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Post by Exalt on Sept 8, 2023 23:10:00 GMT 5
I have created this thread for the purpose of talking about the subject above in general, rather than reviewing a given example.
To get the ball rolling, I have two questions, which prompted it's creation:
1. For paleodocs, how much speculation is appropriate, etc?
2. For modern or prehistoric, how much violence is "acceptable"? People complain about "awesomebros" and what not but at the same time, violence and other grisly acts are not unique to Homo Sapiens.
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Post by Infinity Blade on Sept 9, 2023 0:10:58 GMT 5
The truth is that any paleontology documentary is going to have to use speculation to some degree. Even the most scientifically accurate of paleodocs are only meant to be best guesses, and it’s just unreasonable to expect everything shown to hold up as the years go by. This is why in my reviews I try to make clear which inaccuracies are simply cases of info becoming outdated (and therefore not the producer’s fault) and which were never tenable to begin with. That said, speculation should have actual reasoning behind it, whether it’s based on fossil evidence, modern biology, etc.
For instance, there’s no direct fossil evidence that sauropods bit each other in combat, and their jaws were not specialized for fighting other animals. But there are many herbivores today that bite each other in combat, regardless of how well suited their mouths and teeth are as weapons. So I personally wouldn’t find it unreasonable to depict sauropods doing the same.
I think this is a tougher question to answer than one might think. The reality is that fighting and death in nature isn’t always equally bloody and gory. For instance, a crocodile could swallow a fish whole without that much blood. It could grab a wildebeest and drown it without turning the water into a literal bloodbath. But it can also disembowel a zebra or literally rip its face off (there’s footage of both of these things happening).
My rule of thumb is, if the frequency and magnitude of the documentary’s violence is something you’d expect out of Genndy Tartakovsky’s Primal*, I think you have a problem. But if it’s more occasional, I think it’s fine.
*Not to shit on Primal, it’s my absolute favorite show of all time. I’m just using it to put things into perspective. To be fair, I don’t think any paleodoc really goes that far.
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Post by Supercommunist on Sept 9, 2023 0:50:07 GMT 5
I actually think most high budget dinosaur documentaries don't go far enough when it comes to violence, probably because they want to appeal to general audiences.
We know theropods are objectively better flesh cutters than modern mammals. Komodos and shark predation videos are infamously bloody and brutal. I think many macropredatory dinosaur hunts, if not most of the, were pretty r rated affairs.
Of course, dinosaurs probably weren't constantly biting each other in half or beheading one another but disembowelment was probably very common.
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Post by Exalt on Sept 9, 2023 1:02:43 GMT 5
The theme for both of these seems to be to use discretion, and don't overdo it. I'm not saying I'm against speculation, just trying to figure out what's acceptable. Let's take an animal that I've looked into a lot since getting interested in this subject, Smilodon. Let's say, in theory, I'm doing a paleo doc and one episode involves them. If I portray them as non-solitary, using the famous canine teeth to deal harsh wounds rather than choking like the conical-toothed cats, having said teeth be exposed even when the mouth is closed, brandishing them as a threat or intimidation tactic, and making their fur look a certain way, some people may disagree with those interpretations. But as long as I don't make it purple or something, these are "valid", yes, and part of the necessity of depicting an animal that modern man has not observed alive? I think what I have in mind is closer to what Prehistoric Planet has done. One of the most-talked about bits is the idea of the Dreadnoughtusneck balloon thing. Now, as far as I can tell, this can't be disproven, but disproving things can be pretty hard. This premise is based upon Sauropods having air sacs in their bodies, iirc, and inferring that animals of long ago would have displayed, just like some do today. (It may also have been intended to help create buzz, but that's besides the point.) And of course, the Carnotaurus which relies upon the display concept, and the premise that some large theropod arms seem to have little realistic use otherwise. No direct evidence of either, obviously. Would we draw the line anywhere in particular? I'd ask for thoughts on those details but I have a hunch that I can find them in the Prehistoric planet thread. On the violence, certainly there doesn't seem to be a hard and fast rule. You reminded me that even predation itself is violent on some level. I guess I would say use discretion, don't do it a ton, make it make sense, don't make it like a mortal kombat fatality, but also don't overly sanitize nature. It's probably something even level-headed efforts might not be perfect at.
