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The consensus seems to be that many species of megafauna were driven to extinction by humans:

The high-resolution chronology of the changes supports the hypothesis that human hunting alone eliminated the megafauna (Wikipedia)

Megafauna extinctions in the late-Quaternary are linked to human range expansion, not climate change

Our ancient ancestors contributed to the extinction of many of the world's largest mammals ('megafauna'). (Our World in Data]

How/why then did extant megafauna survive?

As a complete layperson, I can see how tigers and lions might be left alone. But why weren't say slow-moving elephants also hunted to extinction just like other megafauna?

Related: Megafauna extinctions, Did the ancients or other pre-industrial civilisations engage in unsustainable practices?

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    Why do you say that surviving elephant species are slow moving? Maybe you should look at videos of elephants chasing people. I think the people in those videos didn't think that the elephants were slow moving. Commented Oct 5, 2024 at 17:36
  • Late Pleistocene extinctions has a much more comprehensive discussion of the factors (as soon as you scroll past the enervating species lists). According to that, the most pressing case that needs explanation is the bison in North America: "By the end of the Pleistocene, when humans first entered North America, these large animals had been geographically separated from intensive human hunting for more than 200,000 years...bison would almost certainly have been very nearly as naive as native North American large mammals." Commented Oct 5, 2024 at 19:15
  • Some of these species are either close to extinction or have their populations significantly reduced. That they become extinct is a matter of time. Commented Oct 6, 2024 at 17:11
  • Might that be because even if anyone wanted to eat, the hunting would not have been worth the trouble? What risk being stomped or gored by an elephant when you could so much more easily - and tastily - hunt virtually anything else? Commented Oct 20, 2024 at 22:29

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This linked to list of extant megafauna is quite varied (and a little sparse?). Let's organize it a bit:

African Megafauna

  • Gorilla
  • Black Rhino
  • Hippo
  • Ostrich
  • Elephant (African)
  • Lion
  • Giraffe
  • African Buffalo
  • Zebra

This is notably the largest list of any category. According to Jared Diamond in Guns, Germs, & Steel, there's a good reason for that. Humans evolved alongside these animals in Africa, so they learned to deal with the growing capabilities of Honinids slowly over millions of years, at a pace their evolution could handle, rather than getting fully-evolved Homo Sapiens dropped on them cold.

SE Asian Megafauna

  • Asian Elephant
  • Tiger
  • Giant Boa
  • Wild Water Buffalo

Jared didn't go into this one, but SE Asia was the first place we know of hominids spreading to outside of Africa (about 2 million years ago). So if his thesis holds water, then you'd expect some of these to have survived as well, since they also got introduced to hominids rather early on, when their hunting capabilities weren't as great.

Aguatic Megafauna

  • Whales (toothed and untoothed)
  • Crocodilians
  • Sharks
  • Mantas
  • Assorted Giant fish
  • Giant Octopi & Squid

The explanation here seems rather obvious: Humans aren't aquatic creatures. Hunting large creatures in the deep water they are capable of retreating to is no easy task for a human. Doing it at the scale required to wipe out a species seems right out prior to the modern era.

Arctic Megafauna

  • Grizzly/Polar Bear
  • Moose
  • Musk Ox

It seems likely there's a weaker version of the effect with Aquatic animals going on here. Humans can live in the arctic, and hunt there. However, its not easy, and tougher to do at scale.

Domesticates

  • Camelids
  • Cattle
  • Horses

These survived because they were usefully domesticable. Their wild forbears are largely extinct.

Large Bovines (worldwide)

  • Bison
  • Buffalo

Outside of the African variety mentioned above, these creatures (barely) managed to live into the modern era, when men with horses and firearms nearly exterminated them all. Being big, fast, tough (by bow-and-arrow era standards) and relatively prolific may have helped them.

