to become an apex predator one thing you must be is a predator it's in the name after all and because an apex predator means that you're King in your environment it's not crazy to say that some predators have it good but if life was so good for the top dogs then why are predators seldomly bigger than their prey well the answer has to do with the fact that herbivores get their energy straight from the energy producers themselves while carnivores have to rely on getting their share through the herbivores which usually ends up with them receiving
just 10% of what the herbivore originally received from the producer leading to Predators having smaller sizes on average this size difference has led to Evolution giving Predators a wide array of menacing tools and weapons in order to help even the playing field such traits have included things like a powerful bite razor sharp claws and pack hunting and clearly it's worked out well as many predators are able to take down prey much bigger than themselves but once in a blue moon a carnivore comes along that takes the ability of big game hunting to the extreme developing
weapons solely designed for Giants alone and only a few thousand years ago there was one kitty cat roaming the Earth that had perfected this art this was the king of the ice age in other words the Smilodon thanks to its striking appearance and giant saber teeth the Smilodon is one of those extinct animals that nearly everyone knows or at least recognizes a situation helped by its portrayal in famous movies such as Ice Age and yet despite the world knowing it's a cat it did not start out this this way as when it was first discovered
over 160 years ago in Brazil paleontologists first thought that it was an extremely large hyena this misplaced judgment was based on isolated cheek teeth which heavily resembled those seen in living hyenas and soon enough this new animal was dubbed hyena Neoga however luckily for the smod Don's Legacy it was quickly found out that there were much more fossils laying around than just some teeth and within a couple of years dozens of new body parts were identified including foot bones skull material and giant canines that seemed almost too big for this creature's mouth with these additional
bones they could also tell that this had never been a hyena but rather a distinct genus of felid that was undeniably Giant in stature and far more robust than any known modern cat with this in mind paleontologist decided to rename it to Smilodon populator with the Smilodon portion meaning knife tooth after its giant teeth while populor supposedly translates into the Destroyer or he who brings Devastation a fitting species name considering the lethalness of this Predator along with a name change the reclassification led to more research into what kind of feel it the Smilodon was exactly
a task that is continued to this day with paleontologist currently placing it in the now extinct subam the makyo Don which contains the vast majority of what people often call saber-tooth tigers although a more fitting nickname is saber-tooth cats as this group is not closely related to tigers or any other living cat for that matter with perhaps their closest relatives being members of the felin family within the marodon Smilodon was further classified as being a smer dony member who have their very own moniker the Dirk toothed cats so far this is only known to house
five different jera making it a rather lonely group yet over the years it has grown in size but not through the discovery of new jera but rather by the discovery of new Smilodon species as older remains were eventually found in North America that were assigned to two different species resulting in there being three accepted types of Smilodon today the populor Fatalis and grassless if you were being chased by any one of them you'd probably not care which was which nor be able to tell them apart but they did have their differences with one of the
biggest contrast being when they lived grasis was the oldest of the bunch having evolved in North America from the older meganon approximately 2.5 million years ago the second oldest Fatalis came along about 1 million years later followed finally by the populator who appeared about 600,000 years after the Fatalis another area where the three differed was in size as each new iteration was larger than the last and therefore grassless was the smallest while populor was the giant of the three don't get it twisted though because ultimately each of these three species were pretty huge by cat
standards with certain specimens actually making the Smilodon one of the largest known felids to date presently paleontologist believ that grasis was likely the same weight as a Jaguar the third largest cat on Earth today meanwhile Fatalis was a bit bigger with individuals having similar Dimensions to that of an African lion however they were much heavier on average due to the more muscular build with their weight being around 280 kilos or 620 lb which makes it equivalent to large Tigers the biggest current felid that we have discounting hybrids but things get even more hectic when you
move on to the popular Tor who was ridiculously large with the bigger bones we know of namely an exceptional skull indicating a Max body size of around 470 kilos or 1,040 lb so about the same weight as a medium-sized polar bear Earth's current largest terrestrial carnivore and the nice thing about the Smilodon is that most studies find that it didn't have a high level of sexual dimorphism meaning males and females were usually around the same size in other words there are a lot of large individuals and given its size it's widely accepted to a been
an apex predator in each of its environments but the Smilodon wasn't just big because as mentioned it was very robust as well the first sign that this prehistoric cat wasn't interested in small prey specifically smilodons had very thick and sturdy bones that in life would have been roped with large amounts of muscle the heel bone in particular was quite robust and not to mention long which indicates that the Smilodon was an excellent jumper who likely used its vertical leap to jump on top of big bodied herbivores and despite no one knowing what its true leaping