EDIT: This was at Infinity Blade's post, Supercommunist posted while I was typing this.
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Post by Exalt on Sept 9, 2023 1:07:54 GMT 5
I actually think most high budget dinosaur documentaries don't go far enough when it comes to violence, probably because they want to appeal to general audiences. We know theropods are objectively better flesh cutters than modern mammals. Komodos and shark predation videos are infamously bloody and brutal. I think many macropredatory dinosaur hunts, if not most of the, were pretty r rated affairs. Of course, dinosaurs probably weren't constantly biting each other in half or beheading one another but disembowelment was probably very common. I actually did not know that. But how do you quantify that? Thank you both for responding. Btw, have any of you ever watched any of Casual Geographic's videos? I can't say that those didn't influence the violence question. |
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Post by Supercommunist on Sept 9, 2023 1:53:49 GMT 5
Well, the only modern terrestrial animal with serrations are komodos. All the modern carnivorans don't so as whole are objectively worse at cutting flesh. Just compare shark bites to cat bites. When a seal is bitten by a shark they are often cut in half. When a lion bites a small animal there usually isn't that much visible tissue damage until the lion starts eating.
I mentioned this in the bite mechanics thread but there is also evidence that theropods were superior flesh cutters compared to other animals with ziphodont teeth like dimetrodon because they have evenly spaced denticles whereas komodos and dimetrodons are more oddly spaced. It's not really something you can quantify. To this day, I don't anyone can quantify how dangerous a knife attack is compared to hammer attack even though there is probably a lot of medical data on those separate topic.
Not really. I find most animal youtubers only have a superifical/laymen undestanding of the topic and I dislike how clicky baity they often are.
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Post by Exalt on Sept 9, 2023 2:19:02 GMT 5
I guess I'm off to the bite mechanics thread. And understandable, my favorite "content creators" coincidentally don't seem to use clickbait much.
EDIT: I noticed that you said modern Carnivorans. Which extinct ones did?
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Post by Infinity Blade on Sept 9, 2023 2:35:46 GMT 5
The theme for both of these seems to be to use discretion, and don't overdo it. I'm not saying I'm against speculation, just trying to figure out what's acceptable. Let's take an animal that I've looked into a lot since getting interested in this subject, Smilodon. Let's say, in theory, I'm doing a paleo doc and one episode involves them. If I portray them as non-solitary, using the famous canine teeth to deal harsh wounds rather than choking like the conical-toothed cats, having said teeth be exposed even when the mouth is closed, brandishing them as a threat or intimidation tactic, and making their fur look a certain way, some people may disagree with those interpretations. But as long as I don't make it purple or something, these are "valid", yes, and part of the necessity of depicting an animal that modern man has not observed alive? I think what I have in mind is closer to what Prehistoric Planet has done. One of the most-talked about bits is the idea of the Dreadnoughtusneck balloon thing. Now, as far as I can tell, this can't be disproven, but disproving things can be pretty hard. This premise is based upon Sauropods having air sacs in their bodies, iirc, and inferring that animals of long ago would have displayed, just like some do today. (It may also have been intended to help create buzz, but that's besides the point.) And of course, the Carnotaurus which relies upon the display concept, and the premise that some large theropod arms seem to have little realistic use otherwise. No direct evidence of either, obviously. Would we draw the line anywhere in particular? I'd ask for thoughts on those details but I have a hunch that I can find them in the Prehistoric planet thread. On the violence, certainly there doesn't seem to be a hard and fast rule. You reminded me that even predation itself is violent on some level. I guess I would say use discretion, don't do it a ton, make it make sense, don't make it like a mortal kombat fatality, but also don't overly sanitize nature. It's probably something even level-headed efforts might not be perfect at.
EDIT: This was at Infinity Blade's post, Supercommunist posted while I was typing this.
