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Post by Seijun on Jun 1, 2011 8:16:57 GMT
Maybe if the wind is in it's favor.. (the baby's favor I mean)
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Post by Blade-of-the-Moon on Jun 1, 2011 16:28:55 GMT
Maybe...nah won't help... lol
Don't mind me I'm just determined to crush any hope this scene isn't heading toward some brutal violence.. ;D
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Post by Himmapaan on Jun 1, 2011 18:26:34 GMT
Fiend! ;D
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Post by Radman on Jun 1, 2011 22:36:09 GMT
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Post by Blade-of-the-Moon on Jun 2, 2011 1:23:01 GMT
Usually.. ;D I mean I guess there is some tiny, remote chance it's mother is nearby and ...against all instinct really... could barge in and fight instead of hauling tail the other direction..lol |
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Post by Seijun on Jun 2, 2011 5:53:09 GMT
Wouldn't her instinct be exactly that though, to protect her young? Animals attack things way bigger and stronger than them all the time to protect young.
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Post by Blade-of-the-Moon on Jun 2, 2011 7:15:44 GMT
I think it's more common abandon one juvenile that may or may not live to adulthood than risk herself ( a breeding age female ) trying to save it.
It may depend on the situation as well...if it were a small group of dromeosaurs then she might reason she has the upper hand and fight instead of flight...against and adult and healthy looking Tarbosaur though..I just feel she flee instead.
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Post by arioch on Jun 2, 2011 7:24:08 GMT
If there was a small group of dromaeosaurs the juvenile itself could have finish them off without mom´s help. ;D
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Post by Blade-of-the-Moon on Jun 2, 2011 7:36:17 GMT
Not according to my artistic interpretation...  How big is this juvenile ? About 6 feet long or so ? Sounds like fair game for a pack of small hunters to me. |
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Post by arioch on Jun 2, 2011 12:14:09 GMT
Considering the Tarbosaurs is an adult, the young duckbill must be almost cow sized, or bewteen the size of a cow and a horse. More than enough to stomp some wolf sized flightless turkeys (I even doubt they could do better if they were as big as, say, Deinonychus, against prey who exceed twice their size)....;D
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Post by Blade-of-the-Moon on Jun 2, 2011 17:40:30 GMT
Cow sized still isn't that big..and wolves take down prey larger than themselves all the time. A common tactic is one wolf will grab a moose or elf by the nose and pull their head to the ground while the others disable it by cutting the legs and gutting it. Deinonychus is conservatively 11 feet long or so...one alone could take down something cow sized. If you also look at the juvenile's state of mind it's obvious it's still more about hiding than running or fighting on it's own. Smaller, younger animals generally find it's better to flee..hiding can work but unless this Tarbo is blind and has a cold..it's prob not going to work. |
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Post by arioch on Jun 3, 2011 0:00:29 GMT
Keep in mind dromaosaurids and theropods in general are more fragile than carnivorous mammals. Not only because of the hollow bones but also bidedalism and general build. One sole kick or tail blow of that juvenile duckbill, for example could cause serious injuries in a small or medium sized dromaeosaur. We should observe modern birds or reptiles rather than mammals to predict dinosaurs behaviour, and those rarely go after prey much more bigger than themselves. There can be some exceptions nevertheless.  |
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Post by Griffin on Jun 3, 2011 22:14:12 GMT
Birds are much tougher than people give them credit for. Hollow bones have honeycomb-like structure to the inside so even thuogh they are lighter, they are also very strong and can withstand some beating. Eagles frequently intimidate large mammalian predators away from kills. There is footage out there of a martial eagle scaring away some lions over a warthog kill- those talons can seriously maim even large cats to the point where they keep their distance!. Also in mongolia they train golden eagles to hunt and stuff like wolves and deer. Birds also have a one-way respiratory system so they have great endurance as well.
As for reptiles they are leagues ahead of mammals when it comes to fighting durability I feel. They need to be since they tend to be opportunistic predators (crocs, pythons...) cant afford to flinch when grabbing the only prey to come along weeks perhaps longer. I think that when talking about dromaeosaurs though, birds are a better archosaur model.
That being said i don't think a baby (cow-sized) duckbill would stand much of a chance to a pack of seasoned dromies. Mostly because its a baby and its inexperienced. An adult dinosaur would probably be able to at least pose a threat but a baby? Na. Very slim chance.
