Quotes About Predation

parasites make up the majority of species on Earth. According to one estimate, parasites may outnumber free-living species four to one. In other words, the study of life is, for the most part, parasitology. The book in your

When Homo sapiens came along, after all, the Neanderthals had a hard time, and virtually all animals were subdued. The lucky ones became pets, the unlucky lunch.

If there are gods, they made sheep so wolves could eat mutton, and they made the weak for the strong to play with.

When a wolf descends upon your flocks, all you gain by killing him is a short respite, for other wolves will come,

Under the sea the old fish eat the young fish.

Among the myrtles the mantids moved, lightly, carefully, swaying slightly, the quintessence of evil. They were lank and green, with chinless faces and monstrous globular eyes, frosty gold, with an expression of intense, predatory madness in them. The crooked arms, with their fringes of sharp teeth, would be raised in mock supplication to the insect world, so humble, so fervent, trembling slightly when a butterfly flew too close.

The jackal rips out the hare's bowels, but the world rolls on.

The aim of life was meat. Life itself was meat. Life lived on life. There were the eaters and the eaten. The law was: EAT OR BE EATEN. He did not formulate the law in clear, set terms and moralize about it. He did not even think the law; he merely lived the law without thinking about it at all.

They alone moved through the vast inertness. They alone were alive, and they sought for other things that were alive in order that they might devour them and continue to live.

It is the destiny of the weak to be devoured by the strong.

Animals need to understand other species, if only to prey on them or escape from them.

Fishes live in the sea, as men do a-land; the great ones eat up the little ones.

Truly man is the king of beasts, for his brutality exceeds them. We live by the death of others. We are burial places.

The duck swallows the worm, the fox kills the duck, the men shoot the fox, and the devil hunts the men.

The Victorian system used Darwinian techniques to create killers adapted to their prey, which was elegant and effective but led to the creation of killers that were simply too bizarre to have been thought up by humans, just as humans designing a world never would have thought up the naked mole rat.

would draw P-38s as the scent of human flesh draws mosquitoes.

Contrary to the collective delusion thatMother Nature is a nurturing, caring entity that cradles and protects all its forms of life, Earth is instead a giant killing machine. Holding aside all the climatic and geologic forces that would just as soon have you dead, such as droughts, floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, tsunamis, and volcanoes, there's no end of creatures that want to suck your blood, inject you with venom, infect your physiology, or simply eat you.

In fact, surveying the natural order, John Stuart Mill was far nearer the mark when he wrote: If a tenth of the pains taken in finding signs of an all-powerful benevolent god had been employed in collecting evidence to blacken the creator's character, what scope would not have been found in the animal kingdom? It is divided into devourers and devoured, most creatures being lavishly fitted with instruments to torment their prey.

Why does everything have to be so hard? [Eragon] wondered. Because , said Saphira, everyone wants to eat, but no one wants to be eaten.

It was, after all, the natural order of things. Animals killed weaker animals. Humans killed animals. I killed humans. Every species had their foe. I shuddered to think what monster was powerful enough to hunt me.

Did you know that mako shark fetuses eat each other in the womb?... Its true. Only cannibal fetuses survive to be born. Can you imagine if people were like that?

The big fish ate the little and

The big fish ate the little and that was how it worked. To me that

Finally, she said: "I'm lonely" — it's weird but you tell the wolves things, sometimes. You can't help it, all these old wounds come open and suddenly you're confessing to a wolf who never says anything back. She said: "I'm lonely," and they ate her in the street.