I didn't mean to imply that you were against speculation, my apologies if that's what it sounded like. I was just trying illustrate that it's definitely needed even for paleodocs to some extent. The Smilodon example might not be the most apt, though, since pretty much all of those are either supported by evidence (killing with a nasty wound, exposed teeth) or things cats do (displaying the fangs as a threat), so probably not a whole lot of people would complain about those. But as for your PhP examples, I think those are within the realm of reason as far as speculation goes. I mean, I think I've heard some complaints about the neck balloons, but I don't really remember/understand the criticism for those. Your last part about violence, I think, pretty much hits the nail on the head. |
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Post by Infinity Blade on Sept 9, 2023 3:12:55 GMT 5
Saber-toothed mammalian predators (machairodonts, nimravids, and barbourofelids/barbourofelines) are among the most notable examples. At least some species had serrations of some sort on their canine teeth. I say "of some sort" because they're not necessarily "true" serrations (like in theropod, Komodo dragon, or shark teeth) that are made up of a dentin core and enamel cap; in Smilodon, for example, they're only made up of enamel (so the fangs of Smilodon are deemed "false ziphodont"). I think you might even be able to make an argument that even these aren't as specialized for cutting as "true" serrations. Not all of them have have serrations on their teeth (apparently Megantereon cultridens lacks denticles on its teeth), but many, if not most of them do. Magericyon anceps (a bear dog) also apparently had crenulated (weakly serrated) edges on its upper canines. Also, there actually seems to be one living carnivoran with serrations on its teeth. Apparently the sun bear "frequently" (which I take to mean "not always) has serrations on the back of its canines. Although, for them their canines are more for ripping through bark and termite mounds ( Christiansen, 2008). |
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Post by theropod on Sept 9, 2023 3:20:40 GMT 5
I would say (leaving aside considerations like whether it would still be considered appropriate viewing for the target audience) that is mainly a question of context and of how much violence makes sense as part of the narrative. Having that narrative exclusively focus on the violence is neither educational nor particularly interesting in most cases, especially when it’s in an exaggerated, unscientific fashion, and especially if it’s not accompanied by novel, interesting content or at least good visuals.
I think this is best explained by some mini-reviews those documentaries that did it right, and those that did it wrong.
First up, we have the Spinosaurus episode of Monsters Resurrected. I think most people will probably agree that this was one of the worst so-called documentaries (while it technically is one, I always have the urge to put that word in quotes, as labelling it the same as something like Prehistoric Planet just seems so ridiculous). The way it handled violence was a big factor in that.
The entire 45-minute episode contains at most 5 minutes of original, animated footage, probably less.
There’s the herd of Paralititan walking and browsing, there’s Rugops killing one of them, Spinosaurus walking and standing somewhere (the animation quality is ok, but the Spinosaurus model is incredibly inaccurate even for the time it was made in), killing Rugops (in spectacularly inaccurate fashion), killing Carcharodontosaurus (in very very questionable fashion), killing Sarcosuchus (that it didn’t coexist with, in downright ridiculous fashion), attacking (and getting wacked in the face by) Paralititan, attracting the fish with the shadow of its sail (but not actually ever catching or eating any of them), chasing some people in a modern city, attempting to demolish a modern truck, and then finally getting killed by Rugops (or rather, killing itself by rolling over its neural spines and breaking them…which is shown as fatal, for some reason).
These clips (mostly the ones that show Spinosaurus killing stuff, tbh) are then repeated over and over and over and over again throughout the episode. This is not like an episode of WWB or WWD, where you might see a particular animal make one or two kills throughout the same time. No, it is three quarters of an hour mostly filled with repeatedly watching the same spinosaurus
The rest of the episode is padded out with interviews (one can only wonder how much they had to edit and twist the words of those scientists in order to not contradict their narrative), sometimes showing digital models, a lot of narration, almost exclusively saying wrong stuff⁽¹⁾ or directly contradicting what’s shown on screen (e.g. showing a Baryonychine skull and claiming it is Spinosaurus), always intercut with countless repetitions of mostly the same four or five animated scenes. Showing Spinosaurus killing everything in its path.
