Humans soon learnt how to catch ever greater numbers of prey

Predators have roamed the planet for 500 million years. The earliest is thought to be some type of simple marine organism, a flatworm maybe or type of crustacean, perhaps a giant shrimp that feasted on ancient trilobites. Much later came the famous predatory dinosaurs such as T. rex, and later still large toothed mammals such as sabre toothed cats or modern wolves.

But one or two hundred thousand years ago, the world’s most powerful predator arrived.

Us.

We lacked big teeth or sharp claws, huge tentacles or venomous bites. But we had intelligence, and the guile to produce tools and artificial weapons. And as we became ever better hunters we started harvesting animals on a great scale.

We wiped out the passenger pigeon, the dodo, the great herds of North American bison. Last century we decimated great whale populations. Today the world’s fishing fleets routinely take more fish than scientists say is sustainable, leading to crashes in cod numbers for example, while people kill more large mammals in North America than all other causes put together.

But out of our mass consumption of the world’s fauna appears a curious conundrum.

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An English family from days gone by

Celebrating Christmas is often a family affair.

Nan and Granddad, Mum, Dad and the kids, perhaps Uncle Charlie dropping by.

It’s an ordinary scene. But perhaps it’s one that is too familiar, that we never question.

Because have you ever wondered where the human family actually came from?

New research into primate societies is helping to answer that very question; shedding light on the origins of the human family.

The work attempts to explain how the family unit evolved, and why humans have different family structures to our closest relatives, the other great apes.

Although human families seem terribly normal to us, the human family unit is, biological speaking, very novel.

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Bred to race or be sold? (copyright: Slooby)

“Just hours before the Kentucky Derby, trainer Larry Jones got up early with his filly Eight Belles and took her to the track for a ride before the big race.

This was supposed to be a day of tempting history for Jones and Eight Belles.

They were taking on 19 colts and trying to make Eight Belles the fourth filly, and the first since Winning Colors in 1988, to win the "Run for the Roses."

This was to be a day of celebration for owner Rick Porter and his entourage no matter where she finished. She was the first filly to enter the Derby since 1999.

Now there will be a necropsy and then cremation.”

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