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| Figure One - Eyes of a hunter! |
She lay on a ledge overlooking the dying pond. From her vantage point, igmuwatogla, the mountain lioness was watching the pond for prey.
The water in the pond would soon dry up, and the drought had killed off most of the deer. The lioness was hungry. Her small round ears perked up when she heard a sound. She listened and heard something coming her way in the shadows of the trees. She heard footsteps walking through the crackling dry leaves. Her keen eyes focused on the direction of the sound,
but before she ever spotted the prey, she recognized the odor. The scent of deer blood teased her quivering nostrils. Igmuwatogla raised her twitching
nose. She heard the snap of a tree branch. Her ears shot forward, and the pupils of her eyes readjusted to the light where the sound came from. The aroma of blood testing her patience. Her shrunken stomach growled in anticipation of a meal. The lioness spotted movement in the trees below.
She slunk down the slope of the canyon, listening and watching for the prey. Her instincts told her to set up an ambush and wait for her prey.
Igmuwatogla picked up her pace. Millions of years of evolution had made
the lioness the perfect predator
The passage in blue above came from the book SHADOWS on the TRAIL, the first book in the SHADOWS on the TRAIL Pentalogy, a historical book series about Paleoindians 12,600 years ago. The book passage describes how a mountain lioness sizes up her next meal by using the extraordinary senses and instincts that millions of years of evolution had fine-tuned. Who is her next meal? Well, you will have to read SHADOWS on the TRAIL to find that out. If you like Prehistoric America, you won't be disappointed.
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Figure 2 - Smilodon fatalis or a Sabre-toothed
cat fights with a dire wolf over a mammoth carcass at the Rancho La Brea tar pits. The dire wolf is already
fatally stuck in the oozing tar. Photo
courtesy of www.50birds.com.
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In one of my earlier blog articles titled Dire Wolves Versus Gray Wolves, I explored my decision-making for selecting gray wolves over dire wolves for costarring in my first book SHADOWS on the TRAIL. I used the same decision-making process to select my second predator for the book. My decision came down between the seemingly formidable and extinct saber-toothed cat, Smilodon fatalis, or the amazing evolutionary survivor, the American mountain lion. Below is some of my criteria I used in making my selection.
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| Figure 3 - The saber-toothed cat reached a height of 39 inches at the shoulder and a body length of 69 inches. Photo courtesy of www.arisonaskiesmeteorites.com. |
Based on fossil evidence, one of the great predators of North America for over one million years was Smilodon fatalis, or the saber-toothed cat. It survived near the top of the food chain from about 1.6 million years ago to around 10,000 years ago. Based on analysis from skeletons, the saber-toothed cat weighed between 350 to 620 lbs. and was about the same size as a modern-day African lion. Analysis shows it was built more like a bear than the African lion with heavier forequarters and lighter hindquarters than an African Lion. Based on bone structure, the saber-toothed cat was not as fleet of foot as the African lion. Furthermore, DNA studies have confirmed that the saber-toothed cat is not related to any living feline species.
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| Figure 4 - The fictional caveman cartoon The Flintstones featured a saber-toothed cat named Baby Puss. |
The most distinguishing characteristic of the saber-toothed cat was its large serrated canine teeth which could reach a length of seven or eight inches. Although the teeth were ominous-looking, they were fragile and could not bite through bone. Mechanical analyses have shown that the narrow jaws of the saber-toothed cat only had about one-third to one-half of the biting power of an African lion.
Since saber-toothed cats are extinct so we must interpret their habits and lifestyle from fossil remains. The best place to do the interpretation is at the "gooey graveyard" at the Rancho La Brea tar pits in southern California where over two thousand well-preserved saber-toothed cat skeletons have been recovered and analyzed. Only the dire wolf has a greater concentration of skeletal material at the Rancho La Brea tar pits.
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Figure 5 - Size comparison between a human and the saber-toothed cat that weighed as much as three to four men. Photo courtesy of
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Based on the number of skeletons at the tar pits, scientists believe that saber-toothed cats were ambush predators that preyed on large, slow-moving herbivores such as bison, camels, ground sloths, horses, and mastodons. Its bone structure indicates that it was not suited for preying on quicker, smaller animals. It most likely inhabited forest or heavy brush environments where the cover provided an opportunity for ambushing its prey. The large sample of saber-toothed cat bone material recovered in the tar pits indicates that the animals were scavenging other trapped animals there. Scientists, analyzing the tar pit specimens, found a large number of broken teeth and fractured bones in saber-toothed cat skeletons, and concluded that the trauma causing the injuries came from preying on much larger prey animals.
The bottom line is that the saber-toothed cat was unable to adapt to a new environment and went extinct with many of the large mammal species that it preyed upon...
What about the American mountain lion?
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| Figure 6 - The American Mountain Lion |
The American mountain lion, also known as a cougar, puma, panther, or catamount; is a highly efficient stalk-and-ambush predator. The mountain lion's name is a misnomer since its habitat is quite diverse and not limited to mountains. They are found on the desert and plains, as well as the foothills and mountains. The American mountain lion has the widest habitat range of any large terrestrial mammal in the western hemisphere, spanning from the Canadian Yukon to the southern Andes of South America! It is the second heaviest cat in the western hemisphere, behind the jaguar. Adult lions stand 24 to 35 inches at the shoulders and from head to tail range from 4.9 to 9 feet. Adult males weigh between 115 to 220 lbs.
The mountain lion is a solitary, nocturnal animal that pursues a wide range of prey from insects up to ungulates weighing over 1000 lbs. The mountain lion's lean and wiry physique gives it great leaping and short-sprint capabilities. The mountain lion can leap vertically eighteen feet in one bound and jump horizontally forty to forty-five feet. The mountain lion's top speed is between forty and fifty miles per hour. Evolution created this near-perfect predator.
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| Figure 7 - Photo courtesy of www.fineartamerica.com |
In addition to its physical strength and performance, the mountain lion has extraordinary senses. The mountain lion uses its finely tuned sense of smell to locate prey within an area. Once the prey is located, the mountain lion moves its small rounded ears together or independently to isolate the direction of the sound. The mountain lion can open its eye pupils three times wider than a human, letting in much more light for nocturnal conditions. Mountain lions demonstrate a heightened sensitivity to movement and many biologists believe that movement triggers an attack. This theory answers the question as to why most of its natural prey freezes in the presence of a mountain lion. The prey is trying to prevent an attack.
By now you can pretty much guess which predator I picked for SHADOWS on the TRAIL. That does not mean you won't see a saber-toothed cat in my other books. Check out my books and see how I handled the storyline! LINK BELOW!
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