“There is really nothing else so odd about life as its variety. Consider the grasses of a pasture. A dozen kinds of grass and other plants will live all mixed up together in an old pasture. I once found five or six kinds of grass in a square yard or so of one of the manicured lawns of Cambridge. But why should there be so many kinds of grass in a pasture or lawn? Why is there not one perfect kind of pasture plant, ideally suited to the circumstance of pasture life, perfectly efficient at getting a living in that grazed or mowed-down space?”
“Animals live in a pasture too, and in even greater array than the plants, particularly the insects, which are present in dozens of oddly different shapes. Why so many? Why not one perfect grass-processing, pasture insect, together perhaps with its perfectly adapted predator?”
— Why Big Fierce Animals Are Rare by Paul Colinvaux
