How rare and beautiful it truly is that we exist

as far as I know, there is no large carnivore who would abandon actively eating a killed meal to chase live prey. chasing and hunting live prey is a risk, as a healthy live creature has the capability to injure a carnivore, or tire it out through the chase. If there is, say, a giant pile of dead bodies to eat, which abandoning would allow other carnivores or scavengers to steal and eat instead, it makes no sense at all. 

So like, a zebra will try kick your ass just to see what’s up. A tiger won’t do shit unless it’s damn sure it can take you. I’d rather come face to face with a cougar than a stag— have you seen videos of what happens to hunters when a stag catches a dude on the ground? the stag tears the dude apart. Not even to eat him. Just because the stag didn’t like what was going on and decided it was time to curb stomp a motherfucker. 

If a carnivore is Not That Hungry it might drop something dead to chase something that is doing Extreme Prey Behavior– but it’s not going to be serious about it. I’m thinking of things like a domestic cat that chases birds and mice for kicks. Honestly, I think that the t rex in Jurassic Park was a good example of predator behavior– she abandons something difficult (like the kids in the jeep) for the bright shiny thing she has been conditioned to understand means food (tightpants math guy with the flare + gruff dino man with flare). For the rest of the film, she chases things that run, and then quits and chows down once she has something. This has been one of my biggest beefs with the later JP films, especially Jurassic World– rather than the scares coming from being treated and stalked like prey by animals, the scares are based on monsters killing and eating randomly. (And what’s with the treatment of all the herbivores as good and gentle? Herbivores will fuck you up because they got scared or because you pissed them off and those are the two primary emotions of large herbivores– they won’t eat you, but they’ll still trample you).

+Addition: The predators that aren’t snipers (like cougars or herons) tend to test individuals in a herd– they want to gauge your health and willingness to fuck somebody up before they commit to you as a target. If you stare them down with your cold dead eyes and gear up to wreck their shit they’ll piss off unless they’re completely desperate. (Like I said, the main emotions of prey animals are Time To Fuck Shit Up and Time To Run).  So, I’m desperately tired of all these people running and screaming away from wolves and velociraptors and bears oh my. 

Consider:

Here are my initial test pages, from just before I came on board to draw the book. Suvi & Ame's first meeting, plus my first Eursulon design sketches.