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Post by arioch on Jun 3, 2011 22:55:12 GMT
I think an adult duckbill wouldn´t be just a threat but unrecheable for a 6 foot long (half of it a stiff tail) dromaeosaur, or even for 10 of them considering they showed mammal like organized hunting behaviour which is unlikely. The size and weight difference with both adults or youngsters larger than a sheep is way too big (more than tenfold), unlike eagles and wolves or wathever modern analogue.
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Post by Griffin on Jun 3, 2011 23:05:28 GMT
I never said an adult would be on the menu. Nor did I say dromaeosaurs hunted with strategy as advanced as canines.
All I'm saying is looking at the physiology of the animals and using the closest modern relatives to help fill in the blanks a little, My guess would be that a young inexperienced duckbill would be a pretty good target for a group of average sized dromaeosaurs.
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Post by arioch on Jun 3, 2011 23:51:53 GMT
Well, if adults just probably could be a threat ,is like saying dromies had a chance against them to begin with. But what kind of strategy would dromies follow as a pack,? mob hunting like crocs (used against smaller animals)? because only mammals and Harris hawks (which are the exception and not the rule within birds) show that kind of behaviour today. And with the later, only one do the killing. |
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Post by Griffin on Jun 3, 2011 23:57:36 GMT
"Well, if adults just probably could be a threat ,is like saying dromies had a chance against them to begin with."
Maybe they were if they were sick/injured. I think you get what I'm saying.
Wolves and some other canines like cape hunting dogs are really really advanced in terms of cooperation and pack hunting. Its really not fair to say they are the standard for pack hunting by any means. I'm sure a dromaeosaurus could pull off a simple chase-into-and-ambush or a surround-the-prey kind of thing. I dunno I wasn't there! But they weren't stupid. And despite how we don't have a whole lot of evidence saying they WERE pack hunters there is nothing wrong with speculating that they could have been.
harris hawks also aren't the only birds to use cooperation when hunting. Plenty of other birds do too.
You make a decent point saying birds and reptiles are better models than mammals. But this is only really true for certain things. You need to realize that back then, there were no large mammals, but there were birds and nonavian reptiles. That means that dinosaurs and them were not filling the same niches and therefore weren't really behaving all that similarly when it came to a lot of things. Dinosaurs more or less were filling the niches that large mammals are today. So don't get me wrong I'm not saying they behaved EXACTLY the same. But its okay to use certain mammals as inspiration when it comes to dinosaur reconstruction with certain things.
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Post by arioch on Jun 4, 2011 0:28:11 GMT
We can´t predict how they behaved seeing the niche they occupied, but fair enough.
I remember how in another thread someone talked about how extremely mammalized are dinosaurs in our minds and some scientists, in which I agree completely, even forgetting sometimes that at the end of the day they are just reptiles, bird like reptiles and directly birds, with certain processes that just cannot be changed.
But I stand my ground regarding small dromies. They just weren´t built to take down prey more than twice their size, let alone tenfold...
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Post by stoneage on Jun 4, 2011 1:20:04 GMT
Dromaeosaurs were closer in size (weight) to coyotes then wolves. Most animals don't hunt in packs. Not many cats. Coyotes seldom hunt in packs although they have been known to take down Elk and Moose in large groups. However this is very uncommon. Reptiles don't hunt in packs and any type of pack hunting by birds is rare. Dromaeosaurs are poorly known from fossils and are one of the rarest of small theropods. To take down a cow sized animal they would have had to hunt in large packs. But we haven't found hardly any remains, none in groups. Without any more evidence then this I would say it is very unlikely, and they probably hunted smaller animals and scavenged the remains of dead animals.
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Post by arioch on Jun 4, 2011 3:09:46 GMT
They never have been even the apex predator in any of the known habitats in which they lived. If they were capable of taking down big prey on a regular basis then bigger animals which shared their environment like tyrannosaurs wouldn´t have been so successful.
Even in the habitat of the most powerful dromaeosaurs like Deinonychus and Utahraptor we have Acrocanthosaurus as the apex predator. Utahraptor was probable able to take down medium prey like Tenontosaurus and yet, millions of years later when carcharodontosaurs disappeared in North America dromaeosaurs shrinked more and more instead of taking over while earlier and small tirannosaurs got bigger and became the new dominant predator in the northern hemisphere filling the niche left by allosauroids or megalosaurs. Even when they had the advantadge dromies couldn´t compete with another coelurosaurs so they shouldn´t be so special. Hence we can infer that dromaeosaurs always have been quite overrated. ;D
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