The reason is that humans ganged up on and killed critters that dared to take a human. Over the last say 50,000 years, this enduring bit of Darwinist pressure had a big effect. Five or six people with spears are quite capable of killing a lion.
Joe Gwinn
A dozen years ago we owned a lot (around 4 acres) with many large trees. One huge oak had a horizontal limb about 2 feet in diameter and I dreamed of putting up a spiral stair and a platform on the limb, just for fun. We wound up selling the lot instead of building a house on it, and I went by to look at it a last time and the limb had fallen off and was lying on the ground.
I've encountered mountain lions (aka cougar, puma) in both the Santa Teresa foothills and the Marin headlands. They're sized similar to a medium sized dog (24" to 36" at the shoulders, 65 to 180 pounds depending on gender and age).
The lions mainly hunt from dusk to dawn, which is one reason that human-lion encounters are rare. The lions are also not interested in humans as prey.
I encountered one in my back yard. Awakened by the dog barking very strangely, I stuck my head out the arcadia door to encounter mountain lion with my dog standing on top of his dog house shaking like crazy ;-)
Mountain lion took off like a bullet. ...Jim Thompson
I helped my neighbor with the 75-foot by 16-foot wide (at the tree) bridge today, so I figured I'd show you some shots from below:
Notice in that picture above that there is a "widowmaker" of about ten feet long hanging in mid air, ready to fall. Also notice that the "sucker" was cut flush, and the boards screwed to it ...just because we could.
We're close enough to the big redwood to touch it now!
Here's a view, looking down, at the big tree, inches away from it:
That's a milestone after so much work starting at the other end.
I tried to get a picture to take the whole thing, from under:
But, the best I can show you in a single pic is a side view:
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