Re: The absurdity, the absurdity (was: Cooperating theropods?)

[Jonathon Woolf <jwoolf@erinet.com>]

Chris Campbell wrote:

> Jonathon Woolf wrote:
>
> > Um, well, no.  As Larry also observes, canids tend to be chase hunters, 
> > while
> > felids are almost exclusively ambush hunters.
>
> And what's involved in an ambush?  A short chase, pounce, and
> strangulation bite.  All felids are adapted for cursoriality.  All have
> powerful jaws.  All kill by suffocation/strangulation.  Same with
> canids, same with hyenas.

No, _not_ the same.  Chris, you're arguing in generalities.  Just look at the 
animals,
OK?  Cats are pounce-and-kill hunters exclusively.  A short burst of energy, a 
fast
kill.  Cats have no endurance.  A prey animal a hundred meters away is out of 
range for
a kill, because the cat can't reach the prey before it tires.  No cat ever 
lived or
ever will that could run in a prey animal's wake for several miles, biting at 
the
prey's flanks and waiting for the prey to tire so it could attack successfully. 
 Wolves
and wild dogs do that as a matter of course.

> > African wild dogs (hunting dogs, painted wolves, _Lycaon pictus_ for the
> > taxonomically inclined) are fearsomely effective predators, precisely
> > because they are the only chase hunters in a world otherwise filled by 
> > ambush
> > hunters -- the big cats and the hyenas.
>
> Uh, no.  Hyenas are about as far from ambush hunters as you can get.
> They chase, just like dogs.  None of this invalidates my point; the
> particular methods differ dramatically, but the generalities
> (cursoriality, strangulation/suffocation) are the same.  In particular,
> the method of dispatch is very similar in all cases.

Cats are not chasers; cats are ambushers.  Hyenas I'm not sure, but I don't 
recall
anything about them doing much long-range chasing.

> > The tactics that work against a cat that can only run a hundred meters
> > before dropping don't work against a predator that can dog the prey's
> > heels for miles, until the prey animal finally tires and falls.
>
> Depends.  Horns work pretty well regardless.

Most large mammalian herbivores have no horns, or their horns are not usable as
weapons.

> > And both wild dogs and wolves have another unusual habit: when faced with 
> > large
> > animals that take a lot of killing, they have a disturbing tendency to 
> > settle for
> > crippling the prey by hamstringing it or something similar, then just dig in
> > without waiting for it to die.
>
> Right, true.  My point here is that Deinonychus would dispatch its prey
> in a way compeletly different from any extant animals.  This means it
> can take different prey, and perhaps larger prey, than we might expect
> from a modern analog.

You can't be sure of that.  True, dinosaurs don't have any close modern analog. 
 That
means you can't be sure they _did_ hunt like cats or canids, but it also means 
you
can't be sure they _didn't_.

-- JSW