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| Prey With The Best Defence | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Jan 5 2014, 12:52 PM (2,396 Views) | |
| SuetheRex | Feb 17 2018, 12:23 AM Post #16 |
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Unicellular Organism
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voted for size. And when talking about size i mean getting really big. A fully grown African Elephant at 6500 kg can easily counter even a pride of Lion. Even when picking 26 lions (One of the biggest pride that actually exist) and a weight of 190 kg per Lion, a Male elephant would still outweight and outpower the whole pride mass by 1.5 tons... That's the definition of defense. Same did dinosaurs. Despite incredible armor and horns, both Triceratops and Anchilosaurus where on T-Rex menu (especially if there where 2 rexes...). On the other side a full grown Alamosaurus would have nothing to fear from Rex. Same did other giants such as Brachiosaurus or Apatosaurus. Hunters such Allosaurus could not even think of attacking a full grown speciemen. Maybe the only place when even staggering size isn't enaught is ocean. A Megalodon or a Pod of Orcas can take on even really big whales. Still i think that extreme size is the best that nature has come up with during evolution. Simple and effective. On a side note during evolution another method of defense was tested with a success never rivaled in life history. It was extreme intelligence |
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| Jinfengopteryx | Feb 17 2018, 09:08 PM Post #17 |
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Aspiring paleontologist, science enthusiast and armchair speculative fiction/evolution writer
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I assume "never rivaled intelligence" refers to humans. Well, humans are not exactly a prey species. |
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| SuetheRex | Feb 17 2018, 10:03 PM Post #18 |
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Unicellular Organism
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Sure, humans are not purely carnivore or purely herbivore. Hence humans cannot be considered predators at 100% (especially modern ones, ice age men instead...), but for sure a group of 70 kg apes hunting down a fully grown mammoth is a quite an impressive feat when you think that few predators in history would accomplish this (and with much much much larger mass than a homo sapiens). A well equipped modern human dominates anything the world offers, from gigantic whales to Elephants, being able to ""prey"" easily on worlds most fearsome predators. So kind of we could consider extreme intelligence as the apex of defense and attack. |
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| Jinfengopteryx | Feb 18 2018, 02:52 AM Post #19 |
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Aspiring paleontologist, science enthusiast and armchair speculative fiction/evolution writer
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I can see your point. A theoretic herbivorous species with human-like intelligence would be the "prey" with ultimate defense.
Edited by Jinfengopteryx, Feb 18 2018, 02:52 AM.
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| K9 Bite | Feb 22 2018, 06:12 AM Post #20 |
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Herbivore
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Wasn't aware that cape Buffalo and Rhinos can have a similar size...that was really awesome to see! |
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| Marsupial | Feb 22 2018, 08:50 PM Post #21 |
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Autotrophic Organism
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Sheer size, a big healthy elephant bull is nearly impossible to kill (with the exception of humans). Elephants can easily fend off a pride of lion due to it’s sheer size, if elephants were small, they would be very ineffective and would easily be killed bu lions. And if size is paired with numbers (like most herds of big mammalian creatures) it would certainly be one lf the best defense (still, everything is beaten by intelligence) and it is almost unfair to the point where they usually never play the game of predator and prey. |
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| K9 Bite | Feb 22 2018, 11:29 PM Post #22 |
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Herbivore
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It seems the only reason a animal would grow so large is due to defense from predators and to take advantage of huge food sources: https://youtu.be/iATHSvDjR1o |
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9:51 AM Jul 11