Ungulant

In a red desert landscape, two beasts, coarse-haired, four-footed, ungulant, were pawing the dust, raising their snouts to sniff the scent of distant rain, circling and circling a tree, whose uneasy leaves shivered in the dry wind that ruffled a ridge of bristles along their spines.

The prehistoric caribou they had already liberated was wrapped in a space blanket and carefully tied to a sled. The Science Foundation team had then moved on to a deep translucent blue seam in the ice that proved to be a window on the rest of the ungulant herd standing poised in suspended animation, as if waiting for time to start again.

At the time of his study there were probably six hundred lions in Serengeti: plus or minus fifty thousand ungulants a year eaten.