Illustration: Anne Geßner I often loved to walk on the green meadows, near the forest. Above all, however, I enjoyed the greatest natural spectacle of the mating season in the early morning hours. The ritual of the fight between two male deer when they become adults. Biologists call it comment fighting. With their antlers the big deers demonstrated their supremacy for the future offspring. There, hidden among the bushes and shrubs, I observed a fight between rivals that could continue for hours. When I saw them facing each other, I thought they might kill each other. Their antlers bumped into each other and produced a sound that was as unusal as it was familiar. At some point I had the idea to provoke the separation of the fighters by coming out of hiding. But soon I realised however, that the deer only measured their strength within a biological ritual. Until then I tought rituals are something cultural. But such a ritual was only an instinctive behaviour of species. After watchi