Smilodon
Smilodon is the famous 'sabre-toothed cat'. Many people call it a 'sabre-toothed tiger', but this is false, there is nothing such as a 'sabre-toothed tiger'.
The sabres are actually quite delicate - any contact with bone and they would shatter. They could only be used in the soft parts of the victim, and the cat needed to use strong front legs to hold it still.
Out of the huge numbers of bones from California, many of them show serious, healed injuries suggesting that the animals lived in groups, enabling injured animals to feed from group kills until their wounds healed.
See these BBC videos for more information. BBC series of Sabre Cats is where the above and below info come from.
VIDEO 1
VIDEO 2
VIDEO 3
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Q & A
Question: How do we know that Smilodon lived in groups?
Answer: A fantastic fossil site in California - the Rancho La Brea tar pits - has preserved thousands of specimens of the North American species ofSmilodon. Thses give us some interesting insights into its behaviour. Many of the specimens showed serious injuries which would have made the cats unable to hunt effectively - and yet the injuries had healed. This suggests that the cats may have been feeding from kills made by others, and were living in a group. This theory is also supported by the sheer number of cats found in the pit. There seem to be so many that it is thought that they didn't have had exclusive hunting territories. Finally, studies suggest that large cats living on open plains gained from co-operating and killing larger prey together, and sharing the result. Jaguars, which also lived in South America at the time, are solitary and killed smaller prey (just as leopards do in Africa, with lions killing the larger prey). Smilodon was a large-prey specialist as its teeth would have broken if they contacted bone.
Question: How do we know how Smilodon killed its prey?
Answer: Smilodon's sabres are very thin and relatively brittle. It is clear that contact with bone would have broken them, so they must have been used in a soft area of the prey. Modern cats like lions usually suffocate their prey by clamping their mouths over the nose or the windpipe. The long sabres of Smilodon would have been perfectly placed to enhance this technique by slicing through the main blood vessels in the neck and closing off the windpipe in one bite.
Question: How do we know what colour Smilodon was?
Answer: There is no evidence of the colour of Smilodon, but basing it on cats today we can build up some ideas. Spots are the basic pattern for cats. Stripes are rare. The colour of cats also varies depending on the vegetation around it. Cats which live in wooded or forested areas tend to have darker coats with rosette-like spots and those in more open areas tend to have lighter markings and a paler colour. For example: If Smilodon lived in patchy woodland and on the open plains, it would have a pale colour to suit the dry grass and light markings. Cats also use dark and light patches to emphasise their facial expressions and body language - especially important in social situations (lions have these markings even though we tend not to notice them). So, like modern cats, we gave Smilodon dark and light markings around the eyes and ears.
Question: How big is Smilodon?
Answer: The largest species of Smilodon, Smilodon populator, found in South America, was about the size of a large lion, measuring 1.2 metres at the shoulder.
Question: How do we know that Smilodon killed its own cubs?
Answer: Infanticide is quite common in lions, and also in other cats, primates and other animals where males can gain an advantage to their own offspring by killing those of other males. As long as the male can be sure that the babies aren't his own then they are at risk. In some animals (like chimpanzees) the females seem to get around this problem by mating with as many males as possible so that none of them can be sure whether or not they are the father of her young.
SMILODON Is only one of many sabre species. See here for more species Link