylhä, K. M., & Akrami, N. (2015). Social dominance orientation and climate change denial: The role of dominance and system justification. Personality and Individual Differences, 86, 108-111.

“Our global summary…revealed that humans kill adult prey, the reproductive capital of populations at much higher median rates than other predators (up to 14 times higher), with particularly intense exploitation of terrestrial carnivores and fishes.  Given the competitive dominance, impacts on predators, and other unique predatory behavior, we suggest that humans function as an unsustainable “super predator” which –unless additionally constrained by managers—will continue to alter ecological and evolutionary processes globally.”    –Darimont, C. T., Fox, C. H., Bryan, H. M., & Reimchen, T. E. (2015). The unique ecology of human predators. Science, 349(6250), 858-860.

“Humans have supplanted large carnivores as apex predators in many systems, and similarly pervasive impacts may now result from fear of the human ‘super-predator.’”    –Suraci, J. P., Clinchy, M., Zanette, L. Y., & Wilmers, C. C. (2019). Fear of humans as apex predators has landscape‐scale impacts from mountain lions to mice. Ecology letters, 22(10), 1578-1586.

“…although chimpanzees engage in war-like raids where larger parties target and kill much smaller ones, no non-human primate species engages in human-style war, with large numbers of individuals on either side of a conflict. Because hunter-gatherer societies do engage in such war, the presumption is that this predisposition is uniquely human and perhaps purely cultural, or derived from more basic genetic predispositions, such as insider favoritism (Otterbein 2004, Bowles 2006, 2007, Bowles and Gintis 2011).”    –Gintis, H., & van Schaik, C. (2013). Zoon Politicon: The evolutionary roots of human sociopolitical systems. Cultural evolution, 25-44.

“When man developed his weapons, culture, and population sizes to levels that essentially erased the significance of predators of other species, he simultaneously created a new predator: groups and coalitions within his own species.”    –Alexander, R. D. (1974). The evolution of social behavior. Annual review of ecology and systematics, 5(1), 325-383.

“The raising of livestock allows predation on a large scale and ensures continuity of food supply. By domesticating ungulates, much of the risk was removed from the hunting process. The development of traps and firearms enabled prey to be killed from a distance with little or no danger to the predator.”    –Fleming, P. J., & Ballard, G. (2017). Homo sapiens is the apex animal: anthropocentrism as a Dionysian sword. Australian Zoologist, 38(3), 464-476.

Stephen Pinker equates human violence against animals as the same “coldhearted predatory violence against humans.”  “Here are a few examples: Romans suppressing provincial rebellions, Mongols razing cities that resist their conquest; free companies of demobilized soldiers plundering and raping; colonial settlers expelling or massacring indigenous peoples, gangsters whacking a rival, an informant, or an uncooperative official; rulers assassinating a political opponent or vice versa; governments jailing or executing dissidents; warring nations bombing enemy cities; hoodlums injuring a victim who resists a robbery or carjacking; criminals killing an eyewitness to a crime; mothers smothering a newborn they feel they cannot raise.  Defensive and preemptive violence…”    –Pinker, S. (2012). The better angels of our nature: Why violence has declined. Penguin Books. Kindle version L11268

“Because predatory violence is just a means to a goal, it comes in as many varieties as there are human goals.”    –Pinker, S. (2012). The better angels of our nature: Why violence has declined. Penguin Books. Kindle version L11236

“Predation may also be called exploitative, instrumental, or practical violence.”    –Pinker, S. (2012). The better angels of our nature: Why violence has declined. Penguin Books. Kindle version L11236