For thousands of years, people have hunted animals for meat and for their skins.
People once hunted with simple weapons. But modern weapons make killing easy. Hunters may soon wipe out some animals.
Some people hunt animals for sport. We also kill sharks and tigers because they frighten us.
People kill cheetahs for their beautiful fur.
Around the world, many kinds of animals are still hunted for their skins and other body parts. Big cats such as cheetahs are killed for their fur, which is used to make expensive clothes.
Elephants and rhinos are hunted for their tusks and horns, which are used to make ornaments. A lot of this killing is now against the law, but it still goes on.
Chimpanzees are now rare because of hunting.
Hundreds of years ago, people lived by hunting wild animals and gathering plant food. Now farms and ranches provide the food we need, but in some countries, hunting still goes on.
In Africa, rainforest animals are hunted and sold as “bush meat”. Threatened species include gorillas and leopards.
Farmers set traps for foxes that steal chickens and lambs.
Dangerous creatures such as tigers, sharks and poisonous snakes are hunted because people are frightened of them.
Farmers set traps for foxes and wolves because they sometimes kill farm livestock. All kinds of other animals die in the traps.
Passenger pigeons died out because of sport hunting.
Hunting also goes on in the name of sport. In the space of just a few centuries, European hunters wiped out a bird called the passenger pigeon in North America.
Passenger pigeons were once found in huge numbers, but their large flocks made easy targets for European hunters. The very last passenger pigeon died in a zoo in 1914.
Picture Credit : Google