prowess really was it's been speculated to have been able to jump higher than the modern lion who's been observed at times a jumping over 15 ft or 4.5 M High another area where the Smilodon was well built was in its for liims naturally all large felids have powerful for limbs that are designed to hold down struggling prey but Smilodon really took this to the next level as its for liims were about 20% thicker than what scientists would usually expect of a cat its size this gave its forearms ridiculous power that was even greater than that
of cats bigger than it like the American lion for example with its shredded forearms the Smilodon could have easily held down massive prey and they were further empowered by fully retractable claws but these claws were not like the claws of a lion or a tiger because while they were razor sharp and curved the Smilodon claws were proportionally ginormous as seemingly many things on its body were and reconstructions have found them to have been twice the size of the of a Siberian tiger and even longer than those of a Kodiak brown bear which is sometimes twice
the body weight of a fully grown Smilodon these claws could have clearly cut straight through flesh but their size was more of an adaptation for holding down large animals rather than dealing damage with its true weapon or damage dealer being its Infamous saber teeth these iconic weapons are actually not unique to the Smilodon and they've appeared in other mammals and even non-mammals multiple times throughout history this then may make you wonder why the Smilodon is by far the most popular animal with saber teeth and the answer is thanks to their length just like it's claws
its canines were super sized proportionally speaking so much so in fact that they protruded well out of its mouth a feature that is quite uncommon in other saber teeth cats like the homotherium these massive saber teeth could grow to be 8 in or 20.3 cm long and thus making them the biggest saber teeth of any known felid but they weren't just for bragging rights because on top of being long these canines were well adapted to pierce deep into flesh with the tops having been a sharp Point while the sides were smooth and narrow and therefore
increasing the amount of force concentrated at the tips letting the Smilodon create catastrophic puncture wounds surprisingly the design was so efficient that allowed the Smilodon to get away with a not so powerful bite in fact studies found that it could only bite with a force of 1,000 Newtons four times weaker than the bite of a lion and this weak bite is also reflected by the durability of the canines as each was Slender and fragile this just goes to show though that a good piercing weapon doesn't need a lot of force to be effective but it
did make paleontologist wonder how the Smilodon killed as its teeth wouldn't have been able to Simply attack any point in the body this led to many ideas on the nature of its killing mechanism with one of the more popular ones being that individuals would have utilized ambushes in dense vegetation to grab or leap onto a prey which they could then subdue with their claws allowing them to sink their saber teeth into the prey's soft belly thus destroying their guts and incurring massive blood loss while brutal most have pushed back on this hypothesis instead favoring the
equally Grim idea that Smilodon either used quick thrusting attacks or deep bite to wreck a prey's throat invoking severe blood loss and Suffocation amongst other unpleasant symptoms further studies also revealed that his jaw could open up to 120° while biting nearly double that of what's seen in humans meaning that pretty much every neck out there was on the menu these teeth combined with its claws made it one fearsome Predator yet it wasn't bronze alone that gave the Smilodon success as scans of its brain cavity suggested that had a high level of coordination hearing and amazing
Vision that was further backed by its eye sockets as their shape implied binocular vision and as a cherry on top they seem to be very fast too as a good percentage of smilodons had trauma to their sternums which is generally seen as a result of high velocity collisions with prey these traits combined with its Arsenal allowed the Smilodon to hunt down a wide range of megap fonal prey which greatly varied depending on where a given Smilodon lived in North America for example species typically hunted giant extinct bison camels glyptotherium Peery linoides and occasionally mastadons and
Colombian mammoths the largest animals around of the time meanwhile in South America prey included toxodon lit up turn various glyptodon horses camelids and even Cayman while we know that some of these animals were definitely prey based on skeletal evidence we are less certain on what the main prey was a question that also depends on if the Smilodon was a social creature or not as pack hunting would imply larger prey more often one of the biggest pieces of evidence that we have for a social lifestyle amongst Smilodon comes from the LaBrea tar pits in California these
pits are referred to as Predator traps as for whenever one animal gets stuck numerous Predators would often get trapped alongside them after they try to get an easy meal which leads to 90% of the labria bones coming from predators themselves and Smilodon was no exception and is actually the second most common find in the pits with over 160,000 fossils being attributed to it this high yield has convinced many that Smilodon proud in groups since in Modern Cats the more social kinds typically respond more to distress calls thus the larger number of remains is assigned to
