Bloodshed between species is constant and essential. Without it, predators would starve for want of food, and prey would collapse under the weight of their ever-expanding populations. However, violence within a single species is comparatively rare. When it occurs, it is typically restrained and ritualized. For instance, a rattlesnake does not make use of its deadly poison when fighting another rattlesnake. Instead, it will wrestle with its opponent in a predetermined ceremony, in which each snake harmlessly attempts to pin the other to the ground.
So while rattlesnakes will not hesitate to kill an unsuspecting child or a curious dog, when it comes to one rattlesnake pitted against another, the two will typically choose to settle the thing like gentlemen. The same is true when two elk deliberately clap antlers or when two
elephants lock tusks or when an African saplid empties its ink pouch onto a rock adjacent to a competing saplid s egg mound.
Unrestrained conflict between animals of the same species is not unheard of, but, through the logic of natural selection, it is far from being the rule. In addition to the fact that it is a costly expenditure of energy, the risk of being seriously injured is as real for the attacker as it is foi the animal being attacked. If such conflict can be avoided, most creatures do just that.
However, a notable exception to this is the lasar. A stout, round little creature, it will attempt to kill any other lasar it comes into contact with by ramming into it repeatedly. Since the other lasar will conduct itself in the exact same way, the probability of any lasar surviving one of these contests is roughly the same as a coin toss. Existence, for the lasar, is little more than a succession of purposeless murders ending inevitably in its own.
The ritualized righting of other creatures is typically attached to disputes over territory, resources, and sexual dominance, whereas the allout conflict that exists between lasar is attached to none of these. Therefore, the lasar is thought to be the only creature on earth other than man capable of governing itself by means of an ideology—by which it is simply meant that its behavior has somehow been elevated above common sense.
There is no way to determine the content of the lasar s ideology, as ideologies, in general, have no content. They are only indications of a failure to incorporate oneself into the natural world. That the lasar insists on killing other lasar is merely an example of this kind of failure. Unsurprisingly, it is an endangered species. This is seemingly of its own accord, and the fact that there might one day be no more lasar to speak of seems less the result of its shortsightedness than of whatever vague promise it perceives in its own vicious and unstoppable cruelty.