Lately I have been boring people with talk about apex predators and what that concept means. An apex predator is a species that hunts other animals but is not hunted itself. But why is a species apex, and what does "apex" really mean?
1. I started out thinking that by definition there could be only one apex species in a given area. I was wrong. In California 800 years ago there were golden bears, wolves and cougars, all of them apex. Swimming off the coast, orcas (killer whales) were apex.
2. There must be many factors that can contribute to being apex. The two that interested me most were intelligence and commitment to coordinated family teams, as illustrated by orcas and wolves. And humans.
3. I stumbled into what biologists call "the species problem." To my surprise, around ten subspecies of orcas exist (orcas are, like pilot whales, porpoises). Some subspecies may be different species--the orca groupings differ a lot. What constitutes a separate species is not entirely clear.
4. What happens when two apex species meet by chance in the wild? Most of the time, I think nothing happens unless a very young predator gets attacked. I did once see a wolf--part of my family-- come across, for the first time, a bear. The wolf nearly exploded with rage. His reaction seemed built-in.
This is where a commitment to family values might make a difference. A wolf team (or an orca family) hunts in a coordinated way. Bears hunt alone. Six or seven wolves would surround a deer or a bear. The bear would stand up to fight. But at all times the bear would have several wolves jumping around behind it.
The bear might decide to go away.
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