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Eat or be eaten… This is the cruellest dilemma of life that we all face, but it is also one of the most fruitful principles of evolution… Preys and predators, same fight?
Let’s take another look at the evolution of life. All living beings on Earth, all animal species (including ours) constantly have choices to make in order to live and perpetuate themselves. The cruellest and most basic of these biological dilemmas can be summed up in one sentence: eat or be eaten, it is the dilemma of the gazelle in the savannah who must lower his head to feed on grass shoots at the risk of not not see the predatory lions or cheetahs watching her…
Why so many dilemmas and why the most cruel of all, to eat or to be eaten, is one of the most fruitful principles of life and of evolution?
With Denis Realeprofessor of biological sciences at the University of Quebec in Montreal, specialist in ecology and animal behavior, for his book The gazelle dilemma paru chez Humansciences.