History Main / MorePredatorsThanPrey

*** [[OrderOfTheStick "I once encountered 1d3 Dire Camels. No joke."]]

* ''MonsterHunter'' isn't a perfect example, since you ''do'' see herbivores and you ''do'' see predators eating each other, but the food chain still seems pretty unbalanced. What are all these giant monsters eating?

* LampShaded in ''[[JurrasicPark The Lost World]]'', as they actually ask why the island has more predators than the prey should be able to support.

* WorldOfWarcraft has some serious cases of this; a good example is the Hillsbrad Foothills. There's bears, yeti and giant spiders all over the place, but no major herbivorous beasts to feed them. There's a lot of areas like this in [=WoW=].

[[AC:Film]]
* The movie ''Reign of Fire'', wherein the entire non-microbial population of the world seems to be humans and non-cannibalistic dragons the size of whales. However, the dragons are shown to start eating each other later in the movie. Also Lampshaded, as it was stated that the dragons would eventually start to starve and go back into hibernation, which is apparently what happened the first time around with the dinosaurs.

[[AC:TabletopRPG]]
* Gary Gygax recognized that ''DungeonsAndDragons'' had this problem and tried to justify it in the 1st Edition ''Dungeon Master's Guide''.
-->So many of the monsters are large predators that it is difficult to justify their existence in proximity to one another. [snip] Here are some suggestions. Certain vegetation grows very rapidly in the world - roots or tubers, a grass-like plant, or grain. One or more of such crops support many rabbits or herd animals or wild pigs or people or whatever you like! The vegetation springs up due to a nutrient in the soil (possibly some element unknown in the mundane world) and possibly due to the radiation of the sun as well. A species or two of herbivores which grow rapidly, breed prolifically, and need but scant nutriment is also suggested.
** Early D&D also had climate-appropriate herbivores on its random encounter tables. If they were removed it was presumably trimming, there not being much one can do with camels aside from staring at them. On the other hand, getting in the way of a herd of bison is all sorts of exciting.
*** [[OrderOfTheStick "I once encountered 1d3 Dire Camels. No joke.]]
* {{GURPS}} averts this trope, saying that in an realistic ecosystem, the predators will be rare compared to prey.

[[AC:Literature]]
* In ''TheToughGuideToFantasyland'' by DianaWynneJones, she uses this as a key pieces of evidence for the theory that fantasy worlds' ecosystems have been recently ravaged (another is the way piles of refuse around oppressed peasants' huts don't just rot away.) She comes to the conclusion that the systems are re-establishing themselves with humans at the bottom, and everything will be fine.

** [[MathematiciansAnswer Yes; the two options are not mutually exclusive.]] Predation is normally reserved for non-herbivores, but this distinction is unclear in technical ecology, and even in biology referring to a rabbit as a predator is likely to annoy one's colleagues and mark you as a sophist.

In order to make an environment more hazardous, creators of fiction will often include aggressive predatory beasts that occur in far larger numbers than should be possible given the environmental conditions shown. In RealLife, the larger a creature is, the more energy in the form of food from a suitable source it must consume in order to both grow so large in the first place and to sustain itself on a daily basis. If it is very active it will need even more calories just to survive. Despite this, there will often be a veritable horde of wild, aggressive beasts that roam a desolate wasteland or almost lifeless underground tunnels without having prey to feed on and without attacking each other. Such beasts will often be [[SuperPersistentPredator absurdly persistent when encountering humans]], attacking them seemingly out of hunger that overcomes all sense of self-preservation. This occurs even if their fellows fall like flies around them, and they will never pause to gorge themselves on these fresh bodies that should appear a ready and far less risky food source to them. Could the considered the ecological counterpart to MoreCriminalsThanTargets: in both cases adversaries appear in far greater numbers than their circumstances could support.

