The Myth of the Super Persistent Predator · 4:21am Apr 10th, 2018
I've seen a lot of Super Persistent Predator type stories in various media, and they generally suffer from a total lack of explanation as to why the animal starts behaving so oddly. When I was younger, I simply accepted it; now that I know more about ethology it makes little sense.
Look at predator-prey interactions from the predator's point of view. The predator has to take prey (or help its pack take prey) every time it wants to eat meat (which, in the case of an obligate predator, is generally at least once every few days for an endotherm or every few weeks for an ectotherm). Given that the predator isn't always 100% successful in the hunt, this means a lot of encounters with prey over the course of its lifetime.
Now, prey does not want to be eaten. And the prey reaction to a predator boils down to "flee, hide or fight."
Unless one is preying upon something much smaller, slower and stupider than oneself (insectivores often enjoy such a situation) this means that the predator must put itself in some danger. If the prey flees and the predator fails to catch it, sure, there's no fight, only a waste of energy in a botched pursuit. But if the prey flees and is caught; or it hides and is found; and especially if it turns to fight, then violence will ensue, and the predator may not always have it its own way.
Now of course predators usually prey on animals which they have either individually or as a pack some advantage over. If they didn't, they wouldn't survive very long. But "some advantage over" is not the same thing as "entirely safe to confront."
Suppose that you are a predator. You face some prey animal which you can defeat almost all the time in a straight fight, with you getting a minor wound 5% of the time, a crippling wound 3% of the time, and a fatal wound 2% of the time. Bringing down this prey provides you sufficient food for a week.
Is this safe prey for you? Can you make a living by hunting this, and this alone?
Not at all. Suppose that you hunt this prey for 50 weeks (most of a year; I'll assume you eat something else the other 2 weeks.
The chances are 1 in 50 that you will suffer a fatal wound each week you hunt it; thus the chances are that you will die that year. The chances are about 1.5 in 50 that you will suffer a crippling wound each week, and a crippling wound in a state of Nature means that you may suffer slow starvation unless you are a valued part of a larger social unit.
You would be well-advised to hunt this prey only when you believe you have some special advantage (you come upon it already weakened, or an especially small, slow or stupid individual of the species, or in company of others in your social unit). Otherwise, even though you win most of your fights with it, you will die young.
And that's what's wrong with the super persistent predator of fiction. Real predators usually only strike when they have achieved surprise, or greatly outmatch their prey. We tend to imagine predators as super persistent because we tend to be, but that is because we normally hunt in groups with ranged or at least thrown weapons. Human hunters are particularly unlikely to be slain by their prey, even when that prey is otherwise dangerous game.
Now it's true that something huge, like a megaladon or tyrannosaur, could bring down any but a very heavily-armed human with little risk to its own safety. But then, of how much nutritional value is something man-sized to a megaladon or tyrannosaur? Tigers, by contrast, are roughly on our own scale: they mass a few times more than we do at most. Man-hunting, in regions where humans are mostly disarmed, actually makes some sense for a tiger (though it's not entirely safe for them).
Far from being super-persistent hunters of men, most predators are afraid of Man -- and with good reason, as humans habitually destroy all animals dangerous to them which they can find in the vicinity of their settlements. Predators commonly retreat if they are discovered by humans before being ready to attack them. And almost always getting hurt -- even if the injury be minor -- will cause a predator to break off its attack, and usually flee.
This is not because predators are cowardly. It is because predators are in the business of predation to find food, not deathless glory in some sort of gladitorial battles with dangerous prey. If a human hurts a predator which was trying to prey on him, his danger level just got upgraded in the mind of the predator, and it will break off the attack and reconsider its actions.
In fact, the likeliest reason for a predator to act super persistent toward humans is not because it is hunting them, but because it either is, or thinks it is, being hunted by them. Or, even more so, that its offspring are being hunted by them.
