Tyrannosaurus rex vs Swampus (The Future is Wild)

[Infinity Blade]

Tyrannosaurus rex


© @ DeviantArt user DerpyDuckArt

Swampus


Image taken from the Speculative Evolution wiki-> (presumably screenshot from The Future is Wild)

[Infinity Blade]

Having rewatched The Future is Wild, both during my review of the series and just now, the swampus' neurotoxin seems to be rather fast-acting. It doesn't take a whole lot of time for the venom to kill the elephant-sized baby toraton.

On the one hand, it's worth keeping in mind how well the swampus can apply its venom. As big as it is, Tyrannosaurus would be significantly more mobile on land than a swampus (come on, it's two long, muscular legs that retain flexible joints versus literally hauling yourself on land with four arms on four fleshy pads). Its best shot may be to move in a circling motion, getting into a prime position to strike (this, btw, is how I suspect Tyrannosaurus may have dealt with its prey if it was caught head-on and was still determined to get a meal). The swampus in the show dealt its bite to a toraton that moved very slowly towards it (sure as hell doesn't seem like it'd be anywhere near as mobile as a T. rex) and wasn't even trying to fight.

On the other hand...the Tyrannosaurus doesn't know that the swampus has venom. It's not really outwardly obvious (like sharp horns or spikes are), and I'm not sure how it might interpret the swampus' changing colors. It's very possible the Tyrannosaurus will literally just attack straight on (thinking it's just a defenseless morsel of flesh). In that case, it's four arms and a dangerously venomous bite vs a giant skull outfitted with arguably the most powerful bite of any terrestrial predator coupled with what are essentially war hammer spikes for teeth. I feel like the neck and torso of the Tyrannosaurus are less vulnerable than the neck of a toraton (which was long and raised vertically, and therefore a prime target), so the swampus might be stuck attacking the face of the T. rex. This raises a few questions:

1.) How well might the armored face of Tyrannosaurus-> protect it from a swampus bite?
2.) What will happen first: the tyrannosaur engulfing the swampus in its jaws and delivering the coup de grâce with its tremendous jaw power, or the swampus getting a hold on the tyrannosaur's face and delivering its venomous bite?
3.) Wouldn't the tyrannosaur's enormous size allow it to overpower the swampus' arms or will the swampus' dexterity somehow pull through?

So in the end, I don't really know. I haven't accounted for the tyrannosaur also choosing to kick the low-to-the-ground swampus with its clawed feet, but that's more stuff I gotta write and think about.

[creature386]

There are matches you cannot believe work, but that still do.

When you requested this match, there was only one question on my mind. "What's little squiddy gonna do against the king of lizards?"
Then I remembered the toraton scene and that the swampus lonly ooked so small because the adult toratons were just so enormous.

What I want to say is that this is a really good match that can go either way, depending on who gets the first bite.

However, I have two reasons to favor Tyrannosaurus here.

1. Chances of retaliation.
If you locked up both combatants in, say, the New York Central Park (or somewhere swampier, if necessary) and let them fight a hundred times, not every fight would be the same. Sometimes, Tyrannosaurus would win. Sometimes, the swampus would win. And sometimes, both would end up dead.
The swampus' venom works fast, certainly, but only incontext to other animals' venoms. It's still slow in comparison to a maw of hammer-sized teeth sinking into the squishy cephalopod's skin. So, in case the swampus bites the Tyrannosaurus and the dinosaur isn't paralyzed immediately, it has a really good shot at a final revenge bite to take the octopus with it. The reverse is far less likely to happen than if the Tyrannosaurus bites first. While this would by no means increase Tyrannosaurus' number of victories among the aforementioned hundred fights in the New York Central Park, it would decrease the swampus' number of victories and that's certainly gonna factor into my vote.

2. The swampus really only has one chance.
A lot of people favor land-based predators over crocodiles if the fight doesn't take place in the croc's natural element. While crocodiles are much faster on land than many give them credit for, the swampus moves exactly the way crocodiles are imagined to move on land: Generally slow, but capable of quick strikes to ambush unsuspecting foes. While this is certainly effective, this technique has its Limits. It only works as long as the element of surprise is maintained. Should its grip be insufficient, for whatever reason, the Tyrannosaurus is gonna shake off the tentacles and be more cautious next time. The dinosaur, however, has much more retries with its greater mobility.

