History Main / MorePredatorsThanPrey

** Averted in ''[[VideoGame/TheElderScrollsVSkyrim Skyrim]]''. For every bear, sabercat and wolf pack you come across, you see a lot more deer and rabbits. Whether mammoths are preyed on is unsure, what with [[OurGiantsAreBigger giants]] keeping and protecting them as livestock.

* 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. If you point this out to Bao-Dur he reminds you that the planet's being terraformed and the cannocks were introduced to control herbivore numbers. Then[[MegaCorp Czerka Corp]] hijacked the project, released too many cannocks and sent the ecosystem down the tubes. [[DeathWorld Dxun]] has no such excuse, though.

* The [[ProudWarriorRaceGuy Krogan]] homeworld of Tuchanka in ''VideoGame/MassEffect''. Even before the planet was consumed by nuclear war, it was a lush jungle world described as an "evolutionary crucible" of carnivorous and omnivorous life, including [[MeatEatingPlant plant analogues]]. The Krogan themselves were actually a ''prey'' species. Even with the surface now a mix of barren ashy deserts, radioactive salt flats, and alkaline seas, there's still such an abundance of predators that anyone visiting the planet is warned not to travel beyond guarded areas.

* In ''VideoGame/MassEffectAndromeda'', there's an insane amount of continuously-reappearing macropredators like adhi and fiends and very few prey species. It might be partially justified by the late revelation that [[spoiler: the wildlife of Andromeda was largely bioengineered by the [[{{Precursors}} Jardann]] like the angara were and dispersed across each of the habitable planets to create ecosystems]], which also explains why every planet on Andromeda has the same types of wildlife. However, it still doesn't explain why these predators are found in such absurd abundance, unless their vast numbers are consequences of the ecological havoc caused by the Scourge - however, the Scourge happened many centuries ago, by which time the ecosystem ''should'' have collapsed due to the lack of plant-eaters. The best explanation is that these species are adaptable omnivores that also fill plant-eating niches and are aggressive towards the player out of hunger and desperation due to their depleted food sources.

** [[Film/KingKong2005 The 2005 remake]] is a bit better about this, showing some actual predator-prey relations such as the raptor-like ''Venatosaurus'' hunting giant brontosaurs, but there are still far more predators than prey. The companion book fleshes out the environment further by explaining that the entire island is in a constant free-for-all over food, with a lot of the lower-level links in the food chain having specifically evolved to eat carrion, and more herbivores are described than what appears in the film.

* Skull Island, the location of the ''Film/KingKong'' movies suffers from this. Carnivorous dinosaurs, other monstrous reptiles and giant insects are everywhere, and the only herbivores are Kong (who, in some versions, is rather an omnivore, as he eats people) who is TheLastOfHisKind (although in both ''The Son of Kong'' and ''Film/KingKongLives'', another specimen of Kong's species shows up), the Stegosaurus in the 1933 movie, and the Brontosaurus herd in the 2005 movie (the 1933 film's Brontosaurus is either carnivorous or simply hyper-aggressive as it chases down and kills people).

** The natives haven't gone extinct yet because they all find a wild animal and form a parent-zookeeper relationship with it soon after birth.
* A FourthWallMailSlot session in ''Webcomic/DanAndMabsFurryAdventures'' states that [[http://www.missmab.com/Comics/Vol_510.php Furrae's vampires went extinct long ago for exactly this reason]]-- demons, cubi, undead that ''aren't'' [[WeaksauceWeakness sensitive to daylight]], and dragons are all more effective predators competing for the same food source.

* In the world-famous [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Brea_Tar_Pits La Brea Tar Pits]], instead of the usual 1 predator for every 10 prey animals, they have the exact opposite. Most likely, a prey animal or two would get stuck in the asphalt and be unable to escape. Most prey animals know to stay away from dead and dying animals, while predators are drawn to them. Which in turn also got stuck and then attracted more predators.

