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timtyler comments on Bloggingheads: Robert Wright and Eliezer Yudkowsky - Less Wrong
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Standing on your hind legs - which is the behaviour under discussion - is costly to rabbits - since it increases the chance of being observed by predators - so they can't do it all the time.
However, that is not really the point. The signal is not: "look how fast I can run" - it is "look how much of a head my family and I have - given that I can see you now".
Not all the time of course. I was refering to SilasBarta's observation that this might not be a stable equilibrium. Because noticing the fox and turning to it is much cheaper than being able to run fast enough such that the fox will not catch you once you notice it. A good noticer but bad runner can take advantage of the good noticer/good runner's signal and free ride off it. The fox wouldn't care if you were a good noticer if you weren't also a good runner, since it can still catch you once you have noticed it.
Maybe. Rabbits go to ground. Escape is not too tricky if they have time to reach their burrow. Running speed is probably a relatively small factor compared to how far away the fox is when the rabbit sees it.
Yeah, running speed may not be such an important factor.
Not only that, you can only look in one direction at a time. You do need to know where the fox is. The rabbit only loses a couple of hundred milliseconds if the fox decides to make a dash for it anyway.