Comments by "broadbandislife" (@broadbandislife) on "Latest Sightings" channel.

  1. Hyena gained a level! Hyena learned Trolling
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  2. Talk about getting dealt a shitty hand. Also another excellent illustration of why most African wildlife is morbidly fearful of the water.
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  3. More like fear of crocodiles - and for that matter, water - is pretty much genetic in most African land animals. The scaly river monsters are that dangerous to life and limb.
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  4.  @andidinu1456  Yeah let's see you scream with a leopard's jaws clamped around your windpipe. They do that quite specifically to minimise the noise that might attract competition ya know.
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  5. Animals tend the have a pretty decent grasp of their capabilities relative to enemies and competitors. Natural selection is harsh there.
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  6. Group tactics probably aren't exactly their forte, these guys are normally fairly solitary after all. (I'm guessing this is a mother and her two sub-adult offspring?) They tend to rely more on deterrence for their defense anyway and are probably seriously confused when these toothy little things actually decided to start coming on for reals. Also kind of clumsy and half blind which can't be helping one bit.
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  7. The carcass doesn't run with you, after all. So your choices are to stand and fight over it (not a good idea here) or give way and write it off as a loss. It's kind of comparable how once humans started putting down roots as settled agriculturalists they also needed to start devising ways to fight would-be takers off it. There's a reason leopards bring their meals up to trees when one is available.
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  8. Crocs can and will try to dispute kills with entire lion prides when the mood strikes them.
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  9. CA Catr "In the beginning" Man hunted mammoths by tricking them into tar pits and driving them off cliffs, so I have no idea what you're on about. Plus the only animals that actually trust people are the domesticated ones, and even those vary. Also, can the teenage emo bullshit. Our species wouldn't be around if we didn't treat our relevant social reference groups halfway decently - doubly so given how utterly helpless and in need of care human infants are. As for those outside said group, well - pretty sure elephant goodwill runs out very abruptly outside their own herds too...
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  10. This is no anteater.
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  11. Aardvark. Anteaters are very different critters.
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  12. THAT'S PRETTY BRUTAL
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  13. Bullshit. Eyes can't pick up thermal ("long") infrared wavelengths in the first place; you need specialised derivations of the skin's temperature sense for that, and only a very few animals have evolved those. The literal shortlist is pit vipers (which get their name from the "thermal pits" between the eyes and nostrils), boas and vampire bats (which have the pickup in their nose leaf and apparently use it to locate large blood vessels in their prey). If that "sandbathing" behaviour is related to fighting the snake it's more likely aimed at obfuscating the squirrel's scent - most snakes have kinda lousy eyesight and rely heavily on their sense of smell. It's why they have forked tongues - they use those to quite literally taste the air and the split tip helps them work out source directions.
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  14.  @thejesterjester  The cat just about jumped out of its skin on realising a potentially very dangerous rival was calmly observing it mere meters away. It's damn near panicking and in full threat-display mode against the apparent menace. While the hyena is basically going "whoa, peace man, was jus' watchin' is all, no need to get cranky."
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  15. ...I'm pretty sure they never did, you know.
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  16. Birds that move in flocks are by necessity rather good at not getting in each others' way. The humble starlings are proverbial for it.
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  17. More like the big hefalump really didn't give a shit one way or the other. The bulls are loners and have basically nothing at all to do with the kids.
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  18.  @cecarblanco9933  There's a reason the 'pards like to haul their kills up into trees whenever possible. Lots of things around that can and will relieve them of the fruits of their labours if they happen by. Solitary carnivore life be like. 'Course, they have it good compared to their cousins the cheetahs who can't climb worth jack and are usually too dead tired after a chase to do much about kleptoparasitism, not that their light sprinter build was much good for standing up to serious rivals anyway. Hyperspecialisation do be like that.
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  19. TBF male lions are really shitty endurance runners, what with that hot an heavy mane on top of everything else, while cheetahs have a slightly dumb amount of cardiovascular optimization going merely so they can maintain their famously blistering peak speeds for any real length of time. And this was barely light jog for the smaller cat so... yeah.
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  20. jose diaz Lions themselves can get a lot of grief from, say, warthogs a fraction of their size so that's not saying much. And the lion teeth and claws found in croc bellies speak volumes.
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  21. Vark seems kinda sus
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  22. Lasts right until there's actual food at stake. (Plus hippos are fucking scary so they aren't going to start fighting when one of those water monsters is within lunging distance.) They go right back to the classic food fight once there's impala to be eaten... lmao @ that one doggo casually starting to play with a random branch at 1:32 tho
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  23.  @dwreck157  Pit vipers and boas, actually. Pythons ain't got jack there. Also vampire bats (their receptor is in the nose leaf) but theirs is for finding large blood vessels in the large animals they prey on. My layman's guess is the sandbathing is in order to obfuscate the squirrel's scent. Most snakes have poor eyesight (the major exception is some tree-dwellers that catch birds on the wing) and rely heavily on their olfactory sense for locating stuff.
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  24. I mean they evolved to be very good runners for a reason...
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  25. It's no more "doomed to extinction" than any highly specialised species. But heightened vulnerability to extinction in case of environmental disruptions is an universal tax those have to pay for lack of competition within their narrow niche (compare eg. the giant panda).
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  26. The food doesn't run with them. That's the cost of highly specialising in a niche whose requirements leave you ill equipped to fight off rivals. And, yes, such niches are rather extinction-prone in the face of environmental disruptions that the versatile generalists can weather without too much trouble. (Worth remembering that crocodile ancestors were among the very few large animals of the time that made it through the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event.)
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  27.  @johnnysar8615  It's a nyala. Which is literally a species of antelope. Closely related to the lesser kudu as a trivia detail.
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  28.  @dannyvalentino328  And the whole reason they bring it up to trees in the first place is so it doesn't get grabbed by something else on the ground, way to miss the point entirely. Even brown hyenas can reliably solo them off kills. Them's the breaks for solitary hunters for which any serious injury equals starvation.
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  29. +Roger "Rocket Lord" Smith Take your chances with the cranky hippos (and the ever present crocodile risk) or certainly get run down and eaten alive by the dogs on dry land. Your move, tough guy.
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  30. "Self defense" after literally chasing them down, right.
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  31.  @annahusnain6209  Do you even know what "source citations" are. Also Hell of a more reliable reference than some garbled recounting of some unspecified TV show of entirely unknown quality and accuracy so whatever really, or not even looking things up to THAT minimal degree before babbling shit as tends to be the norm on the Intertubes these days. And how many Internet vandals would spend their time committing plausible-looking sabotage on rather obscure scientific articles in the first place anyway? (Also I was clear of high school before the current Internet, nevermind now Wikipedia, even existed so yeah.) More to the point, the thermoreceptor organs are distinctly clearly visible on the faces of all the snake species that possess them; as already mentioned pit vipers got their entire English name from those...
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  32. Hey, it's a far more formidable critter than the small cats and often needs to try fend off would-be killstealers. Still treads very carefully around rivals because as a solitary animal it can't afford to suffer serious injuries - with no family group to fall back on it'll starve to death if it gets too mauled to hunt for itself during the recovery period.
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  33.  @crimsonchin9632  And hyenas do it when mobbed by Cape dogs (or rival hyenas for that matter). It's Fighting Tactics 101 for the whole bunch - the groin is a soft target with lots of major nerves and blood vessels, and injuries there can quickly disable the hind legs with obviously fatal results. Also difficult to defend given the eyes and fangs are at the other end. It's also Hunting Tactics 101 to attack that part for exactly those reasons, which is why you see all of them doing it all the time to buffalos and antelopes and what have you.
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  34.  @IamWhoIam2023  Here's your homework for today, son: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infrared_sensing_in_snakes Hint: cobras aren't on the list. And here's the homework for tomorrow: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snake#Perception Most snakes have kinda shitty eyesight and rely VERY heavily on their sense of smell, but they can detect and track moving things just fine. Resolving finer detail (like what part exactly of the squirrel is waving in front of its nose) can be a different story story entirely...
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  35. Moreover even if cobras did have thermoreceptors the OP's claim would still be plain wrong. A thin layer of dry dust simply doesn't do squat to mask body heat, the squirrel's own damn fur probably already does more in that respect - IR penetrates many obstacles pretty well. Case in point, astronomers routinely rely on those wavelengths to observe stars occluded by interstellar dust clouds and similar obstacles in other spectrums and IIRC military thermograph is pretty good at finding people amongst vegetation. (At the far end of the range IR actually transitions into the radio part of the EM spectrum, remember; those intermediate wavelengths are showing great promise as high-resolution penetrating sensors.) If the squirrel was daubing itself in mud it'd be a different story as the comparatively large amounts of cool water indeed would absorb and disperse potentially meaningful amounts of heat, at least for a while.
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  36. Someone didn't read the description. "“I started filming just after one of the Hyenas ripped of the Rhinos tail and then they started biting it non-stop. --"
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  37.  @crimsonchin9632  Wallowing in ignorance, naturally.
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  38. 'S a pack-hunter thing. Gotta grab your share ASAP before your mates eat it all. Solitary ones just can't count on their pals subduing the lunch.
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  39. Piotr Hobbysta Croc length correlates fairly directly with mass ergo both muscle mass and scute thickness. And the Indian mugger croc is at best middling size for the genus. Pretty sure tigers aren't going to go anywhere near full-grown saltwaters for ex.
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  40.  @Crocutaalpha  "The [striped hyena] frequently scavenges from the kills of felids such as tigers, leopards, cheetahs and caracals. A caracal can drive a subadult hyena from a carcass. The hyena usually wins in one-to-one disputes over carcasses with leopards, cheetahs and tiger cubs, but is dominated by adult tigers.[11][29]" - Wikipedia
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  41.  thehawkus  RULES_OF_NATURE.mp3 Cruelty requires at bare minimum the capability for moral choice, which animals have never even heard of. They just do their thing and give no fucks.
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  42.  @pikapi7429  Hyenas you can see before it's too late. Between them the crocs and hippos make African inland waters a deathtrap the majority of other animals avoid in all but extreme circumstances. To put it in perspective AFAIK gorillas raised in captivity who have never seen a live crocodile still react with instinctive alarm to small toy ones.
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  43. Ya, they definitely aren't picky eaters. It's theorised that ability and willingness to scavenge carrion was one factor that tided their ancestors over the massive but transient ecological disruptions of the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event, and it certainly isn't a quality that hurts one's survival prospects in general.
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  44. Rodents and mustelids don't have retractables either but both groups are loaded with excellent climbers. It's all about claw and paw shape; spotted hyenas being essentially wolf analogs in lifestyle (ie. cursorial ground hunters) theirs have similarly evolved into "running cleats" not climbing aids.
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  45.  @JoyChariton  They simply don't have any reason to care about him one way or another. And if he went drinking and a hungry croc caught him off guard he'd be lunch as readily as anything else.
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  46.  @aricanovic  Everything gets into trouble with crocodiles. Even damn elephants and hippos, though that usually ends poorly for the croc. Usually. (Large bull crocs have been known to gang up on and take down bull hippos that've been injured in territory fights with their peers.) Spotted hyenas do so if anything rather less than most, as they're astute enough to figure out if some toothy river monsters are actually around. Which is why they don't share the congenital reflexive fear most African land animals have of the water in the first place.
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  47. Hyenas are very bright. They're also very, very brazen - kind of comes with the territory when you routinely contest kills with lions - and may casually saunter into the middle of a dog pack alone to try and steal a kill. If anything it's indicative of how willing they are to suffer some bites in the attempt and how comparatively little serious threat to their life and limb the smallish canines ultimately represent. (Spotted hyenas are on the average about twice the weight of the wild dogs.)
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  48. +temoc76 Yes. Rather potently so, in fact, unlike most colubrids: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boomslang
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  49. john smith There's a reason lions aren't keen on going into the water you know. See above for stuff found in croc bellies.
