<No, no -- the prey must provide more energy than the efforts to get
it,
and I can't imagine this would be the case in an animal that would live
off climbing up a tree over and over again.>
To this, I must mention: have you ever saw a great white shark leap out
of the water AFTER it has seized it's prey in it's jaws? Forgive me for
my condescending tone, but this is a useless argument.
Animals are not robots. THEY only use as much power as need be for the
task they were designed to, and set out to do. Which is why we can give
accurate measurements on how many times and for long it can be done. It
seems that all we're doing here is a back and forth testimonial of
who's seen a creature do so much as bat an eye after it has captured
it's prey.
A better argument, at least one with a direction, would be how many
times can a predator do such an action before it exhausts itself and/or
starves.