What do people mean, in a more philosophical sense, when we refer to predatory animals or apex predators as "strong" and to prey animals as "weak"? For instance, deer and elk can easily break the ribs of an attacking wolf, and deer and elk aren't necessarily easy to kill, but people think of wolves as strong while deer and elk are weaker. I'm not a science student, but I know enough science to know that apex predators are much more vulnerable than commonly thought and that it's more of a food web than a food chain. But wolves and lions are majestic and mighty while deer and rabbits are weak, easy prey. Can you help me to unpack the implied philosophies involved? Other than the Great Chain of Being, unless that's really what I'm looking for. I'm not looking toward the life sciences. Are there philosophical theories or schools of thought which consider strength and weakness in a sense that might be applicable to a predator/prey dynamic?

I am not familiar with any philosophical theory that uses the terms "weak" and "strong" in reference to predator/prey relations as such, and I doubt very much that such a framing is helpful to the development either of a sound ecological framework or to an adequate environmental ethics. The only time I have come across philosophical discourses about "strength" and "weakness" in nonhuman species is in the context of either (a) Nietzsche's critique of Christian morality (as a "slave morality"), or (b) fascist ideology (Mussolini, Hitler, and their propagandists). In both instances, categories of the "strong" and the "weak" were used either directly or indirectly to justify social domination, i.e. the supremacy of certain "superior" types of humans over other, "inferior" types. Nietzsche, thus, viewed "will to power" as a natural and healthy drive in all life forms, and correspondingly argued that the strong, "noble type" of human being, the one who created his/her own values, was superior to "weak"...