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  50. Nothing amazing about it. Hyenas plain avoid the males even in large groups; a solitary one is going to bolt the second it sees the big bruiser, nevermind now one blatantly preparing to pounce only meters away. They're also much better long-distance runners so the big cat needs to initiate pursuit ASAP. Presumably he was waiting for a suitable moment to spring his ambush but getting spotted meant a change of plans.
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  51. Dude. They can't beat the dogs in endurance and they know it perfectly well, and this one's clearly already tired. Why do you think it took refuge in the water (which in this case hosted no less than two good reasons for the puppies to stay away) in the first place?
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  52. Henry Dube Hippos are a crapshoot, depending on their current mood and temperament, while crocs generally aren't spotted before it's too late anyway. (They're the single biggest reason a great many African animals are morbidly afraid of deep water.) But on dry land those dogs are certain death, all the more so if you're already tired. There's a reason the impala is taking its chances with the water in the first place.
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  53. QED - getting stuck in African mud leads to an exciting but brief career as the buffet table of the savannah.
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  54. Their distant cousins the seagulls will happily fill that niche instead.
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  55. P much. I've seen footage of hyenas cheerfully sharing kills with rivals when they're alone, but that stops real fast if and when their homies start turning up.
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  56.  edntz  And the croc could certainly have picked up the pace had it felt the need. They can be surprisingly fast when they want to. This guy just ambled casually and even kept dropping down to rest leisurely.
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  57.  @Kurt_Philanderer  I don't think cheetahs would much appreciate the bone fractures from getting hit by that tail, either. The appendage may functionally be an oar... but as many traditional martial artists could tell you oars make pretty decent fighting staves.
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  58.  @derekbates4316  probably a bit too small a pond to house both several hippos and a croc. The two water horrors usually just ignore each other entirely buuuuut...
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  59.  @derekbates4316  It really isn't. Nature follows an internally consistent logic. ...did you have something besides vacuous generalisations to contribute?
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  60.  @Dhurvboruah  You don't say.
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  61.  @azmagaref  That's routine pack-hunter behaviour. One grabs the front while other start tearing at the hindquarters, which have lots of major nerves and blood vessels, in order to weaken and immobilize the prey. Anything that comes loose is naturally gobbled up on the spot because why the Hell not (and your mates would do it if you didn't, first come first served).
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  62.  @juniorfan7a  ...you do realise those guys were among other things rather slow, right? And those smexy oversized canines actually came with a raft of limitations and caveats, as highly specialised traits now tend to. Which is why that branch of cats is now extinct and the more versatile ones do pretty well aside from humans screwing them over.
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  63. I like how you have no idea whatsoever what you're talking about.
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  64.  @crimsonchin9632  I'll have to take your word for that, my good sir.
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  65. Crocodiles aren't lizards.
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  66. Not a whole lot of things will bother even sub-adult crocs on land ya know.
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  67. BlazeBullet And you base that on what exactly? Because I can see nothing in the vid suggesting anything like that.
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  68. BlazeBullet I did. Still nope. Everything about the sequence of events suggests that the lion simply narrowly managed to dodge the croc's lunge and flee into the shallows.
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  69. ***** Dude I'm a cat fan myself. But blinkered fanbois offend me on principle.
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  70. +Alex Grimal Lions are, like most felids, "pouncers" optimised for short bursts of intense activity but their endurance sucks ass. Hyenas are conversely high-endurance "chasers" similar to the social canines. Case in point: lioness hearts are 0.57% of their total body weight, male lions' 0.45%; spotted hyenas' are conversely a full 1% or so. The mane further substracts from the stamina of the males by being rather hot and heavy. Short form: the lion needs to catch the hyena fast or be left panting in dust while the damn marathon runner jogs off into the horizon.
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  71. SubparPanda Well near the tropics assorted crocodilians are a very good reason to not go into water save in desperate circumstances. Further north? ʅ ( • ε • ) ʃ Dunno, maybe the wolves and whatnot just don't like the idea of going near the antlers and such if they can't easily dodge or something.
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  72. TBF, that's where they (as well as the spotted hyenas and painted dogs) usually start with much thinner-skinned meals too. Lots of major nerves and blood vessels around there and for practical reasons not much in the way of natural armour.
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  73.  @Crocutaalpha  More like leopards, typically of solitary hunters, are very risk-averse and loath to hazard injuries that might leave them incapable of supporting themselves (this goes double for cheetahs which live or die by their ability to run fast). So if they can't intimidate the other party they're likely to cut their losses and back off. Striped and brown hyenas conversely are primarily scavengers and "hijackers" - they pretty much have to contest carcasses with something else if they want to eat so it duly follows they're a lot more relentlessly aggressive and risk-tolerant about it.
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  74. Ever seen a flock of starlings in flight? The more gregarious sorts of birds are by necessity quite good at not getting in each others' way.
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  75. What doesn't, really? Those little guys are basically snack food for anything bigger than themselves. It's more a question of if these birds hunt around the water.
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  76. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_hyena#Threats_and_conservation_status
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  77. Yeah, that's kinda the schtick of ambush predators.
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  78. [citation needed], never mind now these are small sub-adults. Also even full grown male leopards get chased off kills by lone brown hyenas lel
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  79. Well no smacking would-be predators with your tail isn't a terribly unusual defense tactic...
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  80. They do, you know. But lion prides are rather better equipped to dispute the matter.
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  81. ??? They've always been perfectly happy eating carrion, and for that matter moonlighting as dry-land ambushers. (They're actually pretty versatile.) Traits that helped their ancestors survive the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event.
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  82.  @azmagaref  Do I need to break out the crayons and baby talk or will you understand if you go back and read again?
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  83. TBF you don't regularly rob the nests of something as dangerous as a crocodile without being a pretty good judge of safe distances... Varanids are probably the smartest lizards around which can't hurt though.
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  84.  @johanrebel  Judging by Wikipedia, a lousy spelling of quinoline. "Quinoline is a heterocyclic aromatic organic compound with the chemical formula C9H7N. It is a colorless hygroscopic liquid with a strong odor." Quino meanwhile is apparently a Spanish surname...
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  85.  @sainjawoof3506  >copes about "wikipedia reeeeee" >copypastas something that clarifies nothing whatsoever >still fucking spells the name wrong Sugoi.
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  86. Same reason as any nest-robber. Easy lunch when the parent is away.
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  87. #dadjokes2019
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  88. What are you, ten years old? Do you even know how the food chain works? Also since you clearly aren't aware safari guests are quite specifically forbidden from interfering with the animals of the preserves, and for that matter leaving their cars already for their own protection. Any of the predators in this encounter can quite readily kill a grown man if it has a reason to.
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  89.  @crimsonchin9632  I don't think you quite realize how it reads in the context of the conversation, old chap.
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  90. Pretty sure their crocodilians are rather smaller than the Nile monsters.
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  91.  @Asdasty  The heck are they watching on there in the bush, shortwave radio? I don't want to think of the framerates they're getting...
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  92. Human infants are spectacularly helpless. (Once they grow up a bit they'll happily murder ants and bird chicks for idle entertainement though.) An awful lot of other animals OTOH are plenty capable predators of small critters right out of the egg so, yeah. As for the OP, I must wonder A) how he thinks predators are supposed to learn the whole business if they don't start practicing early B) why he's so sure that monitor is a "kid" in the first place.
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  93. If it lets go the best result is just the hyena finishing off the hog and the cat still has to square off over the kill. Worst, the hog runs away and the cat has zero chance of getting anything. So what would you suggest it do, o great tactical genius?
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  94. Tipping over a limping juvenile isn't really anything to write home about, tbh.
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  95.  @owenoakheart  wym, that guy is cute
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  96. Cheetahs aren't particularly strong - they're specialised in speed - and tend to be left more or less winded after hunts; it can take them up to an hour to fully recover from a particularly strenuous chase. And crocs have no particular stamina issues on land.
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  97. Rose Gold Maybe you should actually read up on lions a bit before making an utter fool out of yourself in public. See, only fully grown males have a mane. And in some regional subspecies even theirs is actually sparse to virtually absent.
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  98. BlazeBullet You didn't actually watch the video did you.
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  99. Looking at it, the croc seems to go for the neck/shoulder region. The kitty seems to bolt at the last second, so the obvious conclusion would be that the croc only got a superficial bite on somewhere largely useless for grappling purposes ergo the lion had an easy enough time getting away.
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  100. Just so you know I'm pretty sure these are some rather seriously venomous snakes. Might wanna think that over a few times.
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  101. +Piotr Hobbysta What. Saltwaters are found all over the eastern Indian Ocean coastlines and individual stragglers have been reported as far as eg. southern Japan. The things aren't exactly uncommon in the coastal marshes of India and SE Asia. Which as it happens are also Tiger Country. And obviously the bigger the croc the more massive its skull and thicker its scales ergo that much more difficult to get through - not to mention that much more raw muscle to shake the cat off with.
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  102.  @user-Void-Star  Lions, like almost every African land animal, treat the idea of entering any meaningful body of water with deep apprehension (more like reflexive horror) and even in groups act distinctly cautious around adult crocs. Crocodiles conversely semi-routinely hunt on land (they're pretty effective ambushers in cover) and have been observed brazenly walking up to groups of lions to try and steal their meal. The imbalance is... fairly telling.
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  103. Terrance Turner The smaller end of hummingbirds also get preyed on by the larger end of praying manti AFAIK. Makes sense enough - it makes scant practical difference for the latter what exactly tries to visit the flower they've set up shop at so long it's small enough to kill.
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  104. Baha T ...that has nothing to do with smarts though, just plain hard-earned survival instincts. Every animal that needs them has danger-avoidance responses regardless of how much or little it has between the proverbial ears. It's what makes flies so difficult to swat, for example. Their evasion works by reflex - it goes more or less straight from the eyes to the muscles without making much of a detour through what little brain analog they have.
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  105. Baha T Again: insects, which don't even have brains (in the same sense as we do anyway), are at least as good at evading predation. "Being smart" has literally nothing to do with it. ANY living organism needs some way to cope with threats and duly evolves such. "Running away" is a pretty natural defense technique for ones whose lifestyle and ecological niche requires mobility in any case...
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  106. Gabor P Not necessarily doomed, they can sometimes just wait out the pursuers in such ponds. Largely depends on if any of the hunters are bold enough to risk going into the deep water - and if any residents feel like tolerating the intrusion. Crapshoot with the moody and temperamental hippos, and if there's crocs in there... well, there's good reasons the dogs aren't keen on taking a swim. :/
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  107. Tom tonka https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crank_(person) ie. monomanical tinhat nutter.
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  108.  @theddixusa  It's not exactly unusual for crocs to wander away from water you know? In the first place that's kind of the only way they can set up shop in those isolated ponds much too small to support a permanent population.
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  109. Pretty sure these guys are quite dry-surfaced tho.
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  110.  @BlueLightningHawk  Some random description found on Google is not a scientific definition. Cheetahs are classified in the subfamily Felinae (the "small cats") and quite positively lack the defining traits of the Pantherinae ("big cat") branch.
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  111. Fucking brown hyenas can chase male leopards off kills solo you know.
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  112. #cheetahlyfe p much, just about everything can and will pirate their kills. The adaptation for extreme speed comes at the cost of qualities that'd be vital in chasing off rivals, alas. Such is the tax of specialisation in a narrow niche.
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  113. Spotted hyenas barely take leopards seriously more like, though they have as sensible a respect for a mouthful of fangs pointed their way as anything else. Meanwhile even big adult male 'pards are routinely driven off kills by the much less formidable striped and brown hyenas.
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  114. Well they aren't. They're beasts of the forest and the mountain, not open plains - as well illustrated in India where their range overlaps with lions.
