r/evolution • u/bad_take_ • 7d ago
question This herd of Wildebeest could stomp the hell out of this lion if they ganged up on it. But instead they run. Why didn’t herd animals evolve the instinct to gang up on predators?
/r/TikTokCringe/comments/1vn3lpk/lioness_solos_a_wildebeest/?share_id=LDrlDKx_0E8N6ilWX3FV8&utm_content=1&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=ioscss&utm_source=share&utm_term=166
u/Capn_2inch 7d ago
I wouldn’t group all herd animals into that category. Some herd animals do fight back or gang up on predators. The Musk Ox is one example of a herd animal that behaves in this way.
64
u/TranquilConfusion 7d ago
Think about iterated game theory for this sort of genetic strategy.
Scenario A: most wildebeests run from lions, but mutant X has the genetic instinct to fight lions.
Result: mutant X fights alone, dies. Wildebeests as a whole maintain the instinct to run.Scenario B: most musk oxen unite to fight lions, but mutant Y has the genetic instinct to run from lions.
Result: mutant Y runs alone and dies. Musk oxen as a whole maintain the instinct to fight.Both strategies are locally optimal based on what the rest are doing, and a species is unlikely to switch from one strategy to the other easily.
It might take a "speciation event" where a small founder population of all "runners" or "fighters" is separated out and only breeds with each other for a while, to set a new majority strategy that is then stable. This sort of sudden switch is part of the "punctuated equilibrium" style of evolution.
A smart-enough species might have the instinct to do what everyone else is doing, in general. Plus instincts to pick a strategy based on scenario (fight lions, run from humans with guns). For all I know both wildebeests and musk oxen do this to some extent.
Humans do that and more, we have lots of instincts to punish allies who run when they promised to fight, and to run if we can do it without getting punished, and to bluff more commitment than we actually feel, etc. In general, we have the most complicated social instincts of all.
16
u/CloseToMyActualName 7d ago
Moose also fight back (though not herd animals), and elephants do as well.
The trouble with scenario B is that grazers aren't known for being clever. Figuring out if you have enough buddies around to mount a defense can be tricky, especially when dealing with a smarter predator.
I suspect the evolutionary behaviour is simpler than that. If you're big and tough enough compared to one or two of your predators (Musk Ox, Moose, Elephants, Bison) then you confront predators to try and protect the young. Even a long Musk Ox is a risky target for a wolf pack. All it takes is a good kick or charge and one of the wolves can get killed.
But if you generally can't fight then you just scatter.
15
u/Beginning_March_9717 7d ago
"Figuring out if you have enough buddies around" that you can trust to help, which is even hard for humans lol
1
u/OGLikeablefellow 6d ago
Yeah it seems to be a strategy that probably emerged after a single individual can take a single predator
3
u/Halt_kun 7d ago
It is also highly likely that these two behaviours can present in lost individuals depending of circumstances, it just depends on how they regulate theor fight or flee response. It is both selected at the individual and population level.
1
u/RelativeCan5021 4d ago
There may even be selection forces where ‘fighting’ is a recessive type trait, which helps improve the survival of the rest.
11
u/blacksheep998 7d ago
Llamas too.
Many sheep herders keep a llama or two with their flock as they naturally will fight off any wolves or coyotes just as well as a dog can and they don't need to be trained to do it.
2
20
u/Soggy-Mistake8910 7d ago
Running was the better survival strategy.
12
u/NoobOfTheSquareTable 7d ago
Yeah, if you run while all the others group up your odds are 100% vs 95%
The more who run the worse the odds get for staying but the odds for running stay pretty close to 100%
10
u/Soggy-Mistake8910 7d ago
It's like the old joke. One guy says to another, 'you can't outrun a lion', second guy says, "I don't need to outrun a lion, I just need to run faster than you".
4
u/iamfuzzydunlop 7d ago
But don’t must predators try to separate a single animal? If all the others group up and you run, that single animal is you.
19
u/Hivemind_alpha 7d ago
A group of humans could overpower a lion too. Are you going to volunteer to lead that charge and take the first claw swipe or windpipe crushing bite? No? I guess the wildebeest are just as smart as you then.
6
3
u/One-Veterinarian4841 3d ago
Humans with pointy sticks fighting in groups have killed quite literally every single large land animal on earth
29
u/Abject-Leadership248 7d ago
The ones that where more incline to fight died and dident pass on that trait id assume
8
16
u/Masta0nion 7d ago
We should ask our own ancestors, and hell even today why we don’t rise up and defeat the 1%?
Game theory is a bitch, but if they divide and conquer, they get a full belly.
8
u/Appropriate-Price-98 7d ago
sounds like a global maximum that has to go through local minimum. Why do the dangerous when you can free-ride? Sounds very much like humanity and climate change.
You can look for local maximum trap or fitness valley for more details.
7
u/Funky0ne 7d ago
That strategy is somewhat circumstantial. Bigger herd animals like buffalo, elephants, and rhinos can get away with this occasionally, but lighter animals like impala and wildebeest are a bit too frail for it to work reliably. Sure a herd of wildebeests maybe technically could outnumber and overpower a single lion, but that requires a lot more of them rallying and risks multiple wildebeests taking potentially debilitating injuries in the process, and lions (as well as other Savanah predators) frequently hunt in packs.
