Often, people discuss various animals’ responses to humans in terms of intelligence. Big white-tailed bucks are “smart” because they’re so wary of humans, but buffalo are “dumb” because they’re not. This is a flawed way of thinking about animal behavior, because it operates on the assumption that animals evolved with the sole concern of avoiding human predation — the smart ones figured it out, the dumb ones didn’t. In fact, many animals put a much greater emphasis on avoiding predators. It doesn’t necessarily suit an animal’s needs to burn precious calories by running like hell every time a predator appears, especially if the animal encounters a lot of predators that are unable to make successful attempts at killing it.

~ Steven Rinella, American Buffalo