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Photograph of a hunter using a Amazonian tribes blowpipe (also called a
blowgun or blow tube) in the Amazon jungle. Studies by
scientists have found that Amazonian tribes prefer blowpipes to
shotguns while hunting small prey such as monkeys because blowpipes are silent
and do not scare away nearby prey, thereby allowing more monkeys to be more
successfully hunted. In addition, poison darts
are more efficient in that the poisoned prey falls to the ground as the
curare causes their muscles
to relax, rather than remaining clinging to a tree branch high in the
rainforest canopy. Another advantage of blowpipes is pure economics; shotgun shells are expensive
while poison darts are essentially free. Interestingly, scientific
studies have shown that the harvest of
monkeys when using blowpipes is four times that of using
shotguns. Because bows and arrow are distinctly inferior to the blowpipe
for hunting arboreal prey, bow and arrow hunters are more likely to abandon
traditional Amazonian tribe methods and adopt modern shotguns than are
blowpipe hunters.
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