South America

  • Rhea
  • Anaconda

This is actually a really small list, compared to what they had prior to the peopling of the continent. Anaconda are aquatic and largely live in places humans can't farm well. Rhea I don't know much about, but apparently they are very fast (40MPH). Likely the fastest land animal in South America. Their impressive survival capabilities are underscored by the fact that there's now feral populations of them in Germany and the UK.

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African megafauna evolved in parallel with early humans, over hundreds of thousands of years, and had a chance to develop an instinctive fear of humans.

Megafauna on other continents had no such chance. They encountered fully-developed humans, had no fear of them, and were quickly hunted into extinction.

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I can think of different reasons to explain this apparent paradox:

  • First: Human hunting having exterminated megafauna is only an hypothesis. There is one huge reason to say this might not be the case: Human population by the time was so low in numbers that they might not have been able to chase down each and every member of a given species

But let's admit this as true, and go on reasoning. Other explanations exist, thought it is difficult to find how to back them up with proofs. I mean, how do I prove a given hypothesis, where should I search the proof?

  • Usefulness :The usefulness of a mammoth is great: it provides meat in locations where agriculture could not be done and vegetation is poor, it provides fur to survive cold weather, and it is large enough to survive a few days until you need to chase another one
  • Human situation (point linked with usefulness): If the humans in some regions could survive more by gathering than hunting, then species would be less in danger than in other regions where hunting was the first activity for survival (or maybe for tradition, or religious reasons, who knows?)
  • Weaponry: To kill a mammoth, you need strong and sharp pieces of stones at the end of an arrow or a spear. But if you are the member of a population living in savannah, would you find this sort of stones as easy as people living in Northern Europe? I do not have the answer to this question but I think it might explain why some ground favoured some species survival, against others
  • Geography: What was the territorial expansion of mammoths? If they lived between Rhine, Danubia and the Alps or between the big rivers of Siberiaand Ural mountains, herds could not migrate far from an hunting zone. In comparison, many savannah animals (I think of elephants or buffalos) are known to perform long range migrations. Probably it would have been easier for some species to escape hunting tribes where they could migrate without obstacles, rather than in surrounded zones
  • Historic reasons: this is a rather obscure explanation, but I remember reading that aurochs might have survived in Europe until the Middle Age. Thus, historical (and not pre-historic) reasons of the development of population might have impacted the survival of the remnants of this population of megafauna in some parts of the world, as opposed to other. After all, the 19th century in the USA had been closed to see the extinction of bisons
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    what makes you think a sharp stone spear is the only way to kill an animal larger than you? All over the world you can find examples of other techniques (driving over cliffs, for example) and tools. Commented Oct 5, 2024 at 13:03
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    @KateGregory Yes there are different techniques, actually take the sharp stone spear as an example more than adefinite way Commented Oct 5, 2024 at 20:36
  • I don't quite agree with your usefulness argument. The cost of keeping a mammoth around would be prohibitive, if at all possible at that time. I don't say tamed or domesticated, just 'keeping it around' in the vicinity would be impossible. Commented Oct 6, 2024 at 9:10
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    @Jos Sorry I am not sure to understand: by "keeping" you mean "keeping alive?" My usefulness argument is about keeping the meat and fur of the killed mammoth, as opposed to other animals that might have provided less meat and thus be less interesting to chase Commented Oct 6, 2024 at 9:53
  • In that era domestication was out of the question. Even today elephants are tamed, not domesticated. If you need mammoths for fur, you need to be able to shave it off somehow. If you need it for food, you need to be in its vicinity. That's exactly what hunter-gatherers did. You can't herd mammoths, nor elephants. Even on the level of reindeer would be impossible. Commented Oct 7, 2024 at 0:11
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The first graph in your Our World In Data provides a large part of the explanation. Megafauna in Africa had the highest survival chance, these animals where accustomed to humans as a potential predator for hundreds of thousands of years. Elefants know that humans are dangerous.

Megafauna in the Americas and Australia on the other hand did not have any humanoids in their habitats until the first modern homo sapiens hunter gatherers arrived there. They just didn't know they should run away. By the time some figured it out, it was already to late.

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