Hi all and soil guy: Oh I get it now. I see what game we're playing. It's called, "Let's segregate the soil scientist from us decent folk." Well I've had it will elitists like you!
I agree with the many comments and I guess I was lax in being more explicit in my view. Being eaten is not the most common means to extinction but it is potentially the fastest. I can't say for sure, but I would guess starvation would be a bigger cause of extinction. Exposure after an abrupt environmental change might also be a biggy.
While evolution is allowing for the survival of the fittest by adaptation that serves to accomplish that purpose some of the microbes from the ocean are somehow divided into those to be consumed and those that are to be the consumers. It is possible that I am the only person here that sees this to be a unique development. If there were no carnivorous animals except scavengers of corpses there would be survival of lots of misfits as long as the environment did not take them down or force adaptation. So why did nature create the carnivorous ones? Otherwise why didn?t nature provide the rest of the eatables with more defenses? The term "survival of the fittest" is a little over the top, IMO. Seems like it's more like "survival of the fit enough."
Instead of thinking of evolution only as one species struggling against another, also think of it as individuals struggling to live to reproduce. How well does a population of creatures do at sending its genes on to the next generation? Many different tactics and combinations of tactics can work. Along the lines of your thoughts, some may have defenses, others may produce large numbers of individuals with fewer defenses. It may seem to YOU that the ones who can defend themselves are best fit to reproduce, but observations show that producing large numbers of offspring can be quite effective.
From the various responses to my comments I get the impression that everything was by pure chance and I can accept that. Soil guy was concerned with my use of the word ?decide? or decided and I did not mean that literally. When one animal progresses and another goes extinct there is a decision being made of sorts by nature which some how deprived one of the species of what ever it took to make the adjustment. The more I think about it the more complex the application of evolution becomes for me.
jjw DA Morgan is right, you're making things too complicated. Biologically, an individual is a "success" if that individual lives to breeding age and successfully reproduces. That's all. It doesn't matter, for example, if a bear can kick a mouse's butt in a fight. If the bear has difficulty getting food, defending its cubs, finding cover, etc., it could be in danger of being a biological "failure." The keys to survival don't necessarily mean the ability to defeat another creature in a cage match.