Then there’s the mechanical Spinosaurus arm they built, which is entirely underwhelming, because it’s basically just a big, swinging bar with spikes on the end (who would have thought that that could puncture stuff? So surprising!). There is no coherent story being told, the only content is basically "look, here’s this really gigantic theropod you may never have heard of [unless you watched JPIII or otherwise have at least a passing interest in dinosaurs], let us tell you for 45 minutes how much of a killing machine it is". The aspiration to scientific accuracy is so low that it was over half an hour into the programme until someone thought to mention that Spinosaurus also ate fish, and I don’t recall ever seeing it actually catching any (while we do see it attacking every other carnivore in its environment, as well as a giant titanosaur). While the scientists they interviewed clearly tried to tell them that the jaw apparatus was actually specifically adapted for eating fish, they do not use this "revelation" to correct their previous narrative and show it as being superceded by this "new" information, they relegate piscivory almost to an afterthought, and instead try to argue that Spinosaurus was a terrestrial killing machine that also may have occasionally eaten some fish (but let’s not forget that it also killed every giant dinosaur in its environment please!).
So what did Monsters Resurrected do wrong?
They made it clear on all fronts that they were not interested in scientific accuracy, only in what I will dub the "monster narrative". None of the stuff they portrayed makes the animal seem like, well, an actual animal, everything makes it seem like a kaiju on a killing spree. We do not see the animal doing much, except kill. We also do not even see it kill in an accurate or even remotely plausible manner, nor do we get any interesting information about how it killed, it’s basically just random biting, swiping and ripping. Whenever some of the scientists try to say something potentially interesting about Spinosaurus, this gets straight-up ignored or even contradicted by what is shown right away. Most of the inaccuracies are not simply cases of outdated information, but rather of things they should have known better at the time, but must have purposefully ignored. In this documentary, violence doesn’t serve the narrative, it is the narrative, and everything else, including science, is secondary to that.
⁽¹⁾Examples:
>That nobody ever heard of Spinosaurus. It was f*ing 2009, of course people knew Spinosaurus, it was certainly among the top 10 most popular dinosaurs even back then.
>That Spinosaurus was "invincible" (original word they used!)
>That Spinosaurus was a very fast runner for its size.
>That the Rugops we see it killing was 9 m long
I was originally planning to also comment further on Walking with Monsters, and do a similar review for the Dinosaur National Monument episode of Jurassic Fight Club, but this was more time-consuming than anticipated, so I will only do one more, this time a more positive example:
The Truth about Killer Dinosaurs
This is actually a really interesting example, because on the surface it has a really similar premise to JFC or MR, namely dinosaurs fighting each other. But the execution really matters.
First of all, let’s keep in mind The Truth about Killer Dinosaurs came out in 2005, the same year as WWM, and years before JFC, Monsters Resurrected, or any of the other, generally crappy, "awesomebro documentaries", so if anything we should be a bit more lenient towards it on account of its age. It did, however, in a way pioneer the narrative structure also partly adopted by those later programmes. The premise is specifically to look at the predatory capabilities of two famous theropods, T. rex and Velociraptor, and, to an extend, the defensive capabilities of their prey. To that end we see 3D animation of the animals in question, but, as in MR, this is fairly limited and recycled a lot. The accuracy is also, well, alright I guess, for the most part (at least the droms have feathers, albeit inaccurate ones, which is more than one can say for JFC despite coming out 2 years later), but that’s no big surprise since the animals portrayed are known from fairly complete remains. There still are notable inaccuracies, especially with some of the skeletal animations, which are honestly not very good. So at first sight, these series seem pretty similar, right?