There are quite a few advantages the cephalopod has, such as superior grappling ability, but overall, I'd favor the dinosaur.

[Infinity Blade]

Hmm, pretty good analysis!

There are matches you cannot believe work, but that still do.

When you requested this match, there was only one question on my mind. "What's little squiddy gonna do against the king of lizards?"
Then I remembered the toraton scene and that the swampus lonly ooked so small because the adult toratons were just so enormous.

Oddly enough, I feel like the swampus might be the best match for a giant theropod out of all the animals that can move on land in TFIW. The only land animal that's truly bush elephant-sized is the megasquid, and it's a pretty poor match. The toraton obviously destroys, and just about everything else is far too small to be a serious threat, barring the swampus.

[creature386]

I believe one poster pitted the megasquid against the Tyrannosaurus on the old carnivora and it was widely regarded as a mismatch.

I agree that the swampus was the wisest choice. It was just difficult for me to swallow that the swampus is in the same size class as the megasquid, given their different presentation in their episodes (the megasquid felt like the toraton while the swampus felt like a squibbon).

[Infinity Blade]

I believe one poster pitted the megasquid against the Tyrannosaurus on the old carnivora and it was widely regarded as a mismatch.

I did something like that on the old Carnivora, but I used Carcharodontosaurus.

I don't think the swampus is megasquid-sized. The baby toraton is able to keep its neck up while the swampus is clinging to it and biting it; if it were the size of a megasquid it should have weighed the head and neck down. The swampus seems to be smaller than the baby toraton visually too (here's-> a screenshot; note the swampus in the back).

[dinosauria101]

Tyrannosaurus appears to be quite a durable animal - the injuries some specimens survived give CROCODILES a run for their money in terms of damage tolerance. 

STAN has also suffered a broken neck. In the process of healing, two vertebrae fused together and a third became immobilized by extra bone growth (apparently, his spinal cord was not severed, or he would not have lived to heal). His cheeks also show healed injuries, but probably the most chilling is a healed injury on the back of the brain case. Through the back of the skull, we found a circular hole more than one inch in diameter - into which a T. rex tooth fits nicely. The hole ends at a spot where a large chunk of bone (two by five inches) actually broke away! Amazingly, STAN lived through this incredible injury, because a thin layer of bone sealed the broken surface.

www.bhigr.com/pages/info/info_stan.htm

Like other T. rex fossils, "Scotty" shows signs of trichomoniasis, a parasitic infection in the jaw that left visible holes in the bone and was unique to this specific species of dinosaur. Additionally, a broken and healed rib on its right side, broken tail vertebra, as well as a hole near the eye socket are possibly the result of another T. rex attack.

drive.google.com/file/d/15y4u7it1G11o9uZO4x9kj9esbfAKY-1n/view

An injury to the right shoulder region of Sue resulted in a damaged shoulder blade, a torn tendon in the right arm due most likely from a struggle with prey, and three broken ribs. This damage subsequently healed (though one rib healed into two separate pieces), indicating Sue survived the incident. The left fibula is twice the diameter of the right one, likely the result of infection. Original reports of this broken bone were contradicted by the CT scans which showed no fracture.

books.google.ca/books/about/A_Dinosaur_Named_Sue.html?id=2YCFQgAACAAJ&redir_esc=y

Not sure about how tolerant it would be to venom, but the durability at least makes me think it would have a fair shot at winning at least sometimes if not more often than not.

Additionally, it would probably be difficult for the Swampus to control the Tyrannosaurus' head. Infinity Blade goes into a similar matter well, on the Polar Bear vs Nanuqsaurus thread. The same would apply for the Tyrannosaurus and Swampus

