EnderDracolich wrote:blergle wrote: As our size is part of their recognition of us, scent and sound wouldn't matter. They are hardwired to eat small animals, and that prey drive is strong enough to even override commands from owners sometimes.
I must disagree. Especially with the part in bold; it simply does not agree with animal behavioral science. Saying that scent and sound aren't relevant is simply false. Scent and sound are major parts of how ALL animals recognize their environment, including other animals.
What keeps (most) predators from eating their own young? How does an animals distinguish between it's prey, predators, and it's own kind? How does a dog or cat recognize it's owner (as opposed to other humans)? Scent. Sound. That's how.
You seem to think that predators eat anything smaller than them, without knowing what it actually is. This is not the case for most predators; primative lifeforms like fish and amphibians do tend to eat anything smaller than them, including members of their own species and occasionally, they even try to eat their own natural predators.
Mammals, however, are much more intelligent than fish or frogs. They don't just randomly try to eat anything smaller than them. They A) Look at it, and avoid bright colors such as those displayed on poisonous animals. b)They smell it, to see if it smells bad, or if it smells like their own species. c)They respond to sounds it makes; a coyote usually won't attack a rattlesnake, because it knows that the sound means it's dangerous.
People often keep small animals and large animals as pets in the same home. If you were right about how animals work, large dogs would ALWAYS eat cats, rodents, birds, reptiles, and even smaller dogs. This does happen OCCASIONALLY, but it's quite rare if the animal has been raised not to attack other pets. It knows it shouldn't eat the cat because it recognizes the smell, sound, and appearance of the cat.
So, in this hypothetical, fantasy scenario where a human was shrunk down to a small size, suggesting that his pets would mindlessly try to eat him based on size alone is utterly ludicrous. It ignores the basic social habits of most mammals; they sniff, they listen, and they recognize other individual animals of different species.
Unless your pet is a frog or a fish, it's not "hardwired" to eat small animals. Even reptiles and birds are more complex than that, although much less so than mammals. Predatory animals have instincts, yes, but those instincts coexist and compete with other behavioral motivations. They aren't just killing machines; if they were, they would probably go extinct as a result of killing all their offspring and attacking dangerous prey (such as rattlesnakes). Not to mention that keeping pets of different species would be *literally impossible* because they would kill one another.
The fact that you can have a Chihuahua, a great dane, and a cat with kittens in the same home without them killing each other should be proof enough that animal behavior is more complex than simply "big things always kill smaller things."
(Also, some animals actually prey on things that are bigger than they are. Ever seen a lioness kill a water buffalo? A python eat a crocodile? Piranhas eat a cow? Size is not the primary or only component of predation.)
A domestic may not eat you, but he will definitely kill you, everything that is smaller than them and move, the cat will play with it by scratching and biting it, which would kill a 7inch human. To prove it, just put your hand in front of a cat and move it really fast while veing lower than him. It will attack your hand.
