The Mind of the Predator

Good article but for me that was a bit of a no brainer :)

I have never thought of predators as “cold and brutal” and lacking the social bonds that herbivores have. Through my camera work I do see how much killing and eating goes on but while it can be brutal I don’t see it as anything other than animals doing what they have to do to survive and that includes the occasional “playing with their food”. I am not unfazed by it all but when it comes to nature at large it is merciless and still beautiful.

Still a  good read to educate the public. Next I would like to see more people refrain from calling a young and healthy puma ( just to pick one predator ;) as “very skinny”. I get that constantly when I post pictures of mountain lions in the wild. People are used to house cats and zoo animals and the sight of a sleek and hungry cat has become unnatural to them. The fact is that in order to chase and take down a deer a cat has to be both hungry and slim.

“The fact is that in order to chase and take down a deer a cat has to be both hungry and slim.”

This reminds of how dog mushers talk about their racing dogs.  They like to see a bit of rib definition.  Fat is dead weight and they condition the dogs up through the season so they are consuming and utilizing 10,000 calories a day by the Iditarod.  4 times our (around town) intake in a dog that weigh 35-40 pounds! So their metabolic rate per kg is about 15 times mine during a race.  The musher’s is higher, too – my doc came back 3 belt notches skinnier and you wouldn’t have thought he had it to lose – maybe the 7,000-8,000 per day I’ll do during a death march, but they do it everyday for 10-15 days.