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  115. All the pack hunters do that. Lots of soft tissues, important blood vessels and nerves and leg muscle hookups in that region, plus it's harder for the victim to spot attacks from the rear. It's an efficient way to start crippling the prey's mobility by severing such critical "infrastructure" and weakening it through blood loss. They also try to do it to each other when they fight. Watch footage of spotted hyenas swarmed by wild dogs and lions by spotted hyenas - both take great pains to guard their hindquarters from hostile fangs, not in the least by lowering them close to the ground and constantly turning. Hell the distinctively rounded rump of the spotted hyenas is pretty specifically an evolutionary adaptation to deny jaws purchase.
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  116. Tiger is on a different continent entirely.
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  117.  @notgoingtousemyname6921  Tigers have a fairly clear upper limit on the size of crocodile they'll go after, because natural selection. Adult Niles are well above that but, sure, a small juvenile like this would be fair game. Big crocs suffer some pretty awful attrition in the decade plus it takes them to grow too large to have natural enemies anymore after all; that's why they lay large clutches of eggs in the first place.
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  118.  @HerrinSchadenfreude  Imagine calling critters that face down lions for a living cowards. They'll also walk straight into the middle of Cape dog packs to snatch a meal and get away with it too; lions won't even try the same on them because they wouldn't survive the experience.
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  119. HAHAHA no. The big cats might indeed have the firepower to do so (tigers certainly do, and lions manage it occasionally) but cheetahs are far too weeny for even sub-adults like these. Plus they live and die by their ability to run, they REALLY can't risk injury.
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  120. ...you do realise the whole reason the birds are attacking this danger noodle is because snakes are their fucking natural enemies right? Goes double for this guy which is a boomslang, Dutch/Afrikaans meaning literally "tree snake" - take a wild fucking guess what they like to eat up among the branches? Why yeas, unwary birds and their nests among other things. Quite a few birds will very aggressively mob and harass their predators when given half the chance just to reduce risks to their own literal life & limb. It's why crows and magpies are wont to harry cats and birds of prey can often be spotted by veritable lynch mobs pursuing them, too. Goddamn bleeding heart ignoramuses with no grasp of how "nature red of tooth and claw" fucking works. Plus I'm reasonably sure these safari preserves have explicit rules against interfering with the wildlife to boot.
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  121. They don't, obviously. But close-range ambushes are a thing.
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  122. This is a brown hyena not a spotted one, your joke is bad and you should feel bad.
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  123.  @TR4R  Cheetahs aren't cooperative pack animals as such, "teamwork" doesn't come particularly intuitively to them. (Compare eg. spotted hyenas which beat chimpanzees in cooperative problem-solving tests.) And evolution doesn't work to any kind of rational plan. It's just a cause-consequence feedback loop. Cheetahs have the very real advantage that they can readily hunt things everything else on the savanna only has a snowball's chance in Hell of bagging in infrequent particularly advantageous ambush situations. (It should say something that an analogous high-speed pursuit hunter evolved independently off the puma in North America; the pronghorn's blistering speed is a relic of the evolutionary arms race with this now-extinct "American cheetah".) For millions of years they did perfectly fine in a vast swathe covering substantial chunk of the Old World from Bengal, the Caspian steppes and the Caucasus to the cardinal corners of Africa; today they're stuck in a handful fragmented population islands often in conditions of too many competing species crammed in too small areas because humans.
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  124. >jungle what.
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  125. TBF it doesn't really help that the limited size of the preserves makes for kinda cramped ranges.
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  126. Crocs and hippos just ignore each other entirely most of the time. Kinda necessary given they fairly literally rub shoulders.
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  127.  @austinelgwe7952  what.
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  128. "Word." - the late antelope
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  129. Yeah they're not big on going up against crocs either ya know. Plus they stay away from hyena ranges if they know what's good for them.
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  130. Which just tells me you understand exactly nothing of the debate. Or what's even remotely relevant to it.
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  131.  @derekbates4316  p sure if one was present it'd at least have come take a closer look at the proceedings.
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  132.  @derekbates4316  That's not how habitat choice works.
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  133. Assuredly.
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  134. You're thinking more of the other hyenas, the brown and striped ones. (Aardwolves don't count they eat bugs.) Those guys are primarily scavengers, their bigger spotted cousins here prefer fresh game - though like most carnivores they're not too picky about freshness.
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  135. Substantial advantage in cardiovascular endurance doesn't hurt either. Male lions really suck at that.
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  136. The initial hyena might well have been willing to share, but once the rest of the clan started turning up it was exit stage left. Solitary hunter life do be like that.
    2
  137. Carnivores really don't give a shit about the tender feelings of their lunch as long as they can hold it still enough to chow down.
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  138. The actual vendetta is between lions and spotted hyenas, leopards just get their lunch money taken by both. Though when they're alone the hyenas indeed can be quite happy to engage in opportunistic cooperation and kill-sharing with what would usually be their rivals/victims like Cape dogs and leopards. Which really confuses the latter, what with being solitary hunters and all (and to put it bluntly rather less brainy than the hyenas which are close to chimpanzee level in some respects).
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  139.  @lollipop2993  Poison resistances are a specific thing, being fine with one brand and vector doesn't mean jack against another (unless it's very closely related or similar). No idea if those guys have anything on what these king-size ground noodles are packing. FWIW Wikipedia only mentions immunity to scorpion venom.
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  140.  @lollipop2993  Poison not venom. As the distinction has been nutshelled, "if it screws you over when you bite the thingy it's poison; if it's the other way it's venom." I don't think these guys have any "end that sprays", description sounds more like generalised "sweating" in the manner of say poison frogs: "-- secretion of an irritating liquid from pores on their body." Ie. little fuckers pretty much just cover themselves in mild poison if they feel threatened, no real getting around that if you try to bite them. Wiki specifically notes they're among the few invertebrates safe from the driver ants thanks to their chemical defences which also sounds like a full-coverage deal to me. There's also a distinct lack of obvious projectors (a la say whip scorpions) or the kind of related active movement seen in for example beetles with chemical projection defences - neither of which would be very practical given the millipede body plan anyway. A description I came across on a quick search (on the San Diego Zoo's site FWIW) noted they have chemical pores on every body segment so... yeah. Couldn't readily find any details on what exactly preys on them, just a rather generic statement of "birds, small mammals, frogs and a range of reptiles" which doesn't really say very much. Obviously the things that eat them can just ignore the stuff they crap out for defence, as eaters of poisonous things now do, but your guess is as good as mine if meerkats are on that list.
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  141. Pretty sure anything smart enough to make itself troublesome by looking for food around human stuff is also smart enough to not be fooled very long by such tricks - just look at the sorry history of measures intended to fend away gulls and crows for ex. Also glhf constantly reapplying the gunk.
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  142.  @lightning9279  [visible concern]
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  143.  @Polosatiy_Varan  [citation needed] Meanwhile on Wikipedia: "-- They also scavenge or steal kills from other predators, such as lions and leopards (Panthera pardus).[10] Groups of Nile crocodiles may travel hundreds of meters from a waterway to feast on a carcass.[32] They also feed on dead hippopotamuses (Hippopotamus amphibius) as a group (sometimes including three or four dozen crocodiles), tolerating each other. Much of the food from crocodile stomachs may come from scavenging carrion, and the crocodiles could be viewed as performing a similar function at times as do vultures or hyenas on land.[9] -- Occasionally, if regular food becomes scarce, both lions and the crocodile will steal kills on land from each other and, depending on size, will be dominant over one another. Both species may be attracted to carrion, and may occasionally fight over both kills or carrion.[100] --" - Nile crocodile/Hunting and diet "-- Most species will eat anything suitable that comes within reach and are also opportunistic scavengers.[32] -- They may be unable to deal with a large animal with a thick hide, and may wait until it becomes putrid and comes apart more easily.[111] --" - Crocodilia/Feeding Yeah, better have something convincing to back up your sweeping claim with.
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  144. Coming outta nowhere is kind of the ambush-predator thing. And crocs are really good at that gig. That hippo is also a juvenile - Hell it's not much larger than the antelope, which stands 'bout a meter tall, and was clearly more messing around than advancing with actual intent.
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  145. Hyperspecialization for a very specific prey bracket does that. Something very similar happened with the extinct Miracinonyx "American cheetah", the puma relative that got into a velocity arms race with the pronghorns and convergently evolved similar traits. (The pronghorns' evolution hasn't yet had time to drop their resultingly stupid speed as no longer necessary.)
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  146. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anteater https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aardvark Know The Difference
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  147. You're thinking of an entirely different hyena there bub.
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  148. These little crawlies shit out damn neurotoxins for self-defence. I doubt anything lacking specialised immunity to those wants to so much as touch them - more than once, anyway.
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  149. Only once.
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  150. This might come as a surprise but you can actually throw a rock in Africa without hitting a passing lion.
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  151. Not only is this analogue complete BS, it also gets the roles wildly wrong. As expected of YT randos.
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  152. A leopard has it handily beat in both speed and stamina. Not An Option.
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  153.  @earthur715  As if eating plants was any more "fair" for the living things consumed. Hell, they can't even try to run away.
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  154. I don't think you know what that term actually means.
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  155. what.
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  156.  @wdtnewsusa88  ...more like it's kind of a given for cooperative pack hunters. Look up videos of feral dog packs picking on snakes for example, they do something very similar.
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  157. [dubious - discuss][citation needed] Also reminder that already brown hyenas can reliably steal leopard kills.
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  158. Except no. "Lizard" is a quite specific group of reptiles and the archosaurian crocodiles are only very distantly related (their closest living kin being the birds aka avian dinosaurs).
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  159. If it was a jaguar it would of been on an entirely different continent.
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  160. Oh, please. Niles will face down lions over food; a leopard isn't even a contender.
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  161.  @disc64  Doubly so given he made no effort whatsoever at stealth and instead sauntered over blatantly open ground in full view.
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  162. >desert What.
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  163. "Rip and tear" is how they go about it, as terrestrial carnivores now usually do.
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  164. These guys are pretty good at figuring out if there are crocs around - if they weren't they'd be as reflexively terrified of water as everything else on the savannah because natural selection.
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  165. Leopards you mean. Jaguars live across the ocean. And leopards lose kills to lone freaking brown hyenas so eh.
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  166. Aardvarks who are bad at remembering which way their bolthole is when the poop hits the fan don't live long enough to breed.
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  167. I don't think you know much about how crocodiles work.
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  168. no u
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  169.  @hippolam6935  Yawning.
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  170. ...compared to what?
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  171.  @skaldlouiscyphre2453  Fucking poodles run scary fast compared to us couch potato naked apes so that's not much of a yardstick. Ground speed is not what primate evolution went for.
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  172.  @bigplanner  I'd certainly be better if there were fewer egregiously inane comments in my YT alerts.
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  173. I mean the entire reason fleeing into the water works in the first place is most land predators are seriously reluctant to follow prey there specifically because of the dangers posed by ornery hippos and hungry crocs. I've seen recordings of the doges eventually chancing it anyway if there's no sign of either (though it's clearly the bravest and most daring members of the pack), and spotted hyenas seem to be good at sussing out their presence and duly treat bodies of water with uncommon indifference.
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  174. Latter, full stop. Lions are close-range ambush predators; this one was coming right out in the open bold as brass on something it knows perfectly well is a vastly better runner. That screams intimidation not any meaningful attempt at attack.
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  175. ...I think most would. Main reason it lasted as long as it did being it took a while for the young and clueless lions to puzzle out how to handle a meal this large and thick-skinned. Just look at one of them diligently attempting the textbook tracheal bite on a neck wider than her entire damn head around 2:16...
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  176.  @NannupTiger  Spotted hyena clans routinely disperse to forage alone when not occupied by the kinds of things that require group effort, and ofc as per usual young males get booted out of their birth groups on maturity and have to fend for themselves until they can join another clan. The point is that even when they're temporarily flying solo the social animals have a group to return to which will help nurse and care for them if they become injured and can't fend for themselves. The solitaries lack such safety networks to fall back on and must thus weigh their risks that much more carefully. Case in point spotted hyenas will face down lions (which start at some three times their weight) in groups despite obvious dangers to life and limb; leopards can be driven off kills even by the altogether less formidable brown hyenas (whose aggressive hijacking habits are doubtless partially buttressed by usually having a pack to rely on if things go wrong), and even the pair-bonding striped hyenas (which can still count on their mates).
