For us humans, meat is an important source of protein, so we eat meat almost every day, and if you look closely, you will find that the meat we usually eat is basically from herbivores, but there are almost no carnivores.
So the question is, why do humans basically eat only herbivores and almost no carnivores?
As we know, there is a relationship between various organisms in nature called the "food chain", which is a hierarchical structure composed of multiple ecological niches, for example: herbaceous plants-herbivores-carnivores, which is a simplified model of the "food chain".
From the perspective of energy and nutrition, the "food chain" can be simply described as the transfer of energy and nutrients from a lower ecological niche to a higher ecological niche. However, there is a huge loss of energy and nutrients in the process of transfer, generally speaking, 80% to 90% of energy and nutrients are lost after each transfer.
For example, if a sheep eats 100 grams of grass, then the energy and nutrients it obtains from these grasses can only make it grow 20 grams of meat at most, but the problem is that the sheep also needs a lot of energy and nutrition to maintain its various life activities, so the energy and nutrients it obtains can only be used to make it grow meat, so that a sheep eats 100 grams of grass, and its own can grow 2.5 grams of meat, which is already ideal.
In the same way, when energy and nutrients are transferred to carnivores, of course, there will be a lot of loss, in this case, if a carnivore, for example, a lion eats the sheep, then only part of the energy and nutrients it obtains from the mutton can be used to grow meat, considering that the nutrition and energy density of meat is relatively high, we might as well double the efficiency of the lion's long meat, that is, for every 2.5 grams of mutton that the lion eats, it can grow about 0.125 grams of meat.
We all know that modern humans mainly obtain meat through captive animals, it is conceivable that if lions are bred in captivity, then humans first need to raise herbivores in captivity to provide meat for them, such as sheep, in this case, consume 100 grams of grass, humans can get 2.5 grams of mutton, and then feed it to lions to eat, then humans can only get 0.125 grams of lion meat in the end.
(Note: The above data is only rough data given for the convenience of discussion, and there may be some deviations from the actual situation)
But the problem is that from the point of view of energy and nutrition, lion meat and mutton are about the same, which means that captive carnivores will only make the "cost" of human meat skyrocketing, and will not bring better "benefits" to humans, such a thing is obviously no one wants to do, so from the beginning, human beings have never considered captive carnivores for the purpose of obtaining meat.
In fact, long before the large-scale captivity, ancient humans began to hunt wild animals for meat, but ancient humans still basically ate only herbivores and almost no carnivores, why is that?
This is mainly because carnivores often have fangs and claws, and are very aggressive, they pose a great threat to ancient humans, although ancient humans can hunt carnivores by setting traps, throwing spears and other methods, but in general, the risk of hunting carnivores is still very high, so intelligent ancient humans will basically only choose those docile and less aggressive herbivores as hunting objects.
In addition, there is also a reason that due to the transfer of energy and nutrients from the lower ecological niche to the higher ecological niche, there will be a large amount of loss, so the "food chain" of nature as a whole presents a structure similar to a "pyramid", the higher the ecological niche, the lower its biomass, and because the carnivores are basically in the top area of the "food chain", so their number is relatively small, not enough for ancient humans to eat.
That is to say, since ancient times, the meat eaten by humans has mainly come from herbivores, so that over the long years, human tastes will become more inclined to herbivores, so that for modern humans, even if they have the conditions to eat carnivores, they often feel that their meat is far less delicious than herbivores, and it can also be regarded as a reason why humans almost do not eat carnivores.
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Source: Charismatic Science Jun