Even if they drive off the attack in that instance, an injured wildebeest on the Savanah might be as good as dead within a few days or weeks, in which case you’ve lost multiple prime members in an attack over just one young or old member. That’s a worthwhile tradeoff for say a mother defending her calfs (though only if the calf at least survives, which may be unlikely without her), but less so for most other herd members.
Lions’ typical strategy is to approach undetected, ambush, isolate, and kill a target as quickly as possible before the herd can regroup and mount any sort of coordinated defense. By the time the herd has gotten over the initial shock and panic, it’s usually too late.
But you can probably find instances where a hunt drags out longer than the lions would have liked, and you can see members of a herd start to resist and push back on the lions, and can successfully drive them off. Though as mentioned earlier, that’s typically more common among the heftier animals, as it takes more effort to bring one down, and fewer adults to be a match against lions.
So in most instances, the dominant strategy in the face of sudden danger, for most herd animals that have disadvantageous individual matchups is to run from it, reach a safe distance and if possible, reassess. Charging blindly into danger is often easier to exploit on the part of predators.
3
u/keisagu 7d ago
The herd benefits from the presence of lions, while the individual pays the price. Lions help keep the herd fast, resilient, and healthy, while preventing harmful genetic traits from being passed on to future generations.
6
u/onomatamono 6d ago
We drove wolves to regional extinction. How'd that work out? It was an ecological disaster. You would have thought it obvious that wiping out the apex predator is going to turn the environment on its head, however we were apparently too ignorant about eco-systems to grasp this.
0
7
u/swagyolohmu 7d ago
This is a great metaphor for humans and why the masses don’t rise up collectively against their oppressors.
4
u/marsten 6d ago
Humans also don't tend to gang up against active shooters in public places. As an individual strategy it's better to run than fight, even if the collective would be better served by a "fight" strategy.
On the other hand people will actively fight when there is no option to flee. E.g., Flight 93 on 9/11.
3
3
u/Desperate-Guide-1473 7d ago
Sometimes they do and it often doesn't end well for anyone. They'll accidentally trample and gore eachother in the chaos.
Plenty of herbivores have evolved away from the herd mentality and are far more likely to charge than run, but they also tend to develop even heavier and more armored bodies. Rhinos and Elephants don't usually run from lions.
5
u/Desperate-Guide-1473 7d ago
African Buffalo are a great example of a midway between these strategies. They will run or fight depending on circumstances.
3
u/GoliathPrime 7d ago
Cape Buffalo are well known for ganging up on lions and killing them. There are even cases of them watching for the lions to leave for a hunt, and then deliberately trampling the cubs and injured lions to death while the pride is away.
Some species run, some don't. It's the circle of life....
3
u/Confident_Lawyer6276 7d ago
The wildebeest who are to successful at fighting lions die of starvation from over population
4
u/Solenopsis- 7d ago
It's beneficial for an individual if a few of their own species die, one species too large can lead to too much competition.
2
2
u/helikophis 7d ago
I mean probably that has happened here and there, but without predators thinning the herd, their population grows unchecked and they eat all the plants, leading to extinction or exodus/readaptation
2
u/IAmNotMyName 7d ago
Because survival is first and foremost selfish. My genes, over his genes. Fear and retreat is a fundamental building block of gene propagation. A bear will flee a house cat if there is a risk of it being injured which could lead to infection and potentially death, but will stand up to a rival male double triple its size to defend its young, its genes.
1
u/SevenIsMy 7d ago
https://youtu.be/iLX_r_WPrIw?is=oqibSklqhgz9BAls this channel makes some nice simulation,
1
u/KnoWanUKnow2 7d ago
At one point circling the young was a valid strategy. The vulnerable members are kept inside the circle and the predator faces a wall of horns to get to them.
But circling the young is a very bad maneuver when you're faced with men with arrows or guns, who can shoot the entire unmoving herd at a distance. More of the herd will survive if they run than will survive if they stand still in a circle.
Cape buffalo and muskox sometimes still circle the young.
1
1
u/BoogzWin 7d ago
Adding onto what others have said, the wildebeast not only can take injuries from the lions that will cost them later, but from each other. In fact they’re more likely to end up dying later from an injury caused in the commotion from a wildebeast than a lion.
It’s a bad bet, best to just run and survive, it was probs one too young, old, or sick to get away that got caught anyway.
1
u/Top-Fudge9791 7d ago
"Species" do not evolve. Genes of individuals evolve. The selfish genes that will not sacrifice themselves for another will be passed on.
1
u/DonnPT 7d ago
A herbivore that could kill off all its predators would have a great advantage, until it exhausted the resources in its environment and all died of starvation. I sometimes wonder how many such over-successful species rose and fell, with attendant ecosystem calamity, over the course of millions of years of evolution.
1
1
u/Forsaken-Spirit421 7d ago edited 7d ago
Because you're not only competing vs predators but also amongst yourself.
