Coltan Scrivner

These are really pretty easy examples for people to imagine if you're a zebra or gazelle and you're on the Savannah, you're having your brunch.

And in the case of a zebra, a lion walks up or a gazelle, a cheetah walks up.

What do you do?

I'm imagining if I'm a zebra, I'm going to run away.

I don't want to hang out if there's a lion nearby, right?

The problem with that is, do either of you have cats at home?

You've witnessed a lot of cats.

You probably know that cats just sleep most of the time.

Yeah, 22 hours a day.

22, and that's true of most cats, including big cats.

And so if you run every time that you see a lion, you're going to exhaust caloric resources.

You're going to waste time that could have been used towards grazing and actually building those caloric reserves to run when you need to run.

That's exactly what a lion wants you to do is run all the time, right?

And the lion has to only hunt when it's hungry because...

You've seen the Lion King, right?

What happens if you hunt something like hyenas are going to come in and try to take it.

Lots of other hungry animals are going to come in and try to take that if you don't eat it right away.

And then it's going to spoil or vultures are going to come in.

Scavengers will come in.

So lions and other predators are incentivized to pretty much only hunt when they're hungry, which means prey animals are incentivized to understand when their predators are hunting and when they're hungry, what their motivational states are.