Predator-Prey Dynamics Quotes

Nature, red in tooth and claw.

When the eagles are silent, the parrots begin to jabber.

Men lived like fishes; the great ones devoured the small.

Nature has made up her mind that what cannot defend itself shall not be defended.

No man can tame a tiger into a kitten by stroking it.

Until you stalk and overrun, you cannot devour anyone. -Hobbes

The death of wolves is the safety of the sheep.

Hope your new boots are fast Bella. One little jar isn't going to keep a hungry bear occupied for long." "I only have to be faster than you.

A prince being thus obliged to know well how to act as a beast must imitate the fox and the lion, for the lion cannot protect himself from snares, and the fox cannot defend himself from wolves.

And I'm wondering where the lions are.

You can't have five wolves and one sheep voting on what to have for dinner.

Never run from one such as me, female. You will no’ get away - and we like it.

Until the lion learns to speak, the tales of hunting will be weak.

When among wild beasts, if they menace you, be a wild beast.

The coyote is a living, breathing allegory of want. He is always hungry. He is always poor, out of luck and friendless. The meanest creatures despise him, and even the fleas would desert him for a velocipede.

It is not good to wake a sleeping lion.

We monsters are necessary to nature also.

Nature's law says that the strong must prevent the weak from living, but only in a newspaper article or textbook can this be packaged into a comprehensible thought. In the soup of everyday life, in the mixture of minutia from which human relations are woven, it is not a law. It is a logical incongruity when both strong and weak fall victim to their mutual relations, unconsciously subservient to some unknown guiding power that stands outside of life, irrelevant to man.

The hunter is the alert man. But this itself-life as complete alertness-is the attitude in which the animal exists in the jungle.

If you are unwilling to defend your right to your own lives, then you are merely like mice trying to argue with owls. You think their ways are wrong. They think you are dinner.

I stand in the center aisle of the auditorium, a wounded zebra in a National Geographic special, looking for someone, anyone to sit next to. A predator approaches: gray jock buzz cut, whistle around a neck thicker than his head. Probably a social studies teacher, hired to coach a blood sport.

Animals behave in set patterns, which is why we are able to hunt and kill them. Only man has the capacity to consciously alter his behavior, to improvise and overcome the weight of routine and habit.

Beasts of like kind will spare those of kindred spots.

Don't fight the rabbits. If you fight the rabbits, the elephants are going to kill you.

Marla tells me how in the wild you don't see old animals because as soon as they age, animals die. If they get sick or slow down, something stronger kills them. Animals aren't meant to get old. Marla lies down on her bed and undoes the tie on her bathrobe, and says our culture has made death something wrong. Old animals should be an unnatural exception. Freaks.