Why Don’t Predators Hunt Their Prey into Extinction?
Curiosity Weekly
Warner Bros. Discovery
4.6 • 964 Ratings
🗓️ 20 October 2020
⏱️ 12 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Learn about why predators don’t hunt their prey into extinction, then discover the history of crossword puzzles from author Adrienne Raphel!
Why Don’t Predators Hunt Their Prey Into Extinction? By Cameron Duke
- Dickman, C., Nimmo, D., Ritchie, E., & Doherty, T. (2019, May 14). Invasive predators are eating the world’s animals to extinction – and the worst is close to home. The Conversation. https://theconversation.com/invasive-predators-are-eating-the-worlds-animals-to-extinction-and-the-worst-is-close-to-home-64741
- Krohne, D. T. (2018). Ecology : evolution, application, integration. Oxford University Press.
- PREDATOR-PREY DYNAMICS. (2019). Utk.Edu. http://www.tiem.utk.edu/~gross/bioed/bealsmodules/predator-prey.html
- The Red Queen | The American Naturalist. (2020). The American Naturalist. https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/283213?journalCode=an
Additional resources from Adrienne Raphel:
- Pick up "Thinking Inside the Box: Adventures with Crosswords and The Puzzling People Who Can’t Live Without Them" on Amazon: https://amzn.to/3kOjdCv
- Adrienne Raphel's website: https://www.adrienneraphel.com/
- Adrienne Raphel on Twitter: https://twitter.com/adrienneraphel
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi, you're about to get smarter in just a few minutes with Curiosity Daily from Curiosity.com. |
| 0:06.4 | I'm Ashley Hamer. |
| 0:07.5 | And I'm Natalia Reagan. |
| 0:08.5 | Today you learn why predators don't hunt their prey into extinction. |
| 0:11.6 | Then discover the history of crossword puzzles from author Adrian Rafele. |
| 0:15.6 | Let's satisfy some curiosity. |
| 0:17.6 | Human activity has driven many species into extinction. |
| 0:22.1 | And that trend is only getting worse. driven many species into extinction. |
| 0:22.6 | And that trend is only getting worse. |
| 0:24.9 | Which might make you wonder, |
| 0:26.7 | do any non-human species drive other species to extinction? |
| 0:30.7 | You may be surprised to learn the answer is yes, but the culprits are almost always |
| 0:35.8 | invasive species. |
| 0:37.2 | How come invasive predators can hunt native species into extinction, but native predators don't |
| 0:42.2 | tend to. |
| 0:43.4 | In a natural ecosystem, predators and prey evolve together. |
| 0:47.4 | This is called co-evolution, and it works like this. |
| 0:50.8 | The predator eats its prey and through natural selection that prey |
| 0:54.1 | evolves defenses to the predator. The predators that get around those |
| 0:58.1 | defenses survive and the ones that can't well don't. This is what you might call an evolutionary arms race |
| 1:04.7 | through this process predators often specialize they evolved traits that help them |
| 1:09.9 | get around the defenses of only a couple of different species. |
... |
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