On top of this, I suspect tyrannosaurids (at least non-alioraminins) had proportionately more powerful necks than canids. Unlike a cat's relatively short, strongly S-curved neck, a dog has a relatively longer and straight neck, and because a canid's neck muscles would correspondingly be longer, they'd be relatively weaker than a felid's neck muscles (due to the properties of muscle tissue). And even if that's not true, the muscle insertion processes on each cervical are actually relatively smaller in dogs than in cats. The "nuchal ligament" helps to keep a dog's head in place without muscular effort and helps with their foraging method (following scent trails with their noses close to the ground), but they apparently have relatively weaker neck muscles than cats do (source - Dogs: Their Fossil Relatives and Evolutionary History). What did tyrannosaurids have? They had relatively short, strongly S-curved necks (in fact, an S-curved neck is typical of theropods), and their neck muscles were evidently very powerful (Eric Snively once described it like "From the shoulders forward, T. rex was like a whole killer whale: just bite, shake and twist."); sounds like the powerful neck of a felid, no? The intraspinous ligaments of the neck would have been sufficient enough to maintain postural support, meaning the enormous neck muscles weren't necessary for lifting the massive skull, but were instead free to control other movements, including, I don't know, ripping off flesh or subuding prey (Source - Tyrannosaurid Paleobiology)? And as alluded to earlier, the neck would have supported a head that was relatively much larger and more voluminous than what we see in carnivorans like cats, dogs, or hyenas. So seeing as how tyrannosaurid cervicals weren't particularly reduced in overall size relative to the size of the head (even though the head was pneumatic and reduced in mass for its volume), another reason I'd expect their neck muscles to be relatively larger and more powerful than a dog's (other than the more cat-like properties of it) is simply because cervicals with overall larger dimensions would have correspondingly larger muscles.

What does this mean? As the polar bear tries to seize the head/neck of the tyrannosaur, the sheer size (both absolute and relative) of the tyrannosaur's head would maximize the dinosaur's chances of biting one of the bear's paws in response and make it a risky gamble to try to control or attack the head or neck. The strength of the neck would make it (probably much) harder to wrestle with than if it were dealing with a hypothetical upsized canid. The S-shaped neck morphology of theropods--which dogs and hyenas don't have--would also facilitate in fast striking and thus getting a bite in when the bear is trying to seize it. Additionally, the damage output potential of its jaws (I trust I don't need to explain how a tyrannosaurine's bite is so damaging) means that if the tyrannosaur does grab onto a paw/forelimb, the bear's in trouble. If the tyrannosaur crunches some bones and/or takes a huge chunk of flesh from the bear's paw/forelimb, we're going to end up with a polar bear that has essentially lost its most valuable asset in this fight*, leaving it with a single paw and a set of jaws that are far inferior to the dinosaur's.

I should also note that for the bear to actually put its grappling ability to use it needs to be up on its two hindlimbs. And when that happens, it's stepping into the theropod's realm of comfort. Nanuqsaurus, like literally every other theropod, was an obligate biped; because the two hindlimbs were constantly supporting the dinosaur's body, you'd probably expect them to be better adapted for keeping it standing than the hindlimbs of a facultative biped, like a bear. Indeed, comparison of their anatomy seems to suggest this. The fact that Nanuqsaurus was also a horizontally slung animal (unlike an upright, reared up bear), had a very muscular tail to facilitate stability, and most likely had more muscular hindlimbs (the authors of Hutchinson et al. (2011) seem to agree that Tyrannosaurus probably had proportionately larger leg muscles than any extant animal or even any animal that ever lived; by phylogenetic inference the same should hold true for Nanuqsaurus) would only bolster its stability advantage on two hindlimbs over the bear. The only disadvantage the tyrannosaurid might have in this regard is its digitigrade stance as opposed to the bear's plantigrade stance, and even then the dinosaur could circumvent this disadvantage by adopting a plantigrade stance itself (we know from footprints that theropods sometimes adopted a plantigrade stance to gain greater stability). It wouldn't surprise me if Nanuqsaurus could knock a bipedal bear over.

With all this in mind, I might lean towards the tyrannosaur or at least think it has a good shot.

[Infinity Blade]

Well, resistance to physical damage isn't necessarily conferred by the same things as resistance to toxins.

But yeah, I think the grappling arms of the swampus should be easily overpowered by the Tyrannosaurus; the Tyrannosaurus probably being significantly larger with a muscular-ass neck would definitely help. I'm not even sure just how good of a grip the arms can get on something with the shape of a T. rex head; it's a different thing from the long, vertical neck of a baby toraton (edit: nvm, these things still seem to have suckers).