Common in post-apocalyptic fiction and on [[DeathWorld Death Worlds]]; in contrast to RealLife, large predators in these kinds of works seem to be less susceptible to the kind of events that should cause them to be severely depleted or go extinct than the smaller creatures they normally feed on. In fact, they often mutate into something far more powerful than their original form while at the same time getting by with ''less'' sustenance. In [=RPGs=] this can possibly be justified by the fact that the herbivorous prey probably doesn't start random encounters with you -- they run like hell. There might actually be tons of them out there quivering in terror behind a tree as you walk by.

** [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predation Failing at pedantry]] [[YouFailBiologyForever and ecology]]. Predation by definition excludes the consumption of plants.

* [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predation Failing at pedantry]] [[YouFailBiologyForever and ecology]]. Predation by definition excludes the consumption of plants.

* [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predation Failing at pedantry.]] Predation by definition ecludes the consumption of plants.

Common in post-apocalyptic fiction; in contrast to RealLife, large predators in these kinds of works seem to be less susceptible to the kind of events that should cause them to be severely depleted or go extinct than the smaller creatures they normally feed on. In fact, they often mutate into something far more powerful than their original form while at the same time getting by with ''less'' sustenance. In [=RPGs=] this can possibly be justified by the fact that the herbivorous prey probably doesn't start random encounters with you -- they run like hell. There might actually be tons of them out there quivering in terror behind a tree as you walk by.

Common in post-apocalyptic fiction; in contrast to RealLife, large predators in these kinds of works seem to be less susceptible to the kind of events that should cause them to be severely depleted or go extinct that the smaller creatures they normally feed on. In fact, they often mutate into something far more powerful than their original form while at the same time getting by with ''less'' sustenance. In [=RPGs=] this can possibly be justified by the fact that the herbivorous prey probably doesn't start random encounters with you -- they run like hell. There might actually be tons of them out there quivering in terror behind a tree as you walk by.

** Early D&D also had climate-appropriate herbivores on its random encounter tables. If they wre removed it was presumably trimming, there not being much one can do with camels aside from staring at them. On the other hand, getting in the way of a herd of bison is all sorts of exciting.

* The computer game ''Metro2033'' has a very strange ecology at work: The surface world has been in the grip of nuclear winter for twenty years, nothing grows there and the air is toxic. The remnants of humanity hide out in old metro stations where the only food sources are domesticated pigs and cultivated mushrooms. The tunnels between the stations are typically infested with hideous mutants that 1) are mostly larger than humans and also faster and stronger, 2) constantly attack humans in order to eat them, 3) never seem to attack each other, despite the fact that there is more meat on their fellows than on humans. A particulary silly example is how the winged beasts called demons will swoop down on human prey that is capable of shooting at it, but leave the far more numerous nosalises (who only have their claws and teeth) alone, even ignoring the bodies of the ones you have already killed.

* In ''The Tough Guide to Fantasyland'' by Diana Wynne Jones, she uses this as a key pieces of evidence for the theory that fantasy worlds' ecosystems have been recently ravaged (another is the way piles of refuse around oppressed peasants' huts don't just rot away.) She comes to the conclusion that the systems are re-establishing themselves with humans at the bottom, and everything will be fine.

* In ''KnightsOfTheOldRepublic II'', on Telos, there are Cannocks (and Bounty Hunters), which are at the very least hostile and onmivorous, but no "peaceful" or herbivorous creatures.

!Examples:

* The ''Fallout'' series of games have numerous examples of this: nuclear war and subsequent collapse of society has left most of the world a barren desolate wasteland with deadly radiation occuring here and there. Despite the fact that there is little prey for them, giant versions of real critters like scorpions or even flies run around, seemingly attacking only the player character and never any other creatures.

* In KOTOR II, on Telos, there are Cannocks (and Bounty Hunters), which are at the very least hostile and onmivorous, but no "peaceful" or herbivorous creatures.

* In ''The Tough Guide to Fantasyland'' by Diana Wynne Jones, she uses this as a key pieces of evidence for the theory that fantasy worlds' ecosystems have been recently ravaged (another is the way piles of refuse around oppressed peasants' huts don't just rot away.) She comes to the conclusion that the systems are re-establishing themselves with humans at the bottom, and everything will be fine.