- #1
onomatomanic
- 103
- 1
Lyons (from lynx + lion), in my world, are mid-sized (20-40 kg) feliform predators. They live and hunt in groups called prydes (obviously), and are large-prey specialists. The principal prey species are ellefants, which are miniature mammoths (about an ell tall, thus the name), and deer, which range in size from below 10 kg to above 1,000 kg - to be clear, the upper limit is for the largest deer available for hunting to, not necessarily for the largest deer actually being hunted by, the lyons.
Now, would it be plausible for male lyons to have sabre-teeth and for lyonesses not to (or vice versa, but everything below refers to the stated version)? The idea only just occurred to me, and on the face of it, it seems to make quite a bit of sense. An article I read a while ago compared sabre-teeth in quadrupeds with having daggers for thumbs in a human - good for inflicting serious injuries, but mostly just in the way otherwise. Thus, a social cat in which only one sex has exaggerated teeth would seem to get the best of both worlds, in several ways.
A typical hunt could consist in one or more females chasing and/or tackling the targeted prey, with one or more males lying in ambush and/or moving in later to deliver the killing bite, for ellefants and small deer, or to inflict a number of freely bleeding wounds which will lead to the animal's demise in short order, for larger deer. Afterwards, the females could drag the carcass away if necessary, something quite impractical for the males due to the effect of lever action on the skull bones.
Practically, the simplest way to get this would be by both sexes possessing the teeth per se, but by their only growing all the way out of their "sheaths" in the males. As in the picture below, which shows the skull of a juvenile Machairodont:
However, the lever-action problem might materialize in those as well, so perhaps a more fully sexually dimorphic dentition would be necessary?
Anyway, the main reason I'm requesting feedback here is simply that I'm not aware of any parallel cases on Earth. All hunting packs seem to consist of basically identical individuals. There are, of course, differences in size and strength which make some members better suited for e.g. running and others for e.g. tackling (quite like the members of a rugby team, really), and there are probably cases in which a few individuals somehow develop a knack for a particular role, and thus play that one role in most hunts in which they participate. But the latter is always due to behavioural rather than physical specialization, and even the former is quite different from what I have in mind.
That being said, I think I have heard about hunting packs that involve representatives of two or even more different species, each with its particular task to fulfill. I can't remember the context and details at the moment, but whatever it was, if true that would arguably represent an even more extreme case of role division. But in evolutionary terms, what has to happen for either situation to come about is rather different, so again I'm not sure how applicable that is.
Sorry, got longer than I meant it too. What do people think?
Now, would it be plausible for male lyons to have sabre-teeth and for lyonesses not to (or vice versa, but everything below refers to the stated version)? The idea only just occurred to me, and on the face of it, it seems to make quite a bit of sense. An article I read a while ago compared sabre-teeth in quadrupeds with having daggers for thumbs in a human - good for inflicting serious injuries, but mostly just in the way otherwise. Thus, a social cat in which only one sex has exaggerated teeth would seem to get the best of both worlds, in several ways.
A typical hunt could consist in one or more females chasing and/or tackling the targeted prey, with one or more males lying in ambush and/or moving in later to deliver the killing bite, for ellefants and small deer, or to inflict a number of freely bleeding wounds which will lead to the animal's demise in short order, for larger deer. Afterwards, the females could drag the carcass away if necessary, something quite impractical for the males due to the effect of lever action on the skull bones.
Practically, the simplest way to get this would be by both sexes possessing the teeth per se, but by their only growing all the way out of their "sheaths" in the males. As in the picture below, which shows the skull of a juvenile Machairodont:
However, the lever-action problem might materialize in those as well, so perhaps a more fully sexually dimorphic dentition would be necessary?
Anyway, the main reason I'm requesting feedback here is simply that I'm not aware of any parallel cases on Earth. All hunting packs seem to consist of basically identical individuals. There are, of course, differences in size and strength which make some members better suited for e.g. running and others for e.g. tackling (quite like the members of a rugby team, really), and there are probably cases in which a few individuals somehow develop a knack for a particular role, and thus play that one role in most hunts in which they participate. But the latter is always due to behavioural rather than physical specialization, and even the former is quite different from what I have in mind.
That being said, I think I have heard about hunting packs that involve representatives of two or even more different species, each with its particular task to fulfill. I can't remember the context and details at the moment, but whatever it was, if true that would arguably represent an even more extreme case of role division. But in evolutionary terms, what has to happen for either situation to come about is rather different, so again I'm not sure how applicable that is.
Sorry, got longer than I meant it too. What do people think?