But here’s where they diverge widely. Where Monsters Resurrected shows its protagonist doing stuff (and doing it in ways) that no scientist would seriously advocate for, TaKD paid much more attention to detail and, obviously, to working with experts and letting their findings shape the narrative, not the other way around. We do get the recycled footage of animals fighting, but what is shown is not an animal randomly murdering everything in its path and being portrayed as invincible. On the contrary, in the final verdict (which they managed to not completely spoil beforehand) the T. rex gets killed by the Triceratops, and while the Velociraptors are shown as competent predators, one of them gets ragdolled by a Protoceratops, it is acknowledged clearly that it was just the size of a turkey, and would pose no thread to an adult ankylosaur (which we also notably see breaking a Tarbosaurus’ leg), and the animals generally seem like animals, not monsters. So even if there is still a lot of violence, here it is more grounded and nuanced, much more realistic (we are shown things the animals actually would have been capable of in life, not shown madeup BS to advance the narrative that these animals were unstoppable), and much less biased towards one particular animal (by comparison, Monsters Resurrected looks as though it was made by a Spinosaurus fanboy who simply wanted to see it kill stuff, so I suppose had Monsters Resurrected had a Velociraptor episode, they would have found some way for it to kill the adult Ankylosaurus, just like we saw JFC making dromaeosaurs kill an adult Edmontosaurus).
There’s also something about the programme that I can’t really put my finger on and which managed to somehow subtly communicate that while yes, the show was definitely about how "killer dinosaurs" hunted and killed, and pretty much exclusively focused on that, it wasn’t trying to claim that they did nothing but kill all the time, or that they were invincible killing machines, just that they were looking into this particular aspect of their life (whereas Monsters Resurrected honestly felt like it was intended as a general-purpose documentary about Spinosaurus, where everyone just forgot that it also did anything other than killing).
So we have greater accuracy and realism, and much better writing.
What’s more, as in MR, the animated scenes are intercut with a fair deal of interviews and practical tests.
But where in MR, these serve basically no purpose at all, in TaKD they provide a lot of information that is both interesting, and important to the overall narrative. Sure, it’s fun to see stuff (especially cars, as a radical leftist, seeing the destruction of cars always makes me happy!) being demolished, but you can only repeat the footage some claws smashing a car door so often before it gets boring.
On the other hand, the experiments in TaKD are much more varied, interesting, and also much more scientific. Here it becomes really apparent that the programme must have had a considerably higher budget, because they do not simply weld together a few steel bars with some spikes at the end, spring-load it and call it a Spinosaurus arm. They build a set of fully functional T. rex jaws, a Triceratops skull, an articulated Velociraptor claw AND a realistic-looking ankylosaur club, and they test each of these not only against stuff that they think looks cool to destroy, but also against actual, relevant analogues, such as real animal flesh, bones, skin/armour and a hefty wooden log that I have no trouble believing could be a decent analogue for a theropod leg bone. In fact, the Velociraptor apparently had sufficient scientific merit to make it into a peer-reviewed publication (Manning et al. 2006), and the finding from that study (also presented in the episode) is indeed interesting and relevant (Velociraptor claw = not good for disemboweling stuff). So the experiments here, again, actually serve the purpose of conveying (or even finding out) interesting information, as opposed to mere spectacle with zero gain in knowledge. Of course their experiments aren’t perfect; there are definitely some variables I feel they didn’t account for, or accounted for incorrectly (e.g. building the T. rex skull out of solid steel, but the Triceratops skull out of some sort of resin, and then having it charge nose first into a steel plate always felt pretty biased to me. Not only am I not at all that confident they actually replicated the strength properties of bone that well, they also ignore all the skin, muscle and keratin, as well as the fact that a real Triceratops wouldn’t have had its head rigidly mounted on a crashcart, unable to relieve excess stress on its snout by lowering its head). But overall, the experiments were interesting and thought-provoking, and probably the first introduction many young viewers got to functional morphology and biomechanics.
I also far prefer the way they conducted their interviews, which are longer, not cut apart and ripped out of context into a bunch of sentences strewn in here and there wherever they needed a filler, but shown in one piece. At the very least this makes me more inclined to believe that the scientists they interviewed were actually allowed to say everything they wanted to say and not have their words completely ignored or their meaning twisted. They even did practical demonstrations of many things they were talking about on camera, like the fields of vision, maneuverability, anatomy of a turkey, Dino Frey catching alligators in Florida (or was that just in the German version?) etc.
