Why do prey animals often seem to disregard predators in their path that are not obviously camouflaged and only react to the danger of agressive behavior rather than presence of a threatening creature?

Question

Example: A mouse willingly walking into the path of a snake that isn’t in hiding, and only attempts to flee if the snake actively strikes at it.

In: Earth Science

Answer 1

Who says the snake is obvious to the mouse?

You can’t see out of a mouses eyes, or how a mouse interprets the world, maybe the mouse thinks it’s a stick, maybe that particular mouse has never seen a snake before. All it may know is when something moves at it suddenly it should get out of the way.

There’s also the issues of necessity. Something’s prey animals have to do to survive, like drink water, so they’ll knowingly go to a place of danger, like a water hole where predators are, because they have to.