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  177. It can't risk serious injury. A solitary hunter that can't hunt simply starves whereas social ones like now spotted hyenas can rely on their peers while recovering. (And crocs are just straight up big, tough and well-armoured.) Cheetahs have the fundamentally same problem but further compounded by their lightweight sprinter build and tendency to be seriously exhausted after a chase.
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  178. Neither cats nor bears have anything like a *hand*.
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  179. ...brown hyenas already can chase them right up trees ya know.
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  180.  @Nathan-bh1nr  [citation needed] bigtime, cuz this channel already has ample footage of the exact opposite. Also spotted hyenas actually spend much of their time foraging alone, and brown hyenas don't even live in "massive groups" to begin with but wolfpack-style nuclear families of a mated pair plus their sub-adult offspring. So, like, yeah.
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  181.  @containedhurricane  Pandas are a branch of the bears which are omnivores to begin with so it was easy for them to transition into a (mostly) vegetarian diet. Also for the record bamboo, a grass, is kinda dog poo as nutrient source which is why they don't have much competition in their highly specialised niche. Leopards and hyenas are in the rather hypercarnivorous Feliformian suborder, so.
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  182. So any particular reason you phrased that like it was somehow unique to hyenas...?
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  183.  @stefanosoderi4152  I really fail to see what difference it's supposed to make exactly what toothy thing mauls you to death. It's a nasty way to go all the same. Crocs, incidentally, drown you first which is... something, I guess?
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  184. Not really since big brains are a colossal energy and nutrient sink. If you get to the point where you replace biological evolution with technological you have hacked the Matrix, tho.
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  185.  @maymaymahal6963  I was not aware spotted hyenas were in the habit of uploading Tiktok videos about their everyday life. Spotties confirmed more intelligent than previously thought.
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  186.  @anthonyguarino4242  Flattening the neck for intimidation is by no means a monopoly of the cobras you know. Case in point these guys do it too, it's just a lot less pronounced.
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  187. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_wild_dog#Taxonomy_and_evolution There, that wasn't so hard.
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  188. Rose Gold Not sure if trolling or just really stupid.
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  189. ***** The point is the dumb little primate did it anyway. Doubtless ended up with some pretty nasty lacerations on the cranial soft-tissues and probably grooves gouged into the fucking bone, and watching the video I honestly wondered how it didn't plain snap its own damn neck in the effort, but hey - "anything" >>>>>>> "ded & et". Should also be pretty bloody obvious that the croc did NOT have "a good bite". It by definition isn't one if the prospective lunch can tear itself free and GTFO.
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  190. ***** The probability of your being an idiot is rapidly approaching certainty. You're not even reading what is actually written.
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  191. ***** Prove It.
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  192. Rose Gold OK. ignoramus
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  193. Rose Gold Middle schooler confirmed.
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  194. Rose Gold The qualitative improvement is, demonstrably, nominal.
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  195. Sadly it is only too obvious the vast majority of commenters are incapable of even that level of basic research and duly spout varying degrees of painfully ignorant nonsense.
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  196. No duh? Juvenile crocs are snack food for all and sundry (including larger crocs). Full-sized adults... well, they sometimes get the bright idea to try and attack adult elephants.
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  197. The juveniles have ridiculous attrition rates from getting eaten by, well, just about everything, including the larger kinds of fish. They're only safe once they finally get too large and dangerous to prey on; doesn't really help that crocodilians grow relatively slowly... Estimates peg a mere 1% of hatchlings reaching adulthood: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nile_crocodile#Natural_mortality_of_young_Nile_crocodiles
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  198. The odds are low. Their ground speed is the pits, and from what I've seen this is a rather fast kind of snake so running away is kinda gonna be difficult. And I rather doubt they have the means to cause any meaningful injuries to something that big and scale-covered to boot so they're probably just delaying the inevitable. There's a reason those guys don't leave the branches without a good cause. Namely if a predator catches them in the open they're pretty much goners. Or "gone for lunch" I suppose...
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  199. Trust Me More like "narrowly escapes", and that's not a particularly large croc even. ...you wouldn't perchance write headlines for the tabloids for a living...?
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  200. ***** Crocs can't exactly outrun lions on dry land though, and thus by necessity tend to mount something of a fighting retreat if seriously threatened. (The cats treat those jaws and tails with understandable respect.) They can be surprisingly brazen too, though seem to realise their error of judgement quickly enough if they attempt to dispute a carcass with too many lions at once and beat a hasty retreat in such cases.
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  201. ***** 8' is pretty small for an adult Nile though. They average 10+ and the largest reliably documented adult male was 21' 2" (6.45 m) and weighed over a ton...
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  202. LiGht YaGami Maybe on dry land (though I'd imagine having the element of surprise is recommended). In the water? Yeah, no.
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  203. LiGht YaGami Well, the big constrictors are pretty amphibious themselves...
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  204. LiGht YaGami The big constrictor snakes are excellent swimmers and their killing method works just fine in water too. You could say that "footing" isn't really a concern. :d
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  205. Marc Robertson And you know what? Crocs don't give a flying fuck because a lion's paws mean jackshit against their armour. Plus they get kicked by struggling ungulates all the damn time anyway.
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  206. You didn't actually watch the vid did you.
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  207. Maybe write in intelligible English? Also not sure where you're so confidently pulling that length estimate out of in the first place.
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  208. Bickering over territory mostly, I'd imagine, since they're not fighting over a kill.
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  209. +Piotr Hobbysta Length of the tooth is wholly irrelevant if it cannot be pushed through Shit In The Way, which is quite specifically the purpose of skulls and armour scales. And larger crocs have thicker scales and more massive skulls than smaller specimen of the same species by default.
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  210. +steve mcquen I see the depth and erudition of your arguments is only matched by your immaculate spelling.
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  211. I don't think you even understand what cats use their claws for. Also, lolno.
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  212.  @user-Void-Star  U FANBOYIN': BAD
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  213.  @TheDazzler420  "grasping at straws"; look it up. Crocs can and will overpower critters much bigger and nastier than lions in the water. Even hippos - the OTHER terror-inducing water monster of Africa - aren't always safe.
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  214. vidhan matolia "All" is probably stretching it, but in practical terms the grazers in particular end up munching down a lot of bugs alongside the grass...
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  215. vidhan matolia Uh, squirrels are well known to be omnivorous (like most rodents). Notably they're major raiders of bird nests.
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  216. ualuuanie 'Round here various relevant organisations strongly recommend people to fit bird boxes (for smaller birds) they build to put a metal plate around the entrance hole so squirrels and assorted larger birds, particularly woodpeckers, don't just widen the entrance to get at the nest inside. 'Course the buggers have been known to just make a new hole in the side (for the sake of comparision rats can gnaw through unreinforced concrete)... still, that's enough extra effort required to deter the worst of the nest-robbing.
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  217. To be fair, the chameleon did do its modest best to fight it off as long as it could. Not that the outcome was exactly much in doubt ofc.
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  218. Roger Smith Getting tired while crossing a rather shallow body of water isn't as such inherently fatal. Doing so on dry land while being closely pursued by predators is.
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  219. Roger Smith You don't get it do you. Already tired and with the dogs in hot pursuit, running wouldn't work. Se how, when the dogs start rounding the pond, it first follows the shore and then again takes its chances with the water. Why come ashore? Because the hippos were getting restless and it may have at least suspected croc presence. Frying pan, fire. Pick your poison. AFAIK far as the animals in these places are concerned humans in their METAL BAWKSES are basically just scenery, and simply ignored especially if there are more pressing concerns.
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  220. Roger Smith Let me put it this way: how do you think the dogs hunt these animals in the first place? Hint: wolves and spotted hyenas use the same approach.
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  221. Roger Smith Lions hunt in packs too, but with a very different strategy. Anyways, while it may certainly have been nervous about the car (herbivores on everyone's menu are by necessity rather wary) its primary concern was very clearly the dogs. Had it intended to continue its flight overland, it had ample time to simply go around the car whichever way it wanted before the pursuers started even rounding the pond.
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  222. ***** They mostly seem to just ignore the reptiles as long as those don't try to snack of them actually. (Also average length for adult male Niles is like 11 to 16 feet so uhhhh...) Probably just too common fellow water-dwellers to get worked up over, and the bigger ones are probably a bit too dangerous to just pick on anyway.
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  223. Tom tonka About two months back rather than "just", but yes he did. Crankhood has no respect for time, place or context.
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  224. From the hyena PoV, sure. The doggies are about half their weight and duly tend to get their kills confiscated if hyenas arrive on the scene. Bit of a tall order facing down something willing to square off against lions triple their weight...
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  225. Eh, the hippos tend to tolerate carnivores hanging around their water worse than random herbivores taking refuge in it. ('Course if they're in bad mood they may just kill the latter out of hand.) It happens that they lumber up and start chasing off the hopeful hunters, as one indeed began doing here. OTOH, they also tolerate crocs in the same water pretty well if those don't try to munch on them so...
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  226. 4exgold More like it's not really worth the effort to try to chase them off as the reptiles usually leave them alone, and can conversely be rather dangerous if provoked. Apparently even hippo calves tend to act very bold around crocs. Besides, any number of animals have been fleeing predators into the water - or entered it for any number of other reasons - also for millions of years and the ornery bastards are still sufficiently annoyed by it to sometimes kill those for the affront.
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  227. +Modhumpally Meenu You Fail Phylogenetics Forever: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feliformia
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  228. TBF male lions really suck at endurance running.
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  229. Both are inflated claims.
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  230. The coal-black coat and conspicuous absence of the big antelope's distinctive "beard" beg to disagree.
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  231.  @ChosenOne563  Imagine spouting bullshit about taxonomy without any idea of what convergent evolution is. Superficial appearances mean exactly jackshit.
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  232. lol no. Literally nothing hunts grown Nile crocs; much too large, powerful and dangerous. The crocodilians big cats sometimes kill in other parts of the world are distinctly smaller species.
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  233. Just like the other pack hunters lions have to worry about competing with their fellows over the lunch (nevermind now the ever-present risk of someone coming and hijacking the kill), and duly start eating as soon as the prey is sufficiently subdued. SUX 2 B the one who has to do the tracheal bite while the others are already feasting ofc.
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  234. Spotted hyenas seem to be very good at figuring out if water is croc-free, unlike most of their peers which just take for granted it isn't and avoid it like it was lava. They're clever buggers.
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  235.  @Polosatiy_Varan  Ofc they don't, but crocs also don't stay underwater for the lels either. I've no idea how they do it but it's noticeable in footage plentiful on YT. Spotted hyenas will gleefully enter safe waters which other land animals dread by default (which is tactically pretty handy when they're outmatched by rivals), and conversely I've seen a case where a pair abruptly got skittish around a half-submerged carcass and left for no obvious reason; some five minutes later a croc suddenly ate one of the vultures gathered around it... Presumably they're smart enough to discern from subtle clues and traces in the environment whether a given body of water hosts toothy river monsters of whatever form (hippos being the other major reason most African land life is congenitally fucking terrified of water).
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  236. Game reserve animals generally know the weird-smelling noisy boxes are bad hunting. And the ones that don't are wont to get removed from the gene pool pretty quickly.
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  237. I mean. Little guy is dumb as brick, nearly blind and starts sweating poison if it feels threatened. Can't vouch for others but those are qualities I lack.
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  238. "Probably"? A male lion weighs about 3-4 times as much as a cheetah, there's exactly one way that would go. Poor cheetahs are over-optimized for raw speed anyway and get readily pushed around by far less formidable rivals.
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  239. Learning how nature works, "warts and all", is inherently interesting and worthwhile,
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  240. Because none of his damn beeswax. Male 'phants are essentially solitary and have no truck with childcare.
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  241. Other comments speculate he might be a locally well-known half-blind male whose one eye was damaged when his mother chased him off with a slap after he'd overstayed his welcome as a juvenile.
