The Evolutionary Path of the Lion

Chapter 57 This is common sense

It is a lion.

The young individual, small in size, appears orange-red in thermal imaging with a very clear outline. It is walking slowly within the camera's trigger range, with its head down, sniffing the ground, stopping every few steps, completely unaffected by the camera.

“It’s that young male lion,” Marcus said. “The same one from yesterday, in the skeleton area, it was… looking for food.”

There was a two-second silence on the walkie-talkie.

"Only one?"

"There's only one; no other individuals are in the frame." Marcus stared at the screen. "It stopped next to the skeleton and started turning over the bones, looking for any remaining meat."

silence.

Then came Ella's voice, "Marcus, send me the live feed."

"It's been sent."

The silence lasted for about a minute. Marcus stood there and waited, watching the young male lion on the monitor use its paws to flip through the wildebeest skeleton from yesterday. It was the same action logic as yesterday when it flipped through the equipment box, flipping through it one by one. After confirming that there was nothing there, it stood up again and shook off the ashes on its head.

Then it walked out of the camera's trigger range.

The indicator light changed from red back to green.

"Ella, it's gone."

"I saw it." There was something in Ella's voice. Marcus tried to decipher it, unsure if it was disappointment or something else. "Marcus, did you see any other individuals in the frame? Even in the background?"

Marcus flipped through the video footage. "No, there's only this one end within the entire coverage area."

"Okay." Ella paused for a moment. "Save a separate copy of this video and wait for me to come over."

Sandstone platform.

Ella stood at the edge of the platform and watched the recording on the monitor again.

The large head enters from the left side of the screen, walks to the skeleton, flips over the bones, and exits from the right side of the screen. The entire process takes about forty seconds.

The behavior is very clear and normal: a young male lion searches for food in a place where food remains, finds nothing, and then leaves.

Totally normal.

Ella watched the video a second time.

Then a third time.

Kaller stood beside her, glanced at the screen, and said, "Young male lion, normal foraging behavior."

"Yes," Ella said.

"But you don't seem too happy," Kaller said.

"This young male lion appeared near our equipment yesterday and within the trigger range of our cameras today," Ella said. "Both times occurred within three to four hours after our equipment was deployed."

"It's just a coincidence," Kaller said. "This area is its natural habitat, and it's normal for it to forage here; lions are territorial."

"Yesterday it didn't enter the effective range of any equipment," Ella said. "Today it entered the camera's trigger range, but not the pressure gauge's effective range—those two pressure gauges were just set up this morning, and within three hours of being set up, this young male lion happened to enter the camera's range but not the pressure gauge's range."

Kaller thought for a moment, "You mean, if an individual wants to test our device's response, it will send a low-value target into the trigger range while it stays outside to observe."

Ella did not answer immediately.

"That's human logic," Kaller said. "I have no idea what you're thinking!"

"I know," Ella said, "but the pressure gauge data from yesterday and the day before, that speed of movement, that impact force upon landing, are things that no human could achieve."

Kaller took out the water bottle, took a sip, and said, "Ella, you're talking about two things at the same time. One explanation is that there's a non-human individual with advanced cognitive abilities, and the other explanation is that the young male lion had manipulative intentions. These two things can be true simultaneously, but you need to confirm first whether they refer to the same individual."

Ella put down the monitor and glanced towards the low grass to the east.

There was nothing on the grass; the wind pressed the grass into rows of waves, pushing it southward and into the distance.

"I need more data," she said.

Chen Fei watched from the low grass as Ella stood on the edge of the sandstone platform, looking eastward.

She was looking in the direction she had disappeared.

It's not about looking in the direction Da Tou walked out of, but in the direction he disappeared yesterday.

They have begun to discuss the two objectives separately.

This is a good thing.

Separating the discussion meant their attention began to wander, and the value of the "distractor"—the big head—exceeded his expectations.

It wasn't because Big Head was smart, but because Big Head was genuine enough that the investigation team temporarily directed some of their analytical resources in the wrong direction.

Incorrect answer.

It's better than having no answer.

Chen Fei stood up steadily in the low grass and walked to the south. The observation this morning was enough. In the afternoon, he would take Meimei to walk along the western border.

He walked about twenty steps and then stopped.

Looking back.

Big Head was chasing something in the grass thirty meters away. After three steps, he stepped on his own front paw and almost tripped. He barely managed to steady himself and looked up, but the thing was long gone.

He turned to Chen Fei with an expression that said, "Did you see that? It was almost true."

Chen Fei showed no expression and continued walking south.

Big Head caught up, took a couple of steps, then suddenly remembered something, turned back to look at the direction he had been chasing, confirmed that the prey had completely escaped, then caught up with Chen Fei and walked side by side.

His stride was a little wider than yesterday.

North campsite, afternoon.

Morris laid out all the data from this morning, looked it over from left to right, and placed Ella's analysis report on the far right.

They sat around the folding table, the tent zipper was closed, and the hum of the generator came in from outside. It was a little quieter than last night, probably because the temperature was higher during the day and the generator was dissipating heat better than at night.

"Let's get to the conclusions of today," Morris said.

Kenneth spoke first, "The thermal imaging captured a young male lion behaving normally, foraging for food, showing no aggressive tendencies, and showing no signs of avoiding the camera. It is not the target individual. The two pressure gauges showed no abnormal data today, and there were no records of abnormal movement throughout the entire eastern hunting grounds this morning." He paused, "Conclusion: The target individual did not enter the effective detection range today."

"Ella." Morris looked at her.

Ella put her elbows on the table. "I have a different opinion."

"explain."

"That young male lion appeared at the edge of our equipment deployment area for two consecutive days," Ella said. "It wasn't the target individual, but it shared the activity range with the target individual, and—" she paused, "it entered the trigger range of the cameras, but not the effective range of any pressure gauge. The boundary between these two ranges is not visually apparent, and no animal could possibly determine them visually."

The tent fell silent for a moment.

"You're saying it knows the coverage area of ​​the device," Marcus said.

"I'm saying this is a statistical anomaly," Ella said. "Twice, twice in a row, this young male lion happened to fall within the camera's trigger range but outside the pressure gauge's range. If it were random behavior, the probability of this would be very low."

"That young male lion may have just happened to pass by," Kenneth said. "We only have two days' worth of data on its activity patterns, which is too small a sample size to make judgments about its behavior based on just two days' worth of data."

"Correct judgments must be based on extensive information gathering; this is common sense."