some that Smilodon was highly sensitive to distress calls which indicates gregarious hunting another perhaps more interesting argument is what has been dubed by some to be pseudo Healthcare specifically certain paleontologists have pointed out how multiple smilodons with extensive trauma or abnormalities who should have died seem to have survived indicating that they were taken care of a popular example of this was an individual that had signs of hip plasia at a young age and still managed to survive well into adulthood of course though there are those who think it was more of a loner pointing out
how skeletons found outside of Predator traps are more isolated whatever the case Smilodon was no doubt amongst the most dominant Predators around but it was by no means the only carnivore for it lived with multiple other iconic Predators the most important of which in its case was the American lion and direwolves his isotopic analysis showed that these Predators had the most similar diet to that of the Smilodon making them its biggest competitors although despite direwolves having the numbers and American lions having the size Smilodon seemed to do just fine against them perhaps thanks to its
kin's being on full display 24/7 which would have intimidated nearly any animal around regarding the American lion the two most likely tried their best to avoid each other but fights at times were a given considering how similar their diets were and in such fights it was likely anyone's game on the other hand competitional with the direwolf seem to be more in favor of the Smilodon as lebrea remains hint that direwolves would often yield their own kills to smilodons that were then completely devoured plush and Bone alike besides quote unquote cats and dogs there were large
Bears around too namely the short-face Bears whose members could get quite a bit heavier than even the largest recorded Smilodon with a few reaching the size of literal dinosaurs like catosaurus and average sized allosauruses however these bare behemoths possessed more omnivorous diets which helped to likely ease tensions between the two species also these Bears tended to be more solitary therefore if a Smilodon wasn't alone then a bear most likely would not choose to engage and thus avoiding a fight and leaving the carcass for the cats and this mention of carcasses actually brings up a pretty
good question not yet addressed which is how the heck did Smilodon eat food well due to their saber teeth they couldn't eat from the front like most animals can instead they were equipped with blade likee caracals that would overlap in a shearing motion slicing and dicing through flesh like butter these teeth were situated on either side of the mouth allowing individuals to munch on pieces of meat with their heads turned and thus bypassing the obstructiveness of their canines and interestingly enough such a method is still seen in cats today and other Predators as well which
pretty much showcases if it ain't broke don't Fix It ultimately its peculiar teeth led to smile it on being both rather odd and highly successful despite being the youngest of the saber-toothed cats and between the three species it achieved a vast distribution within the Western hemisphere in North America grais and Fatalis had a near Universal range and were found as far north as Alberta Canada and ranged between both coasts in South America where Fatalis and populor resided they were equally widespread having established a domain that extended All the Way South to Patagonia and Smilodon wasn't
just good at spreading far and wide but also capitalizing on mixed biomes with remains showing that it adapted to live in grasslands Plains Woodlands closed forests savanas subtropical forests and Mammoth steps with such an impressive distribution it's no surprise that this apex predator lived alongside a plethora of other Pine and holine icons that included short-faced Bears probo cians ground sloths glyptodont toxodon camels deer horses Bice Terror Birds other large cats multiple canids alligators snakes Crocs Cayman and many many more it also lived with an animal we are very familiar with ourselves it is thought that
we may have encountered Smilodon as far back as 25,000 years ago and because our diet can include similar items the relationship between humans and Smilodon was likely tense unfortunately for Our Kind our timing was rather poor as by the time people arrived only populor and Fatalis the bigger species were left standing this made coexisting that much harder and because meganon the cat which Smilodon may have evolved from was known to occasionally kill homoerectus it's been proposed that a few unlucky people were taken out by Smilodon 2 from time to time however thanks to our far
superior technology humans certainly got the best of some smileton as well for now there's no direct evidence of such battles but in 201 21 researchers did locate a Petroglyph that seemed to depict a group of humans watching a Smilodon from afar which highly suggests that interactions did happen sadly or perhaps not sadly the coexistence between humans and smilodons was rather shortlived as somewhere along the way from then to now smilodons were lost to history with the youngest Fatalis and popular tour remains both being dated to about 10,000 years ago around the same time that farming
was first taking place in certain parts of the world the extinction of the saber-tooth is a topic surrounded by a lot of debate and mystery some believe that humans had a hand in its demise out competing it and starting fires that led to habitat loss and while most agree that humans weren't good for Smilodon population there is disagreement in how much of an impact we had with the more typical thought being that the loss of megap during the quater Extinction event was the true culprit as many large animals died off in North and South America
the Smilodon had less and less prey to choose from a curse of its own blessing as it had evolved to be the perfect Giant Slayer but unfortunately there weren't many Giants left and soon enough Smilodon died out unable to adapt to this new world its ending marked the end of not only saber-tooth cats in the Western Hemisphere but also worldwide as it was the last member of its family who had been King throughout the globe for over 20 million years thanks for watching and until next time onx Zoo