* In Antarctica, there aren't many, if any plants to eat. As a result, the few animals that thrive there are mostly carnivorous or piscivorous.
* It has been found that many healthy tropical reef systems follow this trope. There are far more predators roaming the waters than there are grazers that they feed on; in fact, there five times as many apex predators as ''everything else combined''. How does this system remain stable? Simple. The smaller fish breed like crazy and the carnivores keep eating them!
** Of course, the base of this food pyramid are eating microscopic organisms that are both photosynthetic, like plants, and yet capable of moving and feeding like animals. Depending how you look at it, the things that feed on this base layer are both herbivores and predators. Even then, however, the vast majority (89%) of the biomass are at the very top of the food web.

* Most cities have far more people (we're opportunistic omnivores, pack-hunting apex predators, and megafauna), housecats (obligate carnivores), and domestic dogs (pack-hunting carnivorous megafauna) than the local environment can support. The only way large cities work is by importing food.
** The exceptions are communities small enough for the locals to feed themselves from the nearby countryside and/or through fishing.
* The difficulty in maintaining this trope is one of the arguments used ''against'' the existence of the Loch Ness Monster. The waters of Loch Ness are extremely dark, which means there is not much plant life in the loch. The loch therefore cannot support a great number of fish that feed on those plants, and thus not many larger fish to feed on the plant-eaters. Of course, this is assuming that the animal - if it exists - eats fish.

* LampShaded in ''Literature/TheLostWorld1995'', as they actually ask why the island has more predators than the prey should be able to support. [[YouFailBiologyForever The stated justification being that prions from the sheep-based feed they were given caused most animals to die young and be scavenged by the predators]]. The characters note that this system is doomed to collapse extremely quickly, both due to said carrion being a rapidly depleting resource and because the predators are infected now.

* The Tribe of Running Water came across this issue in ''Literature/{{Warrior|Cats}}s''. It turns out they lived in ''too'' comfortable an area. They weren't dying nearly as much as their forest-dwelling peers, so soon the area was overpopulated with cats. This led to the tribe splitting up.

* ''TabletopGame/MagicTheGathering'': The imbalance of Red mana on the shard of Jund means that almost every creature is a predator of some sort, with the lower end being occupied by small but poisonous lizards, goblins, and fungal mutants, and the top of the food chain being reigned over by dragons. This is represented mechanically by the [[http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=174968 Devour ability]], which allows you to make a large creature even larger when you cast it by feeding it with other creatures you control, several of which were [[http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=376519 designed for just such a fate]].

** Most zones in WoW have "critters" which are small creatures (usually herbivores) that players cannot gain [[RandomDrop loot]] or [[ExperiencePoints experience]] from. One may think that critters are an intentional aversion of this trope (predatory beasts can occasionally be seen killing them), but they are never present in anywhere near large enough numbers to feed the [[RespawningEnemies vast hordes]] of predators which populate many zones.

* LampShaded in ''Literature/TheLostWorld1995'', as they actually ask why the island has more predators than the prey should be able to support. [[YouFailBiologyForever The stated justification being that prions from the sheep-based feed they were given caused most animals to die young and be scavenged by the predators]].

** There is a reason for this. Since being irradiated heals mutant creatures, it can safely be assumed that they're radiotrophic. They don't need to worry about living in a low-biomass environment like the desert because they get most of their energy from background radiation, which they're in no danger of running out of anytime soon.

* In [[TabletopGame/MagicTheGathering Shards of Alara]], the imbalance of Red mana on the shard of Jund means that almost every creature is a predator of some sort, with the lower end being occupied by small but poisonous lizards, goblins, and fungal mutants, and the top of the food chain being reigned over by dragons. This is represented mechanically by the [[http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=174968 Devour ability]], which allows you to make a large creature even larger when you cast it by feeding it with other creatures you control, several of which were [[http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=376519 designed for just such a fate]].

* Much of the ocean floor is home to more ''scavengers'' than prey.

** [[Film/KingKong2005 The 2005 remake]] is a bit better about this, showing some actual predator-prey relations such as the raptor-like ''Venatosaurus'' hunting giant brontosaurs, but there are still far more predators than prey. The companion book fleshes out the environment further by explaining that the entire island is in a constant free-for-all over food, with alot of the lower-level links in the food chain having specifically evolved to eat carrion, and more herbivores are described than what appears in the film.
* ''Disney/{{Zootopia}}'' goes to lengths to avert this: as explicitly said by one of the characters, prey outnumbers predators 10 to 1 in the eponymous city.

