But complex animals had obtained their adaptive flexibility at some cost-they had traded one dependency for another. It was no longer necessary to change their bodies to adapt, because now their adaptation was behavior, socially determined. That behavior required learning. In a sense, among higher animals adaptive fitness was no longer transmitted to the next generation by DNA at all. It was now carried by teaching. Chimpanzees taught their young to collect termites with a stick. Such actions implied at least the rudiments of a culture. a structured social life. But animals raised in isolation, without parents, without guidance, were not fully functional. Zoo animals frequently could not care for their offspring, because they had never seen it done. They would ignore their infants, or roll over and crush them, or simply become annoyed with them and kill them.
The velociraptors were among the most intelligent dinosaurs, and the most ferocious. Both traits demanded behavioral control. Millions of years ago, in the now-vanished Jurassic world, their behavior would have been socially determined, passed on from older to younger animals. Genes controlled the capacity to make such patterns, but not the patterns themselves. Adaptive behavior was a kind of morality; it was behavior that had evolved over many generations because it was found to succeed – behavior that allowed members of the species to cooperate, to live together, to hunt, to raise young.
But on this island, the velociraptors had been re-created in a genetics laboratory. Although their physical bodies were genetically determined, their behavior was not. These newly created raptors came into the world with no older animals to guide them, to show them proper raptor behavior. They were on their own, and that was just how they behaved – in a society without structure, without rules, without cooperation. They lived in an uncontrolled, every-creature-for-himself world where the meanest and the nastiest survived, and all the others died.
The Jeep picked up speed, bouncing hard. Thorne held on to the bars, to keep from being thrown out. Behind him, he saw the raptor swinging back and forth in the air, still clinging to the tarp. It wasn’t letting go. Levine drove back onto the flat muddy banks of the river, and turned right, following the edge of the water. The raptor hung on tenaciously.
Directly ahead, lying in the mud, Levine saw another skeleton. Another skeleton? Why were all these skeletons here? But there was no time to think – he drove forward, passing beneath the row of ribs. Without lights, he leaned forward and squinted in the moonlight, looking for obstacles ahead.
In the back of the car, the raptor scrambled up, released the tarp, clamped its jaws on the cage, and began to pull it out of the back of the Jeep. Thorne lunged, grabbed the end of the cage nearest him. The cage twisted rolling Thorne onto his back. He found himself in a tug of war with the raptor – and the raptor was winning. Thorne locked his legs around the front passenger seat, trying to hold on. The raptor snarled; Thorne sensed the sheer fury of the animal, enraged that it might lose its prize.
“Here!” Levine shouted, holding a gun out to Thorne. Thorne was on his back, gripping the cage in both hands. He couldn’t take the gun. Levine looked back, and saw the situation. He looked in the rearview mirror. Behind them, he saw the rest of the pack still in pursuit, snarling and growling. He could not slow down. Thorne could not let go of the cage. Still driving fast, Levine swung around in the passenger seat, and aimed the rifle backward. He tried to maneuver the gun, knowing what would happen if he accidentally shot Thorne, or Arby.
“Watch it!” Thorne was shouting. “Watch it!”
Levine managed to get the safety off, and swung the barrel straight at the raptor, which was still gripping the cage bars in its jaws. The animal looked up, and in a quick movement closed its jaws over the barrel. It tugged at the gun.
Levine fired.
The raptor’s eyes popped wide as the dart slammed into the back of its throat. It made a gurgling sound, then went into convulsions, toppling backward out of the Jeep – and yanking the gun from Levine’s hands as it fell.