The Law of Predator and Prey

On Rimer, my fictional world, there's a law of biblical proportions (well not really, but it's along the same lines as 'though shalt not sin') that is called 'the Law of Predator and Prey.' To some degree, this Law exists in our real world, but it isn't as organized as Rimer's and it's pretty much how I feel about sport hunting. Here's how it goes:*

1. One shall not kill a being of another species without intent to eat it and thus respect its sacrifice by sustaining your life from it's flesh as is right. To kill a being of another species for any other reason is a sin of the highest order and hence then must be punished.To kill for any reason other than predation (aka the killing of another being for food) is to be considered murder of the worst degree.
2. To needlessly kill a member of one's own species is a lesser sin than killing a being of a different one, though murder of any kind is to be considered a sin.
3. When predating, one must only kill the sick, the weak and the slow. Doing so is ensuring future prey and the survival of one's descendants. The prey is not yours, but your pup's and your pup's pup's and so forth.
4. Protect one's prey from those who would abuse the right to live** through sinful slaughter.
5. One never kills the strong, the pregnant or the young unless weakness is shown.
4. Cannibalism is a sin of the highest order, thus any killing of one's own kind is to be considered murder. Cannibalism is never lawful.


The Law was created from the fashion of hunting which all real Earth carnivorous*** predators resort to. By weeding out the weak, diseased and old members of a herd, a predator is protecting its genetic viability, by only allowing the strongest to survive to reproduce. It's tough, but it protects the genetic integrity of species and also on a much larger scale it protects the ecosystems in which these species reside. Every species in the 'web of life' depends upon each other, but apex keystone predators like wolves and tigers play a particularly integral role. When a wolf kills a deer, that deer is kept from overfeeding on the ecosystem's flora and its bones go back to the earth, nourishing both the plants as well as the micro-organisms which form the immune system for all ecosystems, keeping the ecosystem strong. When the prey doesn't overfeed on the ecosystem's plant life, there is more food for the other deer and prey species to eat, thus keeping everything healthy (but not overgrown, because wolves only kill the weak and the strong are left to forage the plants that would have fed the predated deer.) When you remove a predator species from an ecosystem it falls apart and catastrophe ensues.

THUS, predatory animals MUST be protected and left alone, as their prey must be left alone by us as well. By keeping our grimy prehensile human paws out of ecosystems that are still wild and by protecting these places from ourselves, we take huge steps to making a better world.

Away from the ecological rant, in my fictional world some controversy occurs when the humans first arrive, because we humans (as you know) go bat shit insane ballistic whenever one of us is killed by another animal. That's because we are fundamentally prey animals, but worse because we're herbivores with guns. Humanity's first act of revenge may have been the extinction of dinofelis the 'terror cat,' a large African feline of the Metailurini tribe who may have specialized like all predators in killing a certain favourite variety of prey - us. When humans arrive on Rimer, they lose much of their technology, in particular the technology for explosive weapons such as guns. They can no longer defend themselves quite as well as they were able to here on Earth and that for them, is an extremely bad thing. Further, they know nothing of the Law of Predator and Prey, which is a recipe for controversy as they encounter Rimer's native predatory sentient species. In the style of most species who encounter humans for the first time, most of the predators have no idea what to do with the humans. Most are afraid - how would YOU view an alien on your world? Yet there are some who are not afraid, creatures who are more opportunistic than most and gradually, the humans learn of Rimer's Law of Predator and Prey and that they are considered the latter in the occasion. This being a rude awakening, there is controversy and a great deal of freaking out accordingly before some well educated folks basically tell the rest to STFU and adopt the Law for themselves. (This takes a lot of convincing and it will make one damn good story.)




* While scavengers live by the Law as much as true Rimarian carnivores so, they are considered 'dishonourable' by most of the predatory cultures because they take from the kills of stronger creatures in order to survive. So strong is this thought that by some Rimarian cultures, scavengers are viewed as animals which are no better than parasites which should be destroyed. This thought is mirrored by very real predator-scavenger interactions, such as how wolves have been known to kill interloping coyotes. (Yet still, they have been known to play with them as well, so that is very much a grey area! You cannot judge a book by its cover!)
**'Live' as in the right to hunt for food. As carnivorous species sustain their lives through killing, hunting must be honourable and the prey stock must be protected.
*** Humans are not carnivores (as in 'meat-eaters') or members of Order Carnivora; thus, we do not depend on meat for survival and cannot be classed as carnivorous predators.