Treating Dren Better (Spoilers)

Understand, yes. Follow, no. I'll try to clarify. It's not that Dren's "just an animal", he is actually superior than humans, and he probably knows this. He was actually capable of taking over humans, but what actually did him in was that he was a little too human.

He's shown on many occasions to be probably much more intellectual than the average human, being able to learn and adapt very fast, but, for disadvantages, it inherited human ego, jealousy, carelessness, and probably emotional behavior.

The first problem was that female Dren was too timid. By the time it got to the barn, it was probably capable of surviving without the couples' help. I can understand if it has pack-like tendencies and wanted to stay with them, and subsequently, was kept there by attraction to the alpha male. However, she really could have gone out anytime she wanted to afterwards, but she stayed locked up in the barn just because they didn't want her to. Also, she must have been too attached to Elsa, because when she "beat" her, she should probably have killed her to claim her position as alpha female. If Dren had just left and explored the world, she would have become a lot more knowledgeable, and been able to ruthlessly do whatever it wanted to humans.

Then, when it became male Dren, it erred by leaving Clive for dead just because he was laying on the ground; it possibly even knew that he was still alive, and purposefully let him live as a beta male. Whether it was ego or carelessness, it was part of what got him killed. It proceeded to confront Elsa where it found her instead of carrying her away to a secluded area, which would have been the smart and instinctual thing to do.

Then, at the end, even when its life was about to end, it had to show human spite or vengefulness by killing Clive. This wasn't done because it's beast.

So the above was to establish what I view as some flaws on the human part of Dren. To go into more detail on why I don't believe Dren could conform to human society... that's simply because it IS the alpha. It's clearly superior to humans in terms of physical abilities, and had the mental ability to be able to surpass humans. There was simply no reason for it to follow man. Man did start out as cave men. They learnt to work together to increased their survivability, and learnt to trade and socialize to improve their way of life eventually. Yes, Dren can also learn to live with humans, but there's really no benefit to that, therefor, it didn't want to. Instead it chose to follow its natural instinct, and that was to be the alpha male; and it proceeded to dominate everything in its immediate vicinity. I would say that that was shortsighted, as he really could have done a lot better for himself if he had thought and planned a lot more.

On further thought, if I follow this line of thought, I believe that IF the couple had treated Dren more like a normal human being, it may have been more inclined to be less aggressive, learn, and figure things out. Which may have brought about the Dren masterrace ending.