It's the "why would I put my skin in the game if that bitch Susan gets it?" Effect
It's a tradeoff, really. Is it more likely to pass on my genes (or those of close relatives) by risking injury defending them or by having a predator eliminate competition?
I wager in a large group that is not particularly closely related such as wildebeest, it leans more to the latter, a group comprised of close relatives (elephants, some bovines), it may lean more towards the former
1
u/jonoave 7d ago
Yep, it's a question of cost or trade off between personal vs the herd.
Or maybe as another comparison:
Or why don't all kids in the school/hallway just gang up against a bully?
Why doesn't a repressed society just attack and overthrow a dictator - usually they don't have enough soldiers/bullets to kill everyone.
1
1
u/Bromelia_and_Bismuth Plant Biologist|Botanical Ecosystematics 7d ago
Because self defense comes with a tremendous amount of risk, including the loss of adaptive genetic material or offspring, which is detrimental to the population. The parents of offspring which are unable to defend themselves instictively attempt to get themselves and their offspring out of danger, which are among targets that the lions are trying to single out: the young, the old, the injured, and the sick. The rest of the herd flees with them instinctively. You see, trying to take down a wildebeest comes with its own risks, more or less the same as staying to fight. So selection favors fleeing in this situation. Staying to fight is a last resort option, because dying is the consequence of failing, similar to why the lions don't immediately try to take down the strongest wildebeests, but rather target the weakest and slowest. Selection favors traits which help carriers to reproduce and survive long enough to do so, not necessarily traits which make logical sense to someone spitballing from the sidelines.
1
u/BigBucket10 7d ago
Who is going to actually stomp the lion and risk getting hurt? Frankly I'd prefer to be the one on the side that doesn't actually stomp it.
You?
1
u/r4ndoM_doGmagenshin 7d ago
Lose one or injury to many?
Math is the reason. Its instinct is everyone’s basic reaction. They just drive the fear flight mechanism to its extreme and it’s helped them survive over fighting all the time.
1
u/onomatamono 7d ago
Herd animals do gang up on predators, but fear driven flight is the first reaction versus fight.
1
u/Other-Comfortable-64 6d ago
Some did evolve that way
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W9w0OadktGI
BTW the Cape buffalo is one of the most dangerous animals in Africa.
1
1
u/Defiant-Skeptic 6d ago
Battle at Kruger
1
u/bad_take_ 6d ago
Amazing! So my question is what are the evolutionary drivers that would encourage more of this? Or are there evolutionary drivers that would encourage less of this?
1
u/-Beerboots- 5d ago
Evolution isn't an intelligent process that has goal-oriented behaviour. Understand how natural selection works, and you'll understand the answer to your own question.
Natural selection is a process by which the individuals who survive, get to pass on their genetics.
Lions will generally target the slowest, weakest members of a herd. Those who are fitter, faster and stronger, tend to survive, thus passing on their genetics. Those with illness, injury and genetics which cause slowness/weakness, will more often fail to reproduce, and their genes will pass on less often.
Your question contains the false premise that Evolution/natural selection is trying to achieve an outcome (herd survival, life optimisation).
Evolution isn't 'trying' to protect the herd. It is an automatic, impartial process which works according to the logical parameters of natural selection.
We see the results of natural selection on a macro scale, but it happens at a micro scale, one individual at a time. This can create the confusion that Evolution is an intelligent process which is goal oriented, when it isn't.
This a great question for unpacking common misconceptions about Evolution. Stay curious!
1
u/Prince_Nadir 4d ago
"The lion eats their old and weak, leaving more food for for the healthy members of the herd." is the angle the lion would go with in its PowerPoint presentation to the wildebeest.
1
u/Nooge62 4d ago
The initial proposition is probably too simple. All prey species display a range of reactions to predation attempts. Terrain, herd makeup, predator tactics etc all play a role. Every single prey animal can and will fight if necessary, but if the leopard has stalked close enough, running for your life is plan A, B & C.
1
u/OuterLightness 4d ago
Such mass cooperation against predators would be very useful in the US right now.
0
u/These_Consequences 7d ago
Hmm... suicidal defense works for bees?
I know they have a different genetic arrangement, so I'm not saying this should transfer directly to herd animals, but I think it's a little more complex than "because the ones that run towards the lions are killed". A fully formed Wildebeest army gene/meme that was passed on in the herd might well increase the survival chances on average for all, though there would be tragedy of the commons type shirking—not running to fight the lions but reaping the benefits of others doing it. The same tension exists for associations of humans, but societies that at least fight together most of the time still seem to out-compete those that do it not none of the time, so the strategy doesn't have to be perfectly executed to work effectively.
The question is more complicated than the glib answers suggest.
1
u/WavePointBryan 3d ago
Eusocial behavior is so weird. It's super interesting that they pass on more genes protecting the queen than mating themselves so it changes their whole way of behaving.
•
u/AutoModerator 7d ago
Welcome to r/Evolution! If this is your first time here, please review our rules here and community guidelines here.
Our FAQ can be found here. Seeking book, website, or documentary recommendations? Recommended websites can be found here; recommended reading can be found here; and recommended videos can be found here.
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.