I read an interesting thing about the reintroduction of wolves into Yellowstone. (I recall it was from a book called “Lost in My Own Backyard: A Walk in Yellowstone National Park”...the focus of the book is to help people understand why the things they made as leading tourist attractions in Yellowstone are there for a good reason, as opposed to the places people want to try to go because they aren’t high on the list of places)
Anyway, the guy said he was walking down a trail, and up ahead of him was an extremely steep hill maybe a hundred feet high, densely wooded at the top right up to the edge of the hill, and then the grassy hill down to his trail.
As he was walking, he saw a large pack of coyotes running pell mell out of the woods onto the hill, tumbling head over heels while others frantically tried to run down the hill as best as they could.
He had never seen them behave like this and when he looked at the top of the hill, he saw a lone wolf appear, looking calmly down at the tumbling coyotes.
Apparently, before the reintroduction of the wolves, the coyote population had exploded (big surprise) and some coyotes grew to very large sizes, larger than usual.
When the wolves reappeared, the large coyotes who were used to being the top of the pack tried to stand their ground and were slaughtered, and the rest of them learned to run away anytime a wolves were around.
I guess wolves are better apex predators than coyotes.
What’s interesting is that coyotes are normally solitary animals. After the wolves were killed off the coyotes started to pack up to go after the bigger game.
Life is dynamic. You can’t hold it still. It’s not a zero sum game, as our dumber liberal citizens seem to believe.