‘The rabbit runs faster than the fox, because the rabbit is running for his life while the fox is only running for his dinner.’ My colleague John Krebs and I have dubbed this the ‘life/dinner principle’. Because of the life/dinner principle, animals might at times behave in ways that are not in their own best interests, manipulated by some other animal. Actually, in a sense they are acting in their own best interests: the whole point of the life/dinner principle is that they theoretically could resist manipulation but it would be too costly to do so. Perhaps to resist manipulation by a cuckoo
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