The Naturalist (The Naturalist, #1)

by Andrew Mayne

I’m studying the environment that creates them. I don’t think it’s a behavior exclusive to tadpoles. It can be on a smaller microorganism scale, or human size.” Glenn arches an eyebrow. “Humans?” “Yes. You can see this in the womb, where one fetus takes nutrients from another, causing varying birth weights. In vanishing twin syndrome, probably one in ten pregnancies results in a twin, but one is absorbed by the other. Did the mother cause this? Did the evil twin? If so, the evil twin always wins. “Within a contained environment, like a pond, one organism spontaneously regulates the population, then returns to normal. Apex predators—a dominant animal at the top of the food chain—is going to be emergent when the population gets to a certain size. You see this with cannibal rats, spiders, and even with computer programs.”