The Tiger

by John Vaillant

“All species have been shaped by the forces of evolution to meet immediate needs,” wrote George Page in his companion to the television series Inside the Animal Mind. “The more a given species needs to be conscious of, the more it is conscious of. Either that or it becomes extinct.” Georges Leroy, a naturalist and gamekeeper to Louis XV at Versailles, had ample opportunity to observe predator-prey relations and he speculated that the reason wolves seemed so much smarter than deer was that they would starve to death if they weren’t. While deer forage is stationary and abundant, wolf prey, by contrast, is not only highly mobile but doing its utmost to avoid being eaten. In order to succeed, predators must actively—and consciously—contrive successful hunting scenarios by adapting to, and manipulating, random events within a constantly shifting environment. This, as any hunter or businessperson knows, is hard to do, and these conditions favor the prey almost every time.