Among the extant land animals, the largest is the elephant; in adulthood, it often encounters beasts at the top of the food chain, such as lions and tigers, but it still has no natural predators. What's more, baby elephants basically live with adult female elephants, so elephants have no natural enemies from birth. In ancient times, however, cats such as saber-toothed tigers used elephants as prey. So why is it achieving this goal? This is something that neither lions nor tigers can do. Let's take a look at this problem together.
Can saber-toothed tigers really kill elephants? Speaking of which, it is necessary to talk about the problem that any proboscis animal is collectively called an elephant, and only two kinds of Elephants exist in existence, African elephants and Asian elephants. However, in the past, this family had many classifications, but a large part of it was eliminated, so now there are only two elephants. As a result, it is certainly not the existing elephant that is eaten by the saber-toothed tiger, but the extinct mastodon. So, let's look at the intersection of their contradictions.
Let's take a look at the situation of the saber-toothed tiger first: strictly speaking, this species is not a single species, any member of the subfamily of the cat saber-toothed tiger can be called this name; and there are two families in the subfamily, the post-cat and the saber-toothed tiger, the two families have a total of 13 genera, a total of about 64 different species, they are saber-toothed tigers, and their common feature is that saber-toothed tigers have long-bladed canine teeth. Among them, the paras saber-toothed tiger can be said to be the first in its family, and its fossils can be seen in Asia and Europe in the Miocene (about 15 million years ago - 9 million years ago). In terms of size, it is about the same size as the existing jaguar.
Take a look at the evolutionary history of the saber-toothed tiger family: on Earth 6 million years ago, there were many saber-toothed tigers. During this period, there were 8 species of cats, 12 species of the genus Megalodon, 14 of the saber-toothed tiger team, and 20 species of short saber-toothed tigers and 20 members of the hetero-saber-toothed tiger. Maybe from the Pliocene, maybe from the Pliocene, lived about 10,000 years ago. It is worth noting that under the subfamily saber-toothed tiger, there is an animal that once posed a great threat to human ancestors, that is, the phobia cat in the post-cat family. As a result, the saber-toothed tiger family can be described as particularly large, and since the Mesocene, the terrestrial ecological status has been slowly occupied by them, not to mention that since the Pliocene, its status has increased a lot, evolving into a land boss. However, from the analysis of body size, the members of the saber-toothed tiger subfamily are basically similar to the current big cats, and the canine teeth are the biggest difference.
The difference between canine teeth: From the comparison of teeth, it can be seen that after encountering a heavy object, the long tusks of saber-toothed tigers are easy to break, so lions can jump on the back of herbivores and bite them, but they can't do it. It can also be seen that even if it looks like a saber-toothed tiger has very terrifying tusks, in fact the combat effectiveness is negative. If this is the case, how did the larger elephants get killed by them?
So let's see what its tusks do. At first, scientists speculated that, similar to antlers, saber-toothed tigers' tusks were also for courtship. But then I saw that both males and females have this so-called tusk. More crucially, it can be found from the fossils that have been found: there is not much difference in the male and female body size of saber-toothed tigers, and dimorphism does not exist. Dimorphism is to say that in addition to the reproductive organs, there is a certain difference in appearance between male and female. Like antlers and lions' manes, often sexually dimorphic creatures are polygamous; and those with little difference in body size are the same as modern human marriages. The difference between male and female is not very large, which also means that their tusks do not show how attractive the male is, so what is going on? Scientists have speculated that the saber-toothed tiger may have used this tusk because it caused the opponent to receive a fatal blow.
Unlike most extant big cats, saber-toothed tigers have a very short tail, not as long as the existing big cats, so they can't run fast and can only choose to fight ambush battles. After all, when running fast, the long tail allows the body to be as balanced as possible. In order to find a way to get close to the enemy, perhaps the pattern on the body is the protective color of the saber-toothed tiger. Moreover, in order to be more efficient, they often target large animals that live alone, after all, there are many eyes in the social animal family, which causes serious trouble for their hunting. And species that live alone can cover up their shortcomings.
Saber-toothed tigers have very thick front legs, but the hind legs are relatively short and strong, and have a particularly large claw hook on the thumb. It is speculated that after approaching the prey, it will physically confront the opponent, with strong and powerful legs, the prey will be knocked down, and then the saber-toothed tiger will use its tusks to send it to the end. Yet scientists are still debating where the saber-toothed tiger bites. Some scientists feel that the stomach is relatively soft, so the saber-toothed tiger must first have a stomach, and there are many internal organs in the stomach, not only soft but also rich in nutrients, so many predators will eat the internal organs first, and then eat the muscles.
However, another group of scientists felt that the neck of the opponent was the primary attack site of the saber-toothed tiger, and in that era, many opportunists lived in the Americas, like giant hyenas and short-faced bears, who were not only large in size, but also numerous in number. So when the saber-toothed tiger can't kill and solve its prey as soon as possible, its food will be robbed by these opportunists. The saber-toothed tiger's teeth are somewhat curved inward, shaped like machetes, not to mention that they also have serrated teeth inside, which are somewhat similar to machetes. When the neck of the herbivores is bitten by the fangs of the saber-toothed tiger, the aorta of the prey will be cut off by the serrations of the teeth, and it will quickly lose its life.
Later, after simulating the eating of the saber-toothed tiger, the scientists found that the saber-toothed tiger's tusks attacked the abdomen, but attacking the arteries was less troublesome, but the saber-toothed tiger needed to know where the opponent's arteries were. Moreover, this kind of measure also has the advantage that if it wants to kill the opponent, it does not need such a strong bite force, and it has such a physiological structure. From this point, we can see that the saber-toothed tiger tusks are not a decoration, but a killer tool that kills the opponent.
Summary: In the history of cat evolution, the animal with the longest average length of canine teeth is the saber-toothed tiger, and it is precisely because of this feature that the saber-toothed tiger is powerless against small and medium-sized prey (after all, after inserting into the bone, the canine teeth in the teeth are easy to break), and can only hunt larger and fast animals, and it is precisely because the saber-toothed tiger has no diet that it leads to extinction. At present, big cats have moderately long canine teeth that can be caught by any prey, that is, they cannot kill elephants with thick skin. From this point of view, the current big cat is far superior to the saber-toothed tiger at the level of resistance to natural change.