Predator defense

Predator defense comprises traits and behaviors that reduce an animal’s risk of being eaten. Defenses can prevent detection, discourage attack, or help an animal escape.

Camouflage: Coloration or patterning that makes an organism harder to detect or recognize in its surroundings. It reduces the chance that a predator spots prey before an attack.
Predation: An interaction in which one organism kills and consumes another. Predation creates the recurring threat that defenses can reduce.
Thanatosis: A defensive behavior in which an animal becomes motionless and appears dead. Playing dead can reduce an attacker’s interest or create an opportunity to escape.
Predator: An organism that hunts, kills, and consumes other organisms. Predators impose the selective pressure that prey defenses address.
Predator–prey interaction: An ecological relationship in which predators consume prey and both populations affect one another. Defenses alter the outcomes and costs of encounters between predators and prey.
Aposematism: Warning signals that advertise an organism’s unprofitability, toxicity, or ability to defend itself. Bright warning signals can deter predators that have learned to associate them with harm.
Natural selection: A change in heritable trait frequencies caused by differences in survival and reproduction. Predators can favor inherited traits that improve prey survival.
Hedgehog spines: Modified hairs that form a sharp protective covering on a hedgehog’s back. Raised spines make a hedgehog difficult for many predators to bite.
Escape behavior: Behavior that increases an animal’s chance of leaving a dangerous situation. It is a behavioral route to avoiding capture, often used after detection.
Predation risk: The probability that an organism will be attacked or killed by a predator. Reducing this risk is the immediate selective benefit of defensive traits.

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