So the idea is quite similar to those really bad documentaries, and there is a similarly strong focus on violence, but the execution is so much better in every way that imo it is not a bad documentary overall. Granted, I would never consider it as good as the Trilogy of Life, Prehistoric Planet or the like, which showed us a much more complete view of how prehistoric animals lived and evolved, nor do I think any documentary with this narrative structure really could be that good. So in that sense, maybe there is "too much violence", depending on what kind of documentary one wants to achieve. But there was a lot of pretty good stuff in this one, and I’d argue that it definitely deserves it’s place among paleo documentaries (unlike Monsters Resurrected, JFC or CotD, for which it probably would be preferable if they had never been made).
I think this is a similar case to trying to quantify overall strength of an animal. There are cases where the difference is so vast (usually due to size difference) that it’s obvious. Obviously getting hit with a sledgehammer is going to do more damage than cutting your cheek on a razor. But in many cases, there things are so different they cannot really be compared. I would rather get hit in the thigh with a hammer than get my femoral artery slashed with a knife. In unarmoured fighting, both blunt and sharp trauma are dangerous, but the ways sharp trauma can kill you are probably more versatile and threatening. But if I were wearing a cuirass, or at least something relatively cut- and stab-proof, I’d definitely rather have someone ineffectually try to stab or cut open my stomach, only to be stopped by the layers of protection, than have someone smash me in the helmet with a hammer.
Sharp things→superior against soft targets
Blunt, very forceful things→superior against hard targets.
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Manning, P.L., Payne, D., Pennicott, J., Barrett, P.M. and Ennos, R.A. 2006. Dinosaur killer claws or climbing crampons? Biology Letters 2 (1): 110–112.
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Post by Exalt on Sept 9, 2023 3:28:45 GMT 5
The theme for both of these seems to be to use discretion, and don't overdo it. I'm not saying I'm against speculation, just trying to figure out what's acceptable. Let's take an animal that I've looked into a lot since getting interested in this subject, Smilodon. Let's say, in theory, I'm doing a paleo doc and one episode involves them. If I portray them as non-solitary, using the famous canine teeth to deal harsh wounds rather than choking like the conical-toothed cats, having said teeth be exposed even when the mouth is closed, brandishing them as a threat or intimidation tactic, and making their fur look a certain way, some people may disagree with those interpretations. But as long as I don't make it purple or something, these are "valid", yes, and part of the necessity of depicting an animal that modern man has not observed alive? I think what I have in mind is closer to what Prehistoric Planet has done. One of the most-talked about bits is the idea of the Dreadnoughtusneck balloon thing. Now, as far as I can tell, this can't be disproven, but disproving things can be pretty hard. This premise is based upon Sauropods having air sacs in their bodies, iirc, and inferring that animals of long ago would have displayed, just like some do today. (It may also have been intended to help create buzz, but that's besides the point.) And of course, the Carnotaurus which relies upon the display concept, and the premise that some large theropod arms seem to have little realistic use otherwise. No direct evidence of either, obviously. Would we draw the line anywhere in particular? I'd ask for thoughts on those details but I have a hunch that I can find them in the Prehistoric planet thread. On the violence, certainly there doesn't seem to be a hard and fast rule. You reminded me that even predation itself is violent on some level. I guess I would say use discretion, don't do it a ton, make it make sense, don't make it like a mortal kombat fatality, but also don't overly sanitize nature. It's probably something even level-headed efforts might not be perfect at.
EDIT: This was at Infinity Blade's post, Supercommunist posted while I was typing this.
I didn't mean to imply that you were against speculation, my apologies if that's what it sounded like. I was just trying illustrate that it's definitely needed even for paleodocs to some extent. The Smilodon example might not be the most apt, though, since pretty much all of those are either supported by evidence (killing with a nasty wound, exposed teeth) or things cats do (displaying the fangs as a threat), so probably not a whole lot of people would complain about those. But as for your PhP examples, I think those are within the realm of reason as far as speculation goes. I mean, I think I've heard some complaints about the neck balloons, but I don't really remember/understand the criticism for those. Your last part about violence, I think, pretty much hits the nail on the head. You're fine, I just try to make things clear. I'm often bad at communication, at least verbally. I guess what I meant with that example was that they are things which I would think would sound reasonable but can't be 100% proven, ergo, the lightest level of speculation, and then moving from there.
