predacity

"One of my serial repeating themes is predacity," Mitchell told the Paris Review in 2010, and in fact, "Cloud Atlas" and "The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet" include cannibals.

The wild cat, according to this theory, having to contend with powerful enemies, expanded in general dimensions; its limbs, particularly, became massive; and its long and strong claws, with the powerful muscular mechanism which operated on them, fitted it for a life of predacity.

He also had the noisy energy of a stern-wheeler and the predacity of a buccaneer.

He indeed put an end to the golden age; he gave venom to serpents and predacity to wolves; he shook the honey from the leaf, and stopped the flow of wine in the rivulets; he concealed the element of fire, and made the means of life scanty and precarious.

A thieving fox will grow fat by predacity while an honest dog starves in the path of duty.