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  242. You know why spotted hyenas aren't congenitally terrified of water the way most African land animals are? Because they're clever enough to be able to figure out if there are toothy river monsters around.
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  243. A) noisy weird-smelling METAL BAWKSES aren't really in the lion prime target bracket B) neither are hairless apes C) failure to observe the previous gets you removed from the gene pool D) do you even know how lions hunt because this wasn't even remotely it E) try geroff my lawn ya squatter instead
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  244. Tell me you're a blinkered fanboy without telling me you're a blinkered fanboy.
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  245. A cheetah doesn't need to go anywhere near its top speed to easily outpace a lion never mind now a male ya know. They're also much better adapted to maintain speed.
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  246. I've seen footage of a leopard reluctantly sharing a warthog with a spotted hyena it utterly failed to impress, predators will share meals with rivals if they must. And, really, given how much lion prides squabble among themselves around a kill the croc was probably unusually well-behaved company for these two...
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  247.  @jamellkennedy5017  ...maybe you should also decide on whether you're talking about tigers or leopards.
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  248.  @andidinu1456  I don't remember claiming the tactic had perfect success rate. Indeed it's relatively difficult to fully pull off solo, but not using it just about guarantees a noisy bloody mess which is highly undesirable for a solitary predator that needs to worry about larger and/or more social rivals that can easily displace it from a kill. The muzzle clamp (where the predator's mouth entirely engulfs the prey's muzzle) achieves similar results by a different method, and both techniques are used by a wide range of predators in different contexts. If pure efficiency was the goal they'd just tear out the whole throat or something and call it a day which would be Hell of a lot faster than strangulation/asphyxiation techniques but also far messier. And lots of fresh blood being spilled is also wont to attract undesirable attention. By comparison while I'm not familiar with the kill tactics of the clouded leopard the exceptionally long canines (which have earned it the moniker "modern-day sabre-tooth") rather suggest they're inclined to be bloody. Attracting rivals isn't going to be a major problem for a forest-dwelling animal with seriously top-notch climbing sk33lz and relatively few major competitors in the first place so... yeah.
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  249. Most African land animals just avoid the water like it was on fire because of hungry crocs and ornery hippos. Spotted hyenas are smart enough to figure out if those are actually present and duly don't share that reflexive fear. On the contrary they will gleefully exploit that of others when relevant.
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  250.  @pikapi7429  One rips you to bits and eats you. Another rips you to bits and eats you. "Corporate wants you to find the differences..." That also, uh, has nothing whatsoever to do with the topic of this comment chain?
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  251.  @pikapi7429  ...on basis of what exactly?
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  252.  @BG-bx4ey  Your gratuitous sophistry has been duly noted, dismissed as so much fukken woosh.
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  253. How? They simply don't have any reason to care any more about him than they do about that vulture hanging in the sidelines.
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  254. They're short-range ambush predators not pursuit chasers - a very common feline niche - and will drop chases in seconds if the optics look bad. No point in wasting time and energy. This one was clearly just running the smaller cat out of his territory.
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  255. Uh, no, an awful lot of things can and will outrun a lion - doubly so a male whose added bulk and hot, heavy manes make them slower than the lionesses by default and extra sucky endurance runners. There's a reason they attack from ambush at short range and drop a chase real fast if it's not paying dividends. Spotted hyenas (which conversely are endurance-pursuit hunters, canine style) can and will literally run rings around them for ex.
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  256. ...I really don't think he's equipped to meaningfully injure them you know. Never mind now the obscene risk of death or crippling (thus eventually fatal because starvation) injury he'd run in the process; leopards give way to adversaries far less formidable than grown Nile crocs ya know. They simply have very little reason to care about him one way or another.
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  257. That's not how ectothermy works; environmental temperature dictates the level of activity they're capable of - eg. a commonly witnessed case in point, frogs and snakes getting more and more sluggish and eventually incapable of moving at all as winter approaches and temperatures drop. Which is why they need to seek cover to hibernate in. In African daytime heat they of course have no problems whatsoever. Endotherms ("warm-blooded" animals) OTOH have major overheating issues especially with intense exercise that produces extra metabolic heat, which is one reason many carnivores in such climates prefer hunting at night. It's a particularly acute problem for cheetahs given their hunting technique; it can take them up to an hour to fully cool down and recover after a chase.
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  258.  @notgoingtousemyname6921  No shit Sherlock, your point?
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  259.  @notgoingtousemyname6921  Try to keep track of the conversation please. And work on your reading comprehension.
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  260.  @notgoingtousemyname6921  Abort/Retry/Fail?
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  261.  @notgoingtousemyname6921  That reference just wooshed you, didn't it?
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  262.  @notgoingtousemyname6921  I'm going to take that as an affirmative. Also? Tats are ick.
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  263. There's a reason African land predators, don't.
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  264.  @ashdog236  Nah spotted hyenas work on a "first come first served" principle. They're basically gleeful opportunists one and all.
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  265.  @IdkIdk-gw3qo  They're not. Not too long ago I watched a clip where a spotted hyena came across a leopard wrassling a warthog and promptly joined in; when it sunk its teeth in the hog's leg and pulled both the pig and the 'pard came along. Hyenas in general are dummy strong for their size and the spotted ones are the heavyweights among the lot. Leopards, moreover, are solitary hunters and duly rather risk-averse. If they get too hurt to hunt they starve to death, end of; pack animals like hyenas, lions etc. can rely on their peers to tide them over recovery periods if needed and are that much more willing to risk an actual fight - never mind now that in many cases they evolved to be that social in the first place in order to better contest kills and territory with rivals. Also? Already brown hyenas, which are primarily scavengers and decidedly less formidable beasts than their spotted cousins (for the record they also live in much smaller "wolfpack" pattern family units), can quite reliably drive off even adult male leopards off kills.
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  266.  @ekaeka763  Not even, they have pretty extensive adaptations to cope with the stresses of their extreme peak speeds - meaning they can deal pretty well with lesser paces. Which are entirely sufficient to stay out of the reach of the far slower lion never mind now a male. Lions, conversely, are really bad at cardiovascular endurance and males double so with their hot and heavy manes. They're built for brute force not pursuit.
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  267. "The who what where now?" - every animal, ever
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  268. Male 'phants are mostly solitary and basically have nothing to do with the childcare anyway so...
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  269. Lolno, but thanks for showing your blinkered fanboi colours right out of the gate so you can be duly disregarded. Lions aren't exactly keen on facing down those scaly river monsters either, nor blithely wandering into hyena territory.
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  270. And give them reason to actually care about his existence? If he was suicidal he wouldn't be there anymore in the first place.
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  271. Territory. If the lion was seriously coming for the smaller cat he wouldn't have been approaching in plain sight over open ground.
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  272. There's a reason those guys have no natural enemies.
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  273. I don't see how or why.
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  274.  @Jetdot37  Grow like mold on old bread you mean. I wash regularly, thankyouverymuch.
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  275. OP wears his bias blinkers on his sleeve and Fails Paleontology Forever. The extant form of crocodilian evolved long before the dinosaurs went extinct at which period the entire mammalian class consisted of little nocturnal critters of scant note. Famous examples would include the Cretaceous giants Sarcosuchus and Deinosuchus. Meanwhile his vaunted lions are as morbidly terrified of water as anything else in Africa.
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  276. As if a spotted hyena would have any trouble dispatching an injured warthog. And a kill can be contested, escaped prey not so much. Funny thing is when spotted hyenas are alone they can be quite willing to share kills with rivals.
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  277.  @definitelynotatroll246  I don't think you know how blood loss and infections work but that's beside the point. See again: escaped prey is a certain total loss, a kill can always be contested with a rival.
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  278.  @definitelynotatroll246  It was more a case of "nonchalant hyena sharing its prey with a very confused and jittery leopard". The video is somewhere on this channel IIRC but in brief the scenario was largely the same as here - a hyena turning up while the leopard was in the process of subduing a warthog (more like tearing its chest open but anyway). The big cat got distracted enough by the new arrival that the hog was able to break loose and tried to run away (with its guts hanging out) only to get promptly caught and finished off by the hyena, which duly set down to eat. The leopard was apparently kinda winded from its struggle with the piggy because it hung back for some time and then started sneaking up on the hyena from behind, no doubt intent on recovering its lunch. When it was maybe 5-10 meters away the hyena just looked at it over its shoulder with an air of "goofy pls" and calmly moved to the other side of the carcass so the 'pard could also come eat. Which it cautiously did, with palpable air of bewilderment and nervousness which is unsurprising given they're not exactly used to eating in company to begin with and, y'know, rival predators and all, and every now and then started snarling and baring its teeth at the hyena. Which just calmly ignored such bristling altogether. On a similar vein I've seen a case where a hyena and a trio of Cape dogs, both foraging away from their respective groups, joined forces to catch an antelope and casually shared the meal. Later members of both packs started arriving to the scene and the usual food fight ensued, but by that point the initial hyena had already eaten its fill and calmly went off to the side to pretty much take a nap. These guys are amazingly brazen but then you don't regularly square off against lions without some big brass ones so yeah.
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  279. Lol no, they aren't even in the same genus.
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  280. More like they aren't bloody stupid. Crocs are such a threat to life and limb much African land life is reflexively terrified of going into water, and apes born and raised in captivity without ever seeing a live one are congenitally afraid of small toy ones. Cheetahs? They live and die by their ability to run fast and duly can afford to risk injury even less than most. Also very poorly equipped to contest kills with anything even close to their size.
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  281. As the video description already informs you, get a bite or two for himself. The crocs mostly just ignore his existence anyway, I don't think he's markedly more relevant than that vulture in their POV.
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  282. Universal soft spot with major blood vessels and nerves, ergo easy to get a bite out of and quickly takes out the hind legs. All the major African pack hunters go for the groin because of that if they possibly can - and if you look up recordings of wild dogs fighting with hyenas, they liberally try that on each other too.
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  283. Lions are specialised big-game hunters built more for brute force than anything and pretty much the only things that can genuinely menace the likes of hippos and (young) elephants on dry land. The sheer bulk this requires isn't too great for pursuit - doubly so the larger males with their hot and heavy protective manes - and like most felines they rely on stealth and brief bursts of speed from short distances ("ambush hunting") to actually catch most things. Like most predators adapted for such tactics they'll drop unpromising chases real damn fast to save time and energy and just go make another attempt elsewhere. (Compare & contrast the sustained endurance-pursuit approach common among canids and, in notable deviation from the felid norm, characteristic of spotted hyenas.)
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  284. Hey, food is food.
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  285. p sure the mortal sin involved here is greed, tho; could be gluttony too
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  286. Chalk, cheese.
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  287. Basically, these guys are hella tough for their size. Makes sense given how many fights they get into, never mind now having to contend with the lions that starts at about three times their size. Pretty intense selection pressure for injury tolerance there.
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  288. Chemical defences, as already noted. Smells bad and does bad things if it gets in your mouth or, presumably, other mucous membranes. And lions definitely aren't on the list of their natural predators with appropriate immunities.
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  289. Lions hate them because they directly compete for much the same prey and are big, tough and fierce enough to mount a credible challenge to the big cats. Lions themselves are shameless kleptoparasites and will gleefully bully anything smaller out of a meal whenever they can.
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  290. Evidently not much. He's scarcely more relevant to them than that vulture.
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  291. what.
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  292.  @geraintthatcher3076  TBF everything short of an adult elephant or rhino needs to be wary of crocs - once in a blue moon those buggers even gang up to take down grown hippos. Don't fuck with the killer logs that outlived the (nonavian) dinosaurs, yo.
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  293.  @tuffclutch199  ...only hyenas are in the felid family too. There's proper wild dogs down there as well but those smol bois tend to get bullied a lot.
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  294.  @tuffclutch199  Family Hyaenidae - infraorder Viverroidea - suborder Feliformia - order Carnivora. Cat relatives. Their closest extant kin are the mongooses, incidentally.