In a way these responses are making me feel like it's a "if you're concerned about it, you're probably doing okay" thing...not that I've ever written such a thing.
Thank you.
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Post by Exalt on Sept 9, 2023 3:30:41 GMT 5
Saber-toothed mammalian predators (machairodonts, nimravids, and barbourofelids/barbourofelines) are among the most notable examples. At least some species had serrations of some sort on their canine teeth. I say "of some sort" because they're not necessarily "true" serrations (like in theropod, Komodo dragon, or shark teeth) that are made up of a dentin core and enamel cap; in Smilodon, for example, they're only made up of enamel (so the fangs of Smilodon are deemed "false ziphodont"). I think you might even be able to make an argument that even these aren't as specialized for cutting as "true" serrations. Not all of them have have serrations on their teeth (apparently Megantereon cultridens lacks denticles on its teeth), but many, if not most of them do. Magericyon anceps (a bear dog) also apparently had crenulated (weakly serrated) edges on its upper canines. Also, there actually seems to be one living carnivoran with serrations on its teeth. Apparently the sun bear "frequently" (which I take to mean "not always) has serrations on the back of its canines. Although, for them their canines are more for ripping through bark and termite mounds ( Christiansen, 2008). I see, what advantage/s does this offer? It sounds like they're more efficient at killing, but... |
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Post by Supercommunist on Sept 9, 2023 4:14:15 GMT 5
I guess I'm off to the bite mechanics thread. And understandable, my favorite "content creators" coincidentally don't seem to use clickbait much. EDIT: I noticed that you said modern Carnivorans. Which extinct ones did?
Yeah IB mentioned most of them. There was also some extinct cetaceans with cutting edges on their teeth. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ankylorhiza#:~:text=Ankylorhiza's%20sharp%2Dtipped%20teeth%20had,tusk%2Dlike%20and%20angled%20forwards. |
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Post by Infinity Blade on Sept 9, 2023 5:14:30 GMT 5
Saber-toothed mammalian predators (machairodonts, nimravids, and barbourofelids/barbourofelines) are among the most notable examples. At least some species had serrations of some sort on their canine teeth. I say "of some sort" because they're not necessarily "true" serrations (like in theropod, Komodo dragon, or shark teeth) that are made up of a dentin core and enamel cap; in Smilodon, for example, they're only made up of enamel (so the fangs of Smilodon are deemed "false ziphodont"). I think you might even be able to make an argument that even these aren't as specialized for cutting as "true" serrations. Not all of them have have serrations on their teeth (apparently Megantereon cultridens lacks denticles on its teeth), but many, if not most of them do. Magericyon anceps (a bear dog) also apparently had crenulated (weakly serrated) edges on its upper canines. Also, there actually seems to be one living carnivoran with serrations on its teeth. Apparently the sun bear "frequently" (which I take to mean "not always) has serrations on the back of its canines. Although, for them their canines are more for ripping through bark and termite mounds ( Christiansen, 2008). I see, what advantage/s does this offer? It sounds like they're more efficient at killing, but... Serrations on a cutting edge mean that as the tooth is drawn across flesh or even bone, more pressure is put on those individual serrations than on a smooth, continuous cutting edge. More put on the flesh from the cutting surface of the tooth=flesh is more likely to be cut. So because serrated require less effort to slice and dismember flesh than smooth edged teeth (all else being equal), they are indeed more efficient at killing, but also more efficient at eating. Not exactly the biggest fan of driving long distances myself lol |
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Post by dinosauria101 on Sept 9, 2023 20:22:27 GMT 5
Exalt , thank you for making this thread! I won't do much commenting here until I finish some more entertainment reviews (to avoid spoilers), but I can't wait! I guess this thread is this website's equivalent to Spinoinwonderland's Discord server's palaeodocumentary channel. That channel is one me, Infinity Blade, and Golden Raptor do a lot of palaeodocumentary chat on, so an equivalent here is nice to put general things that would be cumbersome to search out or put in specific documentary threads.
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