page_title: Anti-predator adaptation
section_title: Escaping
hierarchical_section_title: Anti-predator adaptation / Escaping
caption_attribution_description: English: Startled game birds. Narrow strips of maize alternate with cereal crops &gt; 982874. The maize provides food and shelter for the game birds (partridges and pheasants) in the area, and feeders have been placed along the field edges at regular intervals. Startled pheasants can be seen here, taking off in flight whilst others are still thinking about what to do next. A few partridges can be spotted amongst the pheasants.
context_page_description: Anti-predator adaptations are mechanisms developed through evolution that assist prey organisms in their constant struggle against predators. Throughout the animal kingdom, adaptations have evolved for every stage of this struggle, namely by avoiding detection, warding off attack, fighting back, or escaping when caught.
  The first line of defence consists in avoiding detection, through mechanisms such as camouflage, masquerade, apostatic selection, living underground, or nocturnality.
  Alternatively, prey animals may ward off attack, whether by advertising the presence of strong defences in aposematism, by mimicking animals which do possess such defences, by startling the attacker, by signalling to the predator that pursuit is not worthwhile, by distraction, by using defensive structures such as spines, and by living in a group. Members of groups are at reduced risk of predation, despite the increased conspicuousness of a group, through improved vigilance, predator confusion, and the likelihood that the predator will attack some other individual.
caption: Startled pheasants and partridges fly from possible danger.
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