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  295.  @tuffclutch199  Yeah you're straight up wrong, no ifs or buts. Go read so you can stop spouting complete nonsense: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnivora#Evolution
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  296.  @tuffclutch199  Ooooooookayyyyy... So let me get this straight: according to you "you think" beats actual fucking taxonomic classifications and, somehow, "puts me in my place"? This is truly peak Dunning-Kruger Effect. I think we're done here.
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  297.  @tuffclutch199  Oh look, now it actually did some vague semblance of homework and suddenly tries to pretend it never claimed hyenas are fucking canids. Which is Hell of a graver sin than casually using somewhat inexact terminology because you couldn't be arsed to look up the proper one at the time. Know the one about people in glass houses throwing rocks? Piss off, dumb angry kid. ᶘᵒᴥᵒᶅ
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  298.  @tuffclutch199  You literally only even know fancy words like "feliform" now because I threw them your way. And there's one Hell of a difference between getting the cladistic level slightly wrong out of laziness, and putting a whole goddamn family in the entirely wrong suborder on such a brilliant argument as "i think they are" and then having the temerity to act all high and mighty when called out on it, you insufferable little toad.
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  299.  paulo Almeida  Not even remotely.
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  300. Pretty much. Lions aren't idiots, they drop chases real fast when they know further pursuit would be a waste of time and energy. Typical "pouncing carnivore" behaviour.
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  301. The price of over-specializing in the high-speed pursuit niche. Pretty much every other major predator in their range can and will pirate their kills - not exactly helped by the extended recovery period (up to an hour) cheetahs need after particularly strenuous chases.
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  302. @silversteel6891 You sit down and be quiet when adults are talking. Also? Obvious rustled jimmies are obvious.
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  303. @silversteel6891 U MAD? 👾
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  304. @silversteel6891 lol u mad.
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  305. Cry me a river.
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  306.  @derekbates4316  That's a no, then.
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  307. The painted dogs are about 1/3 of spotted hyena size, and spotted hyenas are about 1/3 lioness size. (Male lions are meaningfully bigger natch.) But where even lone hyenas can get away with some frankly astonishing audacity against the doggos a solitary lioness is pretty much a goner if she runs into a hyena group, and even the big males need to watch their step around the buggers if they don't have the pride for support. What I'm getting at is spotted hyenas are disproportionately tough bastards for their size.
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  308. Lions aren't exactly noted for their endurance running (quite the opposite) and a cheetah doesn't need to go anywhere near its top speeds to outpace one ya know... Lions don't waste time and energy on futile chases and attack from ambush anyway; he was clearly just shooing the smaller cat out of his territory instead.
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  309. "Giant [African] millipedes have two main modes of defence if they feel threatened: curling into a tight spiral exposing only the hard exoskeleton, and secretion of an irritating liquid from pores on their body. This liquid can be harmful if introduced into the eyes or mouth." - Wikipedia Yes, yes it is.
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  310. I'm kinda impressed by how you managed to get even basic Scripture wrong.
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  311.  @plantahari  Doesn't really help that after an intense chase cheetahs can require up to an hour of recovery time.
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  312. Uh, yeah, that's kinda by definition.
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  313. Didn't exactly outrun the hyena now did it? Just made it to the hole before the head start ran out, with jaws quite literally snapping at its heels.
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  314. "Not Edible."
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  315. They're evidently very good at sussing out if there's crocs in the water or no. If latter, free rein and the knowledge is shamelessly abused for tactical advantage against less astute rivals that're simply terrified of water by default (lions, Cape dogs etc.); if former, they stay the fuck away. Case in point I've seen footage of a carcass on I think riverbank which a couple of hyenas came to investigate much to the displeasure of the vultures already on scene; after taking a few bites they just left for no obvious reason and the vultures gathered back to do their thing. Couple of minutes later a croc suddenly ate one of the birds. Don't ask me how they do it, intellect combined with perceptiveness probably. These guys beat chimpanzees in some types (namely teamwork-based) of problem-solving challenges after all.
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  316.  @Polosatiy_Varan  [citation needed]
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  317.  @Polosatiy_Varan  You quite failed to answer the question. Nice necro btw.
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  318.  @lollipop2993  Not unless they're immune to the fucking neurotoxin these little guys shit out for defense.
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  319. @@pessoasemnome631 Particularly ones whose sex is impossible to determine without just about cutting them open.
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  320.  @Bane520  That's an odd way to spell "gratuitously overhyped".
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  321. You do realise that third sentence is absolute horseshit right? Pride males spend most of their time away from the female core and duly need to fend for themselves, never mind now nomadic "bachelors" who haven't been able to attach themselves to one.
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  322. You're welcome to ask a priest about the theological justification for the food web. I find the secular explanation to make altogether more sense and involve markedly fewer tortuous mental gymnastics.
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  323.  @Polosatiy_Varan  [citation needed] I have absolutely no reason to merely take your word on it at a face value you know. What are you even basing your claim on anyway?
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  324.  @You-vc8cm  ...and?
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  325.  @You-vc8cm  The point is it's basically a baby, you nincompoop.
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  326. I don't think you know the German loss rates for the French campaign.
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  327. Oh you bet your ass it felt it only too keenly.
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  328.  @skaldlouiscyphre2453  That's kinda pointless because wolves are endurance-pursuit hunters. Doesn't matter if you can outrun them if they can keep chasing you until you can't run anymore... That particular niche, by the by, is filled by the spotted hyenas and the painted dogs on the African savanna.
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  329. Territory. Lions don't hunt by approaching in plain sight over open ground ya know.
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  330. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aardvark https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anteater
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  331. Bull. Shit. They do, however, respect chemical warfare which is what these creepy-crawlies count on to avoid gettin' et.
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  332.  @Predation_records  thatsthejoke.jpg
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  333.  kahanuermeyas-tulu4056  That was an awful long way to say you didn't understand what I was actually talking about.
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  334. Nah, he had turf to protect. Lions don't waste time and energy on pointless chases.
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  335. Not really other than the croc eating the late & lamented antelope and the hungry doges leaving empty-handed to search for other dinner candidates. When crocs catch something in the water it's basically curtains, exit stage left.
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  336.  @fillfinish7302  what.
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  337.  @KoId.  Even striped and brown hyenas, which are primarily scavengers and kleptoparasites (they can solo grown male leopards off kills), will take live prey at every available opportunity. (Curiously striped hyenas sometimes form cooperative packs with grey wolves.) Spotted hyenas are pretty much mini lions in their ecology. They cheerily take prey all the way up to adult Cape buffalo which are some of the most dangerous game in Africa.
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  338. The wild dogs' whole hunting strategy is based on having superior endurance (VERY common among pack-hunting canids that) so good luck with that. Prey animals take refuge in the water because that strategy has already failed and staying on dry land is sure death (the drink doesn't always have hungry crocs and/or murderously cranky hippos present).
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  339. Territory.
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  340. TBF that hippo is clearly a juvenile, given the small size, and more messing around than trying even remotely seriously. An adult that decided to take offence on the buck entering MY waters would just have unceremoniously murderized the unfortunate little ungulate and there's preciously little he could have done to stop such a fucking amphibious tank.
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  341.  @fillfinish7302  Not sure what else you expect anything would do there but try to fend off the bitey gray thing and hope for the best. The normal first-choice prey animal solution of running the fuck away obviously isn't in the cards here.
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  342.  @fillfinish7302  No, I don't think I will. Surely you've heard the one about the cornered rat?
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  343.  @fillfinish7302  what.
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  344.  @ClintDempsey-dh1iv  Do elaborate.
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  345.  @warmicecubes2161  Errrrrrrr... what?
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  346. Most African land life is congenitally afraid of water and apes born and raised in captivity are instinctively terrified of even small toy crocs (which has been exploited to protect recording equipment from their curiosity). The proximate causes can be found basking on riverbanks mouths agape, though the murderously territorial hippos certainly haven't helped any.
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  347. Technically hyenas are cats ya know...
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  348. Unlike their rivals (which just reflexively fear water) these guys are smart enough to suss out if there's crocs around.
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  349. They live in groups for a reason.
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  350. ...how do you think even the pride males feed themselves when away from the female core, which is to say the majority of the time? Never mind now the unattached bachelors.
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  351. Literally read the description and look up where the national park is located.
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  352. These guys seem to be rather good at figuring out if there are crocs around a particular body of water, Lord knows how. Probably just astute and, well, they've very smart. Which they shamelessly abuse for tactical advantages against rivals (lions, Cape dogs etc.) that aren't and which duly fear water like it was lava.
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  353.  @Jayess-c  Crocs aren't exactly known for letting things stay on surface ya know...
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  354.  @Jayess-c  And a croc would try to hunt (or set up shop to begin with) in water too shallow to kill lunch in because of why again?
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  355.  @fabiomgm1293  Reality check brah. Lions are pretty fucked if they get accosted by a croc in water and the damn river monsters will take prey up to twice their own size on dry land. (They moonlight as bush ambushers when they feel like it.) Spotted hyenas are dummy tough and scrappy for their size, but they're not going to have much to say to an apex-predator reptile many times their size on its advantageous home ground.
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  356. Yup. One of the few invertebrates safe from the driver ants thanks to that.
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  357. That's universal pack-hunter tactics, they use it against prey all the time. The groin has a lot of major nerves and blood vessels so injuries there disable rapidly, and it's also a relatively safe target given it's at the opposite end from where the teeth and horns and tusks and other natural weaponry (as well as the eyes to direct them) are. If you look at videos of fights between the various predators of the savanna one thing you'll quickly notice is how they're wont to hold their hindquarters low to the ground when surrounded specifically to deny the opponents that juicy target - the constant turning you see in that scenario plays into that too. Spotted hyenas have even evolved noticeably smooth and rounded hindquarters to deny hostile fangs purchase on the hips etc. which should say something about how many fights they get into.
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  358. I've also seen footage of a pair of hyenas that were being chased by an irate pack of painted dogs park their butts against a tree in similar fashion. Resulted in a standoff and the dogs eventually leaving to do something more useful with their time. Water gets used similarly as most African critters instinctively avoid entering it for fear of crocs and angry hippos, though spotted hyenas seem to be an exception (they're apparently clever enough to be able to tell when it's safe).
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  359. Shooing a competitor off his turf. They're not stupid, they don't do futile chases. They also don't walk up in plain view over open ground if they actually try to hunt something. Ambush predators, remember?
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  360.  @James_explorerC  ...there was one?
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  361.  @James_explorerC  ...did you just default to irrelevant nonsense when you couldn't come up with a proper retort?
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  362. That's not how any of this works, least of all crocodiles.
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  363.  @sainjawoof3506  "Quino" doesn't mean jackshit, it's a goddamn Spanish surname. And as far as I could quickly find the quinolones mentioned in that snippet you copypasta'd earlier like it meant something are bloody synthetic antibiote precursor or some shit and could scarcely be less relevant in the context if they tried. Quinoline alkaloids OTOH occur commonly in nature as plant and animal toxins - one example being strychnine, which even utter laymen have probably at least heard of, and "quinine" ought to ring some bells - and sound rather highly topical. Rest assured I can't be fucked to go on a search trawl to find out what nastiness exactly these creepy-crawlies use to avoid gettin' et though. Not invested enough in the topic and you sure as shit aren't worth the effort. Ain't my problem if you pull vague and impenetrable contractions out of your ass and then get all pissy and defensive when people snark about that.
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  364. P sure he was just shooing the smaller cat out of his territory. Lions aren't idiots, they don't pointlessly waste time and energy in futile chases.
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  365. lol, no
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  366.  @earthur715  So how many tears did you shed over the unfair fate of your latest Chicken McNuggets?
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  367. Lions aren't idiots, they don't waste time and energy in futile pursuit. I've seen footage of a male trying to ambush a spotted hyena and dropping the chase in like five seconds after it clued in and bolted in time to get enough of a head start - hyenas are far better endurance runners and lions know it. Ditto no doubt cheetahs - the adaptations needed to cope with the stresses of their peak burst speeds aren't going to have any real trouble with the paces needed to outrun the much slower lions. He was shooing the smaller cat out of his territory is all.
