By ROEDY
Added: Wed, 29 Sep 2010 09:56:01 UTC

It seems to me predator-prey drives much of evolution. If a prey loses an encounter, it loses its life. If a predator loses an encounter, it loses a meal, somewhat less serious.

Any decent theory should make some predictions. So I would expect faster evolution in prey than predators. Is that so? If not, why not?

Another way of asking this question would be to ask, "why don't rabbits have poison spurs to fend off wolves?".

In watching videos of wild animals, it often struck me that if the prey animals ganged up, they could easily defeat the predator, yet you rarely see this happening except a mother defending a calf. Musk ox do. What are the conditions needed for prey to co-operate in defence? Warning calls are more common than physical defence.

P.S. has anyone got a list of predictions from evolutionary theory, rather than just explanations consistent with it? I became acutely aware of the difference explaining the features of a NMR spectrum of a given chemical vs predicting what chemical generated them. The first is extremely easy compared with the second, even though they appear to require the same knowledge.

TAGGED: EVOLUTION