In Lewis Carroll’s the Red Queen takes Alice on a race through the countryside
They run and they run, but then Alice discovers that they’re still under the same tree that they started from
The Red Queen explains to Alice: “ , you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place
” Biologists sometimes use this Red Queen Effect to explain an evolutionary principle
If foxes evolve to run faster so they can catch more rabbits, then only the fastest rabbits will live long enough to make a new generation of bunnies that run even faster — in which case, of course, only the fastest foxes will catch enough rabbits to thrive and pass on their genes
Even though they might run, the two species just stay in place