Large Fierce Mammal

Peromyscus maniculatus, commonly called the Deer Mouse after the similarity of its colouration to that of the White Tailed Deer. Click the picture for a larger view.

Nature demands balance. She is neither wasteful nor inefficient, and She isn’t interested in the how of things so much as She is in finding the most efficient path to a necessary outcome. Life is an exercise in energy management, and there can often be more than one right answer to the same problem. This is why it’s not hard to find examples where multiple species of flora or fauna evolve convergent strategies to fill a common ecological niche in ways that represent variations on a theme, all on the path to a common end.

Take, for example, the ubiquitous deer mouse which shares a critical position with many species of insect and marine life in that it exists at the bottom of a food chain where survival of any species built to fill such a niche requires its member creatures to be resilient, adaptable, and prolific. Terriers, ferrets, cats, owls, and some species of snake are highly effective and successful in preying on deer mice. Each brings a different bag of evolutionary tricks to the trade, but all lead to an equal result for the mice – dead is dead. Removal of predator induced mortality from the deer mouse life cycle equation will result in an explosion of population driven competition for resources until a critical point is reached after which starvation, parasites, and disease will start correcting the imbalance. Dead is still dead, and Nature will have balance.

Technologized human society  flatters itself with lethally ill conceived beliefs in human ascendancy beyond the reach of Natural laws. That somehow humans exist to conquer Nature and teach Her a lesson. That humans have somehow earned the right to declare themselves exempt from the one immutable law that applies rigidly and without exception to every other living thing on Earth – the stupid, wasteful, lazy, and otherwise ineffective are punished with death, and Nature prefers to pass sentence before the offender has muddied the gene pool with its offspring. Technology has cushioned Man from these grim realities, but it has not granted an exemption.

Nature also never hurries, and somewhere along the way humans have mistaken this for inaction on Her part.