The most fascinating predator-prey interactions

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I know bull elands are far from their usual or preferred prey, but here's one instance of a leopard successfully preying on an adult male eland.


Larger Carnivores of the African Savannas (Bothma & Walker, 2013)->


These incidents are not common either, but leopards have also preyed upon giraffe calves.

The remains of two giraffe carcasses were found in Acacia reficiens trees at heights of 4 m and 5,7 m respectively. Claw marks on the trees indicated that leopards had been responsible. It could not be determined whether the giraffes had been disembowelled prior to being carried into the trees because of the advanced states of decomposition. No evidence as to how the prey had been killed, could be found. One calf was younger than six weeks old as the first permanent molar had not yet protruded above the alveolar margin (Hall-Martin 1976). It probably weighed about 90-110 kg based on the weights of other giraffe calves in Etosha at the same age class (unpublished data). The second calf was between six and ten weeks old, as the first permanent molar had erupted and mandibular indices (ramus height, diastema length and mandible mass) corresponded with those of calves known to be in this age class (unpublished data). This calf would have weighed up to 125 kg. These records represent food items for leopards at the large end of their prey size spectrum. If the mean body mass for adult male and female leopard is 59.8 kg and 31.5 kg respectively as suggested by Johnstone (1971) for the Matetsi area in Zimbabwe, the prey could have weighed 1,5-2,0 or 2,9-4.0 times the mass of an adult leopard, depending on the sex of the predator.

Scheepers & Gilchrist (1991)->

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Never forget this one. Protoceratops may not have been regular or preferred prey for Velociraptor, but hey, I guess it was common enough to make it into the fossil record.


© @ Yuya Tamai

According to Kenneth Carpenter, the Velociraptor was 170 cm long, while the Protoceratops was 120-130 cm long (Carpenter, 1998). Rinchen Barsbold claims both animals to have been around 170 cm long (Barsbold, 2016). The latter more specifically claims "Each fighter was about 170 cm long and weighed approximately 45-50 kg". Obviously this mass figure is far too high for the Velociraptor, but I'd say it's more plausible for the Protoceratops. If Asier Larramendi's length and mass figures for Velciraptor spp. are anything to go by (link->), then isometrically scaling down suggests this Velociraptor specimen should have weighed in the ballpark of 10 kg.

Something to note is that neither animal seems to have been as large as Wikipedia claims. That said, at least the Protoceratops is clearly stated to be an adult (Carpenter, 1989).

The discovery of the Protoceratops being attacked by a Velociraptor and of a hadrosaur skeleton showing evidence of an attack by a large theropod, provides conclusive evidence that theropods actively hunted and were not strictly scavengers as has been suggested, especially for Tyrannosaurus (e.g. HOTTON, 1963; HORNER & LESSEM, 1993). Furthermore, the prey in both instances were not young animals, but adults, and in the case of the "fighting" pair, the prey was more massive than the predator.

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No one knows exactly for sure who started the fight, but it is interesting, this fossil.

[sam1]

[elosha11]

Apparently, thresher sharks are on the menu for many other sharks and also orcas. Tough life. They get harassed and eaten by seals and sea lions when they are little, and are in constant threat of larger apex predators even when they are adults. This despite their overall large size. However they are not large enough and their jaws are significantly less deadly than other similar-sized sharks.

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That's one shark killing another far smaller than it. Never mess with a great white shark.

[Ceratodromeus]

[Supercommunist]

Armadillo attacks lamb, very strange.

[6f5e4d]

Seems very familiar, like Macroeuphractus.

[Supercommunist]

Sable kills musk deer.

www.reddit.com/r/HardcoreNature/comments/mu346g/sable_mauls_a_musk_deer_in_yakutia/?utm_content=body&utm_medium=post_embed&utm_name=bb7e48500ca949ad83a37b2f4b7fe16a&utm_source=embedly&utm_term=mu346g

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This hadrosaur tail vertebra displays a pathology that has been interpreted as a bite wound from a theropod. The nature of the wound suggests the hadrosaur died shortly after the attack due to infection. Since the fossil site it was found in lacks a large theropod that could bite the top of the tail from above (e.g. like T. rex biting an Edmontosaurus tail), it would rather seem that a smaller theropod jumped on top of the hadrosaur and bit it (Canudo et al., 2005). That suggests the hadrosaur was bigger than its attacker, and yet was killed by the predator's bite via infection.

So it looks like at around the same time T. rex was taking bites out of hadrosaur tails, another theropod across the world was doing the same thing, but this one was punching above its own weight.

The anomalous growth forming a bone callus is documented in the dinosaur fossil register (see review of Tanke & Rothschild 2002). In some cases the growth completely covers the fracture such as in the case of a ceratopsian phalanx studied by Rothschild (1988), this involving the use of X-rays to relate the callus with a fracture. This indicates that the specimen completely seals the fracture without the development of related infections. Nevertheless, this is not the case of Blasi3|140, in which there is almost no anomalous bone growth (Fig. 2, 3). Bearing in mind the speed at which the callus is formed, we must suppose a quick death a few days after the neurapophysis fracture is produced.

There is a difference to DMNH 1493, namely the very little development of the bone callus in our specimen, which indicates a short time between the attack and death. The swelling of the bone can be explained by a quick and generalised infection of the soft tissues and of the bone with great inflammation. The hole located in anterior position would be the place where the tooth penetrated and caused the fracture of the neurapophysis, but also, once the infection was established, would be where the waste formed by dead microorganisms, fragments of bone and other pus elements would be expelled.

The fossil association of Blasi (López-Martínez et al., 2001, Torices et al., 2004) lacks a large theropod which could produce a bite from top to bottom as suggested by Carpenter (1998), which would have been produced by a T. rex in an attack on the Edmontosaurus, as we saw previously. Hence, one possibility is that one or a series of smaller theropods would have jumped on top of the Arén hadrosaur, producing bites which would not have been lethal in themselves, but which would have caused death through infection.

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A while back I posted a paper documenting further evidence of a tyrannosaurid-ceratopsid interaction (Dalman & Lucas, 2018). NMMNH P-50000 is a chasmosaurine skull that would have been 2 meters long or slightly more when complete (what we have is 1.73 meters long). A cast was made of the orbital horn core before it was lost; judging from it, this ceratopsian was well armed. This skull has bite marks from a tyrannosaurid that are both healed or unhealed. While the bite maker's species cannot be determined, the bite pattern shows only a single row of teeth on each side of the ceratopsian's skull. This indicates the tyrannosaur had a narrow mouth, more like that of Gorgosaurus than Daspletosaurus.

Just to be clear of what happened to this ceratopsid (particularly with regards to the unhealed bite marks), I emailed the authors of this paper for clarification (Lucas conferred to Dalman to answer my question). Turns out while this ceratopsid survived one attack, it wasn't so lucky a second time, and ended up killed and eaten.

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Instances where great white sharks take humpback whales are interesting. Below are the two I know of. These whales aren't fully sized or in good health (ranging from 7-10 meters long), but at the same time the great whites aren't fully sized either (ranging from 3.5-4 meters long).

Here, the shark was just under 4 meters long while the humpback was around 10 meters long and ill (link).


In this other instance, two great whites (both were estimated to be 3.5-4 meters long) take down a 7 meter humpback. It was in poor condition and entangled (Dines & Gennari, 2020).

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This albatross choked to death trying to follow a seal shark. You can see the shark's tail protruding out of the bird's throat.



www.acap.aq/latest-news/2355-a-northern-royal-albatross-succumbs-after-swallowing-a-seal-shark

[lethocerus]

Ringneck with a Northwestern Garter Snake: www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rgal8K_93IE