As long as cars aren’t moving faster than a natural predator would, a prey animal will usually get out of the way in time, even if the driver doesn’t brake. The hunted maintain what’s called a spatial margin of safety. They’re able to visually intuit the distance between themselves and a predator, and they have an uncanny sense of exactly how close they can let that predator come before they need to take off. Flight initiation distance, or FID, as that closest point is called, shrinks and lengthens according to circumstances. If animals or birds are feeding on something nutrient-rich and
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