A Different Flesh

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WHEN TWO ORGANISMS overlap too closely in a single environmental niche, they compete. It may not be purposeful, the organisms may not have the kind of brains that will make anything at al purposeful, but they will compete just the same. They will try to use the same habitats; live on the same food; and it is very likely that one will prove a bit more efficient than the other. The stronger will beat off, damage, or kill the weaker; the better hunter or forager will leave the poorer to starve.

It is one of the mechanisms of evolution, usually expressed by the cliche "survival of the fittest" (except that you define the "fittest"

as the one who survives, so that you have a nice circular argument).

To get a bit closer to home . . . We don't know exactly what killed off the australopithecines after their having lived in eastern and southern Africa for two million years, but it may well be that genus Homo, wittingly or unwittingly, helped.

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