** Played straight in ''VideoGame/TheElderScrollsIIIMorrowind'', although a couple of comments and world details imply that there ''are'' more types of prey roaming Vvardenfell, the vast majority of wildlife you encounter on Vvardenfell and Solstheim are hostile predators.
** Averted in ''VideoGame/TheElderScrollsVSkyrim''. For every bear, sabercat and wolf pack you come across, you see a lot more deer and rabbits. Whether mammoths are preyed on is unsure, what with [[OurGiantsAreBigger giants]] keeping and protecting them as livestock.

* In ''VideoGame/MassEffectAndromeda'', there's an insane amount of continuously-reappearing macropredators like adhi and fiends and very few prey species. It might be partially justified by the late revelation that [[spoiler: the wildlife of Andromeda was largely bioengineered by the [[PrecursorRace Jardann]] like the angara were and dispersed across each of the habitable planets to create ecosystems]], which also explains why every planet on Andromeda has the same types of wildlife. However, it still doesn't explain why these predators are found in such absurd abundance, unless their vast numbers are consequences of the ecological havoc caused by the Scourge - however, the Scourge happened many centuries ago, by which time the ecosystem ''should'' have collapsed due to the lack of plant-eaters. The best explanation is that these species are adaptable omnivores that also fill plant-eating niches and are aggressive towards the player out of hunger and desperation due to their depleted food sources.

* The amount of prey animals required to nourish the wolf packs and [[BearsAreBadNews bears]] the Inquisitor will encounter in ''DragonAgeInquisition'' in the same (relatively) small areas of territory would strip the environment bare and cause rapid environmental collapse. There's even a gigantic dinosaur-sized "Great Bear" found in the Emerald Graves and Emprise du Lion that, while much less common than the other predatory enemies in the game, is still far too abundant for a macropredator of its caliber thanks to the nature of the game's enemy respawn system. Naturally, ''all'' of these are unrelentingly aggressive to the Inquisitor and crew to an unrealistic degree, but it's suggested in passing that their aggression is due to corruption from [[OurDemonsAreDifferent demons]] and the open rifts. Alternatively, they could have come from the Fade, since it's possible to summon animals from there.

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 most will never pause to gorge themselves on these fresh bodies that should appear a ready and far less risky food source to them. If they ''do'' pause to eat their own dead, it'll be played for [[MonstrousCannibalism horror, to make them seem even more ravenous.]]

* An insane variant occurs in ''VideoGame/{{Pikmin}}'' where every last enemy in the game is a predator to pikmin and pikmin alone. No enemy will ever try to eat another enemy, ever. Even more ridiculous is that there are enemies that don't feed on pikmin but try to kill them anyway.

* The difficulty in maintaining this trope is one of the arguments ''against'' the existence of the Loch Ness Monster. The waters of Loch Ness are extremely dark, which means there is not much plant life in the loch. The loch therefore cannot support a great number of fish that feed on those plants, and thus not many larger fish to feed on the plant-eaters. Whatever one believes Nessie to be, it's simply unlikely there is enough food to support it.

* Most cities have far more people (we're opportunistic omnivores, pack-hunting apex predators, and megafauna), housecats (obligate carnivores), and domestic dogs (pack-hunting carnivorous megafauna) than the local urban environment can support. The only way cities work is by importing food.

** Played straight in ''VideoGame/TheElderScrollsIIIMorrowind'', although a couple of comments and world details imply that there ''are'' more types of prey roaming Vvardenfell, they just can't be seen as in-game creatures (or, in one case, as wildlife instead of domesticated in-universe living static objects).
** Averted in ''VideoGame/TheElderScrollsVSkyrim''. For every bear, sabercat and wolf pack you come across, you see a lot more deers and rabbits. Whether mammoths are preyed on is unsure, what with [[OurGiantsAreBigger giants]] keeping and protecting them as livestock.

* The difficulty in maintaining this trope is one of the arguments ''against'' the existence of the Loch Ness Monster. The waters of Loch Ness are extremely dark, which means there is not much plant life in the loch. The loch therefore cannot support a great number of fish that feed on those plants, and thus not many larger fish to feed on the plant-eaters. Whatever one believes Nessie to be, it's simply unlikely there is enough food to support her.