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Ah, I see what you are saying. I was assuming that your were speaking of the prey/predator relationship (which I was). It appears that you were speaking of the entire behavior. Although I tend to agree with you that there are instinctive limits on behavioral patterns, these don't seem to be hard and fast limits. Each individual is different and situations arise in which patterns change.

What I was specifically addressing was the fact that many have the view that predators only kill the prey that they can eat. This is just simply not so. Predators quite often will slaughter far more than they can eat (ever seen what one weasel can do to the population of a chicken coop?). And tortuing their prey is not that uncommon (cats playing with mice and Polar Bears sucking the blubber out of still-living walruses are examples that come to mind).

And tortuing their prey is not that uncommon (cats playing with mice and Polar Bears sucking the blubber out of still-living walruses are examples that come to mind).

And humans have similar propensities, largely directed toward our own species--it wouldn't surprise me to learn the the answer to the question "Where are they?" is that we are sequestered off by the civilized beings in the universe until our manners improve.

The point that's interesting to me is not that predators are well-mannered--it is that predators are just well-enough armed to do their job, and no better. You could take it that, viewed as a long term relationship, prey-predator relationships are co-dependencies. Darwinian relationships in reasonably stable conditions dictate that bears don't get much faster then moose, and vice-versa.