Most of what I've said here regarding Humans also applies, of course, to the Ponies. The Ponies are not themselves dietary predators -- they are obligate herbivores, and merely occasional omnivores (real horses will cheerfully gobble up helpless animals which they have no particular reason not to kill). Hence, herbivores have less reason to be afraid of them.
However, just like Humans, the Ponies are threatened by large enough predators (and "large enough" means "large enough to be dangerous to their children, not necessarily to full-grown stallions and mares). Like Humans, the Ponies have weapons, and other technologies, and would use them against dangerous wild beasts. Thus, large predators would (quite rightly) fear them.
Consequently, when one writes a story in which a predator attacks a Pony, one should consider the context to consider whether or not this attack seems likely. Note that it need not always be reasonable: I know of real-life cases in which non-rabid raccoons and bobcats attacked full-grown humans, even though neither beast would be a good match for a man in a protracted fight. Animals aren't always reasonable; sometimes, they think they are in danger from men when they aren't, and resolve to drive them off, or at worst sell their lives dearly. Anyone who has worked at an animal shelter knows that even a feral domestic cat can claw and bite viciously -- usually out of terror on the part of the poor felid.
Just remember that animals always have their own motivation, and it generally forms no part of their design to be slain by men -- or ponies -- for experience points.
This is a good essay/article here. I remember those old 'super persistent predator' stories from my youth as well -- I assume at least some of them were from that big wave of 'Nature Attacks' films following the success of Jaws? I.e., Grizzly, Day of the Animals, and similar films in which animals attack humans even under suicidal conditions? Though at least DotA had a sort-of reason with the 'virus'. Even if they didn't reveal it until the very last line of the movie.
And unless I am using the term SPP incorrectly, I seem to recall that the Tsavo lions acted like that. They would press attacks home even while surrounded by terrified men hitting them with sticks and work tools and sometimes charged through fires to kill the one particular human they were focused on. When you remember the stories of the cunning they displayed it becomes easy to see why some natives thought of them as literally demonic.
"Moby Dick does not seek you, you seek him!"
I think it might have something to do with Man’s innate desire to see ourselves in things that are not human; for example, we see “faces” in things, we talk to our pets, we curse at malfunctioning inanimate objects...
Man is, for all our stupidity, a very persistent creature. Few other predator animals do what we do, as you have mentioned, in wiping out perceived dangers in other animals that may or may not threaten us immediately; in our collective past, Man was a dogged hunter/gatherer, often going miles just to chase down a single creature, tracking it to its lair or to its exhaustion, and not always simply for food, but for revenge against the bear that killed a relative, or the tiger that mauled a local child.
How many times have we had mass killings of rattlesnakes or sharks following an incident involving one where death or serious injury occurred? And what is much of the subconscious reasoning behind it?
“Punish that animal and its friends. Teach it a lesson.”
Which may work on an individual human and/or its tribe/community/race...
But snakes and sharks? They lack the capacity to understand the concept of tribe/community/race, and of the animals that DO, how many understand that one individual or subset of individuals behaving a certain way could require punishment of every member of that tribe/community/race?
The über-persistent predator is a reflection of Man’s own obsessive/vengeful tendencies.
The SPP plays to one of the audience's primal fears, that there is some implacable something lurking unseen, waiting to pounce. It just takes all of those potential somethings and lumps them together into a single one.
It's interesting to note that many modern spins on the SPP give it intelligence enough that it has a reason to pursue its victims beyond hunting or defending its young. The Terminator, the Yautja, and others are all the more terrifying because there is a mind on the other end of the chase, but one that has so fully dedicated itself to that chase that it will never yield, save perhaps for a single condition known only to it.
As you noted, ponies began lower on the food chain than we, so their horror entertainment definitely has SPPs both animalistic and intelligent to cater to an even stronger ancestral fear of what might lurk in the tall grass. (Indeed, the Olden Mare from "Sleepless in Ponyville" appears to be an example of the latter.) Still, their more direct influence over much of the ecosystem in areas outside of the Everfree means that actual predation on ponies is likely minimal.
