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Why did Phorusrhacids have hooked beaks?
Topic Started: Dec 17 2016, 09:23 AM (483 Views)
Mesopredator
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Disaster taxa
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Corvids: dagger like beak
Butcherbirds: dagger like beak
Herons: dagger like beak
Storks: dagger like beak
Pterosaurs: dagger like beak (many such cases)

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???

No wonder they went extinct!
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Nergigante
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Can you simplify what you said? I am confused.
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LionClaws
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Omnivore
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I think he's trying to figure out why terror birds had hooked beaks when most other opportunistic birds/parallels thereto had straight, dagger-like beaks.
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Ceratodromeus
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Aspiring herpetologist
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Perhaps it is the result of more macrophagous tendencies; raptorial birds have hooked beaks and they can bring down large mammalian prey that would be supplemental to their normal diet(though iirc some populations of some species prey heavily on large{r} bodied prey animals); a different niche to fill. My ornithology is rusty so that's just a best guess from ol' Ceratodromeus..
Edited by Ceratodromeus, Dec 17 2016, 11:38 AM.
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Ausar
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Xi-miqa-can! Xi-miqa-can! Xi-miqa-can!
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I'm aware of the "sledgehammer" idea proposed for phorusrhacids. And while I think they employed this action, maybe the predatory repertoire of phorusrhacids was more contingent on actually biting things than in beaked animals with straight, dagger-like beaks. If you have a toothless beak and want to bite things and pull back flesh, a hooked one will have obvious benefits over one that's straight.
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Wyvax
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Herbivore
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I'm willing to bet that they were opportunistic, but that doesn't equal daggerbeaks in birds. Just look at bald eagles, though predators with hooked beaks they will steal from osprey rather than fish for themselves. Kleptoparasitism is probably the pinnacle of opportunism, scavenging can be considered such as well, and I'm fairly certain that vultures have hooked beaks last I checked. I don't think that opportunity is the basis for the beak shape here, I think diet is, regardless of whether they hunted or scavenged or both, they still need a beak that better facilitates tearing into flesh and a hook that can pull is better than a snapping/spearing dagger.
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Mesopredator
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Disaster taxa
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Well it was sort of a false question.
If it is right that the Phorusrhacids had a carnivorous diet, surely a beak resembling raptors does make sense. Crows and marabou storks as example need to wait for vultures or buzzards and so on to open up carcasses so they can eat.

On the other hand, looking at the feats of herons, surely a dagger like beak could've worked no?

But I imagine that the Phorusrhacids had a bauplan that simply resulted into what it became.
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