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  368.  Azman Abas  Of course they can. Case in point there's a species of fox - the North American gray fox Urocyon cinereoargenteus - that's evolved to become a quite good tree-climber. But there would need to be some reason ("selection pressure") for their evolution to go that way, and last I checked the spotted hyenas were doing just fine in their terrestrial big-game pack-hunter niche so that's a long shot. They basically occupy much the same niche in Africa as the gray wolf occupies in the rest of the world; try figuring out an environmental pressure that'd make it important for wolves to start climbing trees and you'd be on the right track I guess.
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  369.  @jq7323  The small-game niche is already well occupied (and going strong as smaller critters tend to be less vulnerable to sudden changes) and more to the point biological evolution is much too slow to cope with the abrupt changes humans are wreaking on their environment in the span of mere decades or less.
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  370. Most African land animals just avoid going into water altogether (more like are congenitally terrified of it) on account of hungry crocs and irate hippos. Spotted hyenas only avoid going into water that actually has those hanging about because they're clever enough to tell the difference.
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  371. Gotta eat you know.
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  372.  @mr.jayflex7007  You... don't even know how speed measurement works do you?
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  373.  @mr.jayflex7007  You do realise your piece of anecdotal evidence has fuck-all to do with the argument you're trying to apply it to right?
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  374. Aquiris quodocum rapis. ("You get what you grab.") - Crocodile, probably "My dinner... :c" - Leopard, basically Poor cat was all but dismissed entirely as a bystander lmao
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  375. Yeah, no.
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  376. Seen the one with a hyena (probably a young male looking for a clan to join) sharing a warthog with a leopard? The cat is jittery and visibly uncomfortable as all Hell and keeps randomly snarling at the hyena... who treats those displays with monumental indifference and calmly concentrates on eating its half, barely deigning to glance at the kitty. Certainly showed which one was used to dining in raucously noisy and intensely competitive groups if nothing else. :P
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  377. More like annoying. Cheetahs certainly know they can outpace their enemies if need be but being shooed away like that keeps them from gainful pursuits like hunting and whatnot.
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  378. Not like it had any reason to, no food to fight over and neither is into risking life and limb against a similarly-sized predator for no good reason. Spotted hyenas seem to have a pretty flippant attitude to leopards in general so it was probably just curious what the big cat was doing.
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  379.  @ekaeka763  [citation needed] because the top recorded speed Wikipedia knows of is 74 km/h - and that'd have been a lioness, the bulkier males are slower. (Also even worse at endurance what with that hot and heavy mane.) Cheetahs go up to like half again that and the extensive physiological adaptations they have to cope with the stresses involved in such extreme dashes ought to make them far better at maintaining lower speeds over extended periods should it be necessary - they certainly ought to be able to both outpace and outlast lions over distance.
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  380.  @Robin_TheFr0g  You'd be hard pressed to find a predator that gave a flying fuck about whether its meal is actually fully dead, less still the tender feelings thereof. Eg. you know how otters, clever little buggers that they are, have learned to work around toad poison-skin defences? They just skin those little croakers alive in the water. I mean there's no shortage of carnivores that basically just swallow things alive for that matter.
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  381. If all animals ran like cheetahs lions wouldn't have evolved into their present forms in the first place.
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  382. Why would they? There's already a meal they're focused on and it'd be a silly waste of time and energy to try to catch a big cat up on dry land. They don't appear to consider him meaningfully more relevant than that vulture off to the side.
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  383. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crocodile_River_(Mpumalanga) It's not exactly a verdant corner of Africa.
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  384.  @jacekpaszkowski2000  A) those are crocodiles, not "gators"; two different cladistical families that split already almost a hundred million years ago. B) hippos have no natural enemies, they're much too large and dangerous for that. Lion prides sometimes down one that's wandered way out onto dry land but that's always a high-risk long-odds business, and occasionally large bull crocs team up on a bull hippo injured in a territory or mating-rights fight with his peers but that's basically it. These guys are the other toothy reason most African wildlife is genetically terrified of water. Most of the time the crocs and hippos simply ignore each others' existence beyond some idle curiosity. Kind of a necessary arrangement given the degree to which they're obliged to (often literally) rub shoulders in Africa's rivers and ponds.
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  385. I'm seeing no meaningful bird participation here.
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  386.  @sukhbirsinghgidda7948  Not to mention that if predators didn't keep herbivore populations in check the latter would soon overgraze local vegetation leading to famines among themselves and a laundry list of ecological problems. Which kind of thing happens frequently enough due to human meddling. The semi-desert conditions of the Iberian interior - a permanent legacy of short-sighted commercial intensive sheep farming in the Early Modern era and due runaway erosion - are one major example.
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  387.  @Sneaky_freek  Do you have any idea how often people spout lines like that without a smidgen of irony around here? Sarcasm indistinguishable from mere stupidity will be read as the latter by default, the Internets in general and YT comment sections in particular are much too infested with bonafide numbnuts for benefit of the doubt to be bothered with.
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  388.  @Sneaky_freek  You're sounding more and more defensive and less and less convincing on the "totally sarcasm bro" by the second you know.
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  389.  @Sneaky_freek  Congratulations, you've been reduced to making up random shit. Your credibility is now officially zero.
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  390. I don't think you know how wildlife works.
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  391. Gotta eat. Crocs don't do the octopus thing where they literally starve to death guarding their eggs ya know.
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  392. You do realise lions in general and the males in particular are really sucky endurance runners while the various physiological adaptations that allow cheetahs to maintain their famously blistering top burst speeds for any length of time aren't going to have any difficulties handling the pace needed to outrun a much slower male lion, right? And that chase clearly goes on for a decent while judging by the sky.
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  393. English 101: "to fight" carries an awful lot of meanings besides concretely punching someone inna face.
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  394.  @Viralwyd1  It can, yes. Depending on the context. You do realise that normally when we speak of "sibling fights" we mean "squabbling over toys" instead of "Battle Royale with axes" right?
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  395.  @Viralwyd1  That you characterise this encounter as a "staring contest" demonstrates the essential failure of comments like yours - a fundamental inability to grasp how and why animals fight. (PROTIP: if the croc ever got to biting distance the results would be too summarily one-sided to be called "fighting" anyway.) The two lizzies are for all practical intents and purposes laying siege to the nest here.
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  396. They quite literally just have no reason to care about him one way or another. From their POV he's scarcely more relevant than that vulture.
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  397.  AL-qs9bl  Bears don't have the major intelligence driver of large social units with some of the most complex relationship and hierarchy structures known outside primates. Bit of apples and oranges anyway though what with bears being solitary omnivores and these guys hypersocial pack hunters. Spotted hyenas reliably beat chimpanzees in problem-solving tasks that demand teamwork, let that sink in for a moment.
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  398. Pride males spend most of their time away from the core of females and offspring - those territory borders don't patrol themselves - and are duly usually kinda irrelevant in practice.
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  399. ...the male is pretty much the slowest lion in the pride by default, tho. That beefy bulk and protective mane come at a cost.
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  400. Well hippos don't exactly eat grass anyway. They're also pretty equal-opportunity ornery bastards - predator or prey, if you come into their waters when they're in a mood they'll just murder you out of hand without distinction. Which alongside the ubiquitous hungry crocs is why land predators are so hesitant to follow desperate prey into the drink in the first place, obviously.
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  401. Cheetahs have top speed like twice that of lions and much better cardiovascular endurance, doubly so the bulky males with their hot and heavy manes. Out in the open he never had a snowball's chance in Hell of catching the smaller cat (and nigh certainly wasn't even trying to but was chasing it off his territory instead).
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  402.  @benito2250  There's a number of scenarios where a lion or similar can catch and kill a cheetah. Openly approaching a healthy one in plain sight with no pridemates lying in ambush is in no way shape or form one of them.
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  403.  @PatrickEgwu  Brown hyenas already reliably chase adult male leopards off kills, and they're rather less formidable than their spotted cousins who evolved to contest stuff with lions. Long story short in faceoffs between the various big predators of the savanna the leopard is one of the low men who gives way so its face doesn't get bitten off. And as one of the previous commenters noted as solitary predators they can't afford to risk injury because inability to hunt equals starvation.
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  404. "Giant [African] millipedes have two main modes of defence if they feel threatened: curling into a tight spiral exposing only the hard exoskeleton, and secretion of an irritating liquid from pores on their body. This liquid can be harmful if introduced into the eyes or mouth." - Wikipedia Something as slow and conspicuous as these guys doesn't survive very well without such defences.
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  405. I've read this comment four times now and it still makes no fucking sense.
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  406.  @jamaaelmariano3242  I mean... lionesses already weigh about triple what spotted hyenas do, and the males are still bigger. It's a testament to how tough and scrappy the hyenas are that they can put up a credible fight in the first place - they themselves can get away with bullying the painted dogs (which are about 1/3 of their mass) markedly more audaciously. You'll note how once the hyenas recover from their initial shock the lion actually has to quickly take up a defensive posture with his ass covered by vegetation - he may have bitten off more than he can chew here and he knows it.
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  407. Most African land animals are instinctively terrified of the water thanks to two different kinds of lethal river monsters and due natural selection. Spotted hyenas are clever enough to tell if those are actually present and will quite cheerfully go into the drink if not.
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  408. Sire, this is a Wendy's the tropics. P sure it's the wrong hemisphere to boot.
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  409.  @Mj.5414  Or rather without lunch, lions can certainly flee from crocs on dry land if need be.
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  410.  @sunnygupta9160  Unless there was a now-deleted comment you originally responded to - what?
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  411. Like that mattered. Brown hyenas don't have those either and can chase full-grown male leopards off kills.
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  412.  @superdave354  Spotted hyenas have no qualms about sharing meals with rivals if the other party is wiling to play ball. I've seen footage of them doing it with both wild dogs and leopards - the latter being noticeably jittery throughout since that kind of thing is presumably rather alien to them in general.
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  413. I mean large herbivores being ornery assholes isn't exactly news. There's a reason even remotely sensible people don't carelessly enter bull enclosures...
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  414.  @thomasneal9291  Definitely not. Whether it thinks in any meaningful sense of the term is an open question to begin with anyway.
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  415. Same reason every other predator tries to get rid of competition it can push around.
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  416. TBF the extinction events kind of bumped off the less aquatic crocodilians.
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  417. Territory. If he was trying for an actual attack he'd have snuck in through cover, not sauntered up in full view over open ground.
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  418. Lions in general and the males in particular are much worse endurance runners though, and a cheetah doesn't need to go anywhere near its peak burst speeds to outpace one. Less still a male.
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  419. As ignorant laymen think you mean. Anyone who's so much as parsed the relevant Wikipedia article knows these guys are some of the smartest things on the savannah.
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  420. ??? Even the less formidable brown hyena routinely chases leopards off kills. The big spotted cousins treat them with what amounts to casual contempt. When you've evolved to contest lions a leopard just isn't a particularly big deal.
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  421.  @nammoo89  "They are aggressive kleptoparasites, frequently appropriating the kills of black-backed jackals, cheetahs and leopards.[25] Single brown hyenas may charge at leopards with their jaws held wide open and can tree adult male leopards;[25] they have been observed treeing leopards even when no kill was in contention.[26] In the Kalahari Desert, they are often the dominant mammalian carnivores present because of this behavior and the relative scarcity of lions, spotted hyenas, and packs of African wild dogs." - Wikipedia, Brown hyena/Diet " Leopards retreat up a tree in the face of direct aggression, and were observed when killing or preying on smaller competitors such as black-backed jackal, African civet, caracal, and African wildcat.[59][120] -- In the Kalahari Desert, leopards frequently lose kills to brown hyenas, if they are unable to move the kill up a tree. Single brown hyenas have been observed charging at and displacing male leopards from kills.[125][126]" - Wikipedia, Leopard/Behaviour and ecology/Enemies and competitors Citation provided; your move. Brown hyenas wouldn't survive very well on that kleptoparasite strategy if they weren't good at bullying others for meals ya know.