Also, persistence hunting is a thing.
Where you don't actually attack the prey, just chase it and chase it and chase it, until it just dies of exhaustions. Humans in some places still use that method of getting food.
I think it's been touched on a bit, but it's worth noting that there are some things that will make otherwise normal predators act in a more persistent or seemingly suicidal way: on a group level if habitat loss or loss of their normal prey forces them into a corner, or for individuals rabies or other neurological damage or diseases, or the animal version of a personality disorder (usually in mammals, the result of being orphaned or improperly socialized in effective behavior.)
But, as you totally correctly point out, those are specific circumstances with reasons, not typical behavior. Evolution will take care of that shit on a macro level.
Super Persistent Predators bug me too, though I suppose it depends, as you say, on context. Predators chasing multiple humans who look like easy targets makes sense, especially if the story shows the predator giving up after a certain amount of effort fails to deliver results. Predators acting like hyperactive juggernauts and serial killers on a vendetta against one human after contracting rabies... does not make sense.
To pick an example, the T. rex from Jurassic Park fluctuates between this trope and believable behaviour. On the one hand, its initial encounter is half-curiosity and half-"there's canned food right on my doorstep, this should be easy pickings". And it does give up the jeep chase later once it becomes clear the thing's proving more trouble than it's worth.
On the other hand, I have no idea why it shoved the kids' tour car over the cliff (failed attempt to flip it over?), and quite apart from smashing through a tree branch halfway through, it really shouldn't be running after the jeep that fast. A creature that size would break a leg if it tripped.
Although I get that SPPs are abundant in fiction chiefly because of the dramatic inconvenience they cause to their victims. Thrill-seeking audiences want to see rabid, unstoppable killing machines who hunt beyond all reason, simply because they then want to see how the prey will avoid getting killed.
Well, that and the average person's understanding of predatory ecology is basically non-existent. Or fuelled by easy prejudice.
The Jurassic Park series often had this problem; they set the dinosaurs up as being relatively normal animals. They had to pull a few contrivances in the first one, but overall the humans just kept running into their territory. With Lost World, we were presented with a load of dumbasses who kept hauling around a crying T-Rex child, and then they had to dump them in San Francisco. Jurassic Park III was an improvement, but still lacking in logic.
(I tried to get that to go to the 21:20 mark, did I do that right?)
Something that truly fascinated me about Jurassic World is how they went into the psychology of a mentally unbalanced animal, and that such a thing is even possible. The Indominus Rex is just running on fear and aggression after a lifetime of poor captivity. But even then, she's not even chasing after any of the human characters. The repeat encounters are because the humans are actively hunting her.
I'm feeling less confident about Fallen Kingdom.
After being abducted from their island home after it exploded, I totally get why all the rescued dinosaurs are on edge and ready to kill anything that approaches (4837448). What doesn't add up is why the Carnotaurus is bothering with killing the humans when it's actively running for its life. Or why T-Rex bothers with Carnotaurus.
Also, I think Owen's being whiney at the beginning. She didn't want to be with you that way dude, get over it!
It's a good point. The only area I would say it doesn't really apply is in a fantasy setting, where things like Timberwolves exist. Of course, Timberwolves may not even be predators, monsters that kill and don't eat their prey aren't predators in a traditional sense. (Interestingly enough, the one time we see Timberwolves be really persistent is in hunting Spike, the only being that they might instinctually recognize as a threat to them.)
Wolves in general are probably the predator that hunts most like man, being both pack-like and the other great persistence predator.
Completely valid points, and the absurdity of the Super Persistent Predator could be exploited narrative-wise: I don't know if anyone has suggested it yet, but the 'Smart/Knowledgeable Person' of a group which are being hunted by a creature/creatures could point out how utterly abnormal it is that particular predator(s) is/are so relentless in pursuing them. This could serve as foreshadowing for the readers as the characters are clued in that there's something wrong with their animal adversary, and perhaps even the whole environment they found themselves in if all the predators behave like that.