Why don’t lions hunt other lions? Another good question of a type which is seldom asked is: Why do antelopes run away from lions instead of hitting back? The reason lions do not hunt lions is that it would not be an ESS for them to do so. A cannibal strategy would be unstable for the same reason as the hawk strategy in the earlier example. There is too much danger of retaliation. This is less likely to be true in contests between members of different species, which is why so many prey animals run away instead of retaliating. It probably stems originally from the fact that in an interaction
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