“There is a patience of the wild--dogged, tireless, persistent as life itself--that holds motionless for endless hours the spider in its web, the snake in its coils, the panther in its ambuscade; this patience belongs peculiarly to life when it hunts its living food;”
This quote means that survival is so important that animals will do whatever it takes to get the nourishment they need, even if they have to wait an inexplicably long time.