Why is this important?
“I mean that in the absence of food, baboons will organize themselves to find a meal, but in the absence of leopards they will never organize themselves to find a leopard. In other words, it’s as you say: when animals go hunting—even extremely aggressive animals like baboons—it’s to obtain food, not to exterminate competitors or even animals that prey on them.” “Yes, I see what you’re getting at now.” “And how can you be sure this law is invariably followed? I mean, aside from the fact that competitors are never seen to be exterminating each other, in what you call the wild.” “If it weren’t invariably followed, then, as you say, things would not have come to be this way. If competitors hunted each other down just to make them dead, then there would be no competitors. There would simply be one species at each level of competition: the strongest.”
Mac's Adventure 