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  422.  @Onelove-Oneheart-h4c  This is true but also entirely beside the point.
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  423. You're evidently unaware that they moonlight as bush ambush predators. These just have no reason to be in a hurry anywhere, less still give a hoot about the big cat skulking around. From their POV he's only marginally more relevant than that vulture waiting for its turn in the sidelines.
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  424.  @whyareyoureadingmynickname8158  And then they couldn't hunt the really fast stuff they do now. You'd just be left with another variety of leopard or thereabouts. Evolution is all tradeoffs and niche partitioning. For the record cheetahs have been around some 3-4 million years and a comparable cougar offshoot evolved independently in North America to fill a similar niche (the pronghorns' blistering speed is a relic of the arms race with those kitties). They're struggling now because humans have pretty much turned their environment and ecological context inside out in about 150 years.
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  425.  @basketballexpert4584  For the record these guys rake in a small but steady H. sapiens sapiens body count every year. And tourists dumb enough to go wandering dismounted around wild obligate carnivores that rip buffaloes apart for a living are hankerin' for Darwin Awards.
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  426.  @Coffee4Dessert  Tiger. Tiger. Sir, this is Africa.
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  427.  @Coffee4Dessert  Which were thoroughly irrelevant for the topic at hand. Have a good day.
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  428.  @Coffee4Dessert  Your :contribution: has been duly noted. ...isn't it past your bedtime already?
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  429.  @Coffee4Dessert  Your comment history here begs to disagree already. Cute attempt at having your cake and eating it too tho. And you might have some kind of point if you'd been referring to that to begin with instead of fucking tigers on Animal Planet. Wrong goddamn continent and wrong goddamn critters for the topic.
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  430. The males spend most of their time patrolling the borders of the pride territory by their lonesome, they're kind of irrelevant in daily life.
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  431. An oxymoron. Leopards, like all true felines except lions, are solitary aside from mothers with cubs.
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  432. Nile crocodiles. The cladistical families Alligatoridae (gators and caimans) and Longirostres (crocs and gavials) split already almost a hundred million years ago. Hippos are so large and dangerous they can basically just ignore other animals with impunity. A pride of lions may be able to take down one on dry land but that's always a chancy and risky endeavour and large Niles sometimes gang up on bull hippos injured in territorial/mating-rights fights with their peers but that's pretty much it. Most of the time the crocs and hippos basically just ignore each others' existence and a leopard is an object of idle curiosity at best. (At worst, well, hippos are the other toothy reason most African wildlife is genetically afraid of water.)
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  433. Lions also can't catch the stuff cheetahs routinely run down in the first place.
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  434.  @NannupTiger  goes double for the leopards, since as solitary animals they can't rely on their group for support like social critters if they get injured. Comes down to "don't risk it if you don't really need to"
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  435.  @doktorhyena  Even injured members can still get at least scraps from the communal kills while recovering. Their complex status and interpersonal relationship webs no doubt add further wrinkles. Solitary predators that can't hunt for themselves OTOH are basically screwed.
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  436. He sure has. But he ain't putting up with squatters on his turf.
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  437. That's not how evolution - or any of this - works OP.
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  438. Crocs and hippos basically just ignore each other most of the time.
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  439. Without carnivores to check herbivore populations the latter would just over-graze all the vegetation and starve. Do learn elementary principles of the food web before spouting bleeding-heart fairytale nonsense please.
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  440. Lots of juicy soft tissues down there. As well as major nerves and blood vessels severing which is a pretty good way to stop the prey from running away. Natural armament (teeth, horns, tusks, what have you) is also primarily in the front part and you obviously want to stay the fuck away from that if possible.
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  441. "Giant millipedes have two main modes of defence if they feel threatened: curling into a tight spiral exposing only the hard exoskeleton, and secretion of an irritating liquid from pores on their body. This liquid can be harmful if introduced into the eyes or mouth.[4] Because of this defense, A. gigas is one of the few invertebrates that driver ants are incapable of taking as prey." - Wikipedia Bugs did chemical warfare before it was cool 😎
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  442. He wouldn't have gone into the pond in the first place if there was one around. These guys are clever enough to tell, unlike most African land animals which are simply reflexively terrified of water.
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  443. ...two minutes on Wiki would have answered you: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyena They're Feliformians from the "cat" branch of the Carnivora - as mentioned above their closest living relatives are the mongooses of all things. They merely resemble dogs due to convergent evolution in similar ecological niches (spotted hyenas being broadly wolf analogs for ex).
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  444.  @johnniefinkley2766  "Jungle" is a corruption of the Sanskrit word jangala which actually means "rough and arid" (ie. "wilderness" or "wasteland" in general) - the Indians certainly knew lions were plains cats while the forests were tiger country, and doubtless so did the 18th-century Europeans in India who picked it up. Something clearly got a bit garbled in transmission into general parlance back in Europe as the loanword took on the meaning of "tropical rainforest" or thereabouts instead (with due implicit error in the lion's proverbial habitat). Influence from Urdu, where the same word refers to forest instead, has been suggested.
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  445. It's a game reserve, safari cars are dime a dozen. The animals just treat them as part of the scenery - similar to how urban animals essentially ignore people and vehicles.
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  446. They just don't care. Why would they? He's scarcely more relevant to the proceedings than that vulture.
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  447.  @mikes7446  I don't think the F. catus is neurotoxin immune.
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  448. I mean critters in these reserves are by necessity utterly inured to safari vehicles. Judging by how they behave in footage they basically just treat them as weird but harmless sort of mobile scenery - inquisitive juveniles may want to take a closer look, ofc.
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  449. More like these little fuckers are poisonous so anything that isn't specialised in eating them with due resistances isn't going to try it more than once.
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  450. They kind of just have to accept that Everything & Dog, Inc. pirates a statistically significant portion of their kills and compensate by hunting enough they themselves get sufficient food. Upside is, very few rivals indeed can even catch the stuff they run down in the first place.
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  451. ...the description literally identifies it as a boomslang.
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  452. Bro what. It takes an entire pride of lions or an unusual alliance of large bull Niles to even try to take down an adult hippo. They're much too large and dangerous to have actual natural enemies. Also hippos and crocs mostly just roundly ignore each other. Kind of a practical necessity given they can't avoid rubbing shoulders in Africa's rivers and ponds.
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  453. [citation needed] I rather doubt prey animals bother making overmuch distinction about what exactly is trying to eat them.
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  454.  @hitchensrazor5450  You have absolutely no idea what you're talking about. None of that works like you think it does.
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  455.  @hitchensrazor5450  No, you're blithely dropping random numbers and drawing arbitrary far-reaching conclusions from them without the slightest understanding what they even mean and how the things you're talking about work.
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  456.  @samo6083  First off, "they say" is a red flag for bullshit. And that's not how instinctive alarm calls work. Second, those "rates" you keep talking about? They don't mean anything like you think they mean because you're bithely talking apples and oranges like they were the same thing. Do you even understand the difference between "pursuit" and "ambush" hunting strategies?
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  457.  @samo6083  A) you do not understand the difference. B) you also didn't do basic fucking reality check on the implications of your claims. By your logic how do you figure lions etc. don't fucking starve to death? C) you "explained" nothing more than your absolute ignorance about how things work and willingness to believe random hearsay. D) as you yourself noted above YT isn't kind to links nowadays so you factually provided exactly nothing whatsoever. Hell as far as I know you never linked anything in the first place and are just making shit up, anyway.
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  458.  @samo6083  Oh and by the by that "almost 100% success rate" is total fanboy horseshit. Allow me to directly copypaste from Wikipedia (African_wild_dog#Hunting_and_feeding_behaviour): Hunting success varies with prey type, vegetation cover and pack size, but African wild dogs tend to be very successful: often more than 60% of their chases end in a kill, sometimes up to 90%.[54] Despite their smaller size, they are much more consistently successful than lion (27–30%) and hyena (25–30%),[55] but African wild dogs commonly lose their kills to these two large predators.[56] An analysis of 1,119 chases by a pack of six Okavango wild dogs showed that most were short distance uncoordinated chases, and the individual kill rate was only 15.5 percent. Because kills are shared, each dog enjoyed an efficient benefit–cost ratio.[57][58] So, yeah. As an aside Cape dog population densities correlate negatively with those of lions and spotted hyenas. Straight competition in the same ecological niche aside, the hyenas are quite bold about and successful at pirating their food and lions not only do the same but also tend to murder them on sight (as they're wont to try with the spotted hyenas too - fuck competition amirite? - but the latter are much better equipped to fight back).
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  459.  @samo6083  And trying to claim his observations (made in coastal Mozambique, on a quick look) represented some kind of universal rule is tendentious bullshit. Early 19th-century field research methodology had some rather substantial limits you know, all the more so in a continent whose ferocious disease regime made its interior a death trap to outsiders before the advent of modern medicine. Also? "However, larger packs have been observed and temporary aggregations of hundreds of individuals may have gathered in response to the seasonal migration of vast springbok herds in Southern Africa.[44]" (Mozambique, for the record, is in southern Africa - right across the strait from Madagascar more specifically.) This kind of opportunistic concentration is hardly unheard-of among predators today either, for example Nile crocodiles concentrate in exceptional densities at key river crossings during herd migration seasons. And famously pretty much everything piles on the beaches when sea turtle eggs hatch and the babies run (using the term very generously) the gauntlet towards the surf - you get the idea. Predators wouldn't stay around very long if they didn't know where and when look for their meals. I also like how you keep studiously ignoring any and all requests to actually think through the big-picture implications of the various claims you make.
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  460.  @samo6083  Temminck, moreover, was primarily an ornithologist and (seeing as how he now was Dutch and worked in the scientific establishment there) his overseas work mainly concerned the Dutch East Indies. I daresay one is allowed to take his word on the mammalians of Portugese Mozambique as less than entirely authoritative - for the record while he was the one to first scientifically describe the Cape painted dog ("after examining a specimen from the coast of Mozambique") he also misclassified it as a hyena. So, yeah. I'd be actually curious to know if he in fact even personally visited the place (and if so, for how long) or if that "record" was second-hand at best...
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  461.  @samo6083  You did not even understand the point, less still disprove jack shit. This is entirely unsurprising given you haven't understood anything relevant about the whole topic from the get go. Riddle me this: how, according to your logic, do the big lions with due proportionally large food intake requirements not starve wholesale to death with their oh-so-low hunting success rates?
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  462.  @samo6083  If you'd actually looked at the Wikipedia page you'd know the reference for that is the exact same 1972 study you cherry-picked the "90%" number out of and then grotesquely over-generalized because what even is context and sample size. PROTIP: every single one of those bracketed numbers in that copypasta'd section is a citation reference, do you even know how Wikipedia works? Your fabulous two sources ain't got shit. Also thank you for confirming beyond the slightest shadow of doubt you know exactly nothing about lion ecology (and by extension cats and ambush predators in general). Not that it wasn't painfully obvious before.
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  463.  @samo6083  I do read all your posts FYI, painful though it is. I just don't bother with the irrelevant fanboy bits and meaningless wild claims argued out of patent ignorance. By the by I'd like some sources for your earlier claim about the doges having similar food intake requirements as the lions that are about six times their mass (and the males several multipliers more). That'd make lions some astonishingly energy-efficient critters indeed, square-cube "economies of scale" or no... The actual reason as you'd know if you in fact understood anything about carnivore ecological strategies, and why your fanboi harping about "rates" is utterly irrelevant horseshit, is because the numbers aren't comparable in the first place. The dogs are "pursuit" or "chase" predators, as the social canids are wont to be; their main gig is investing substantial time, effort and energy into seeing through a comparatively small number of sustained hunts with due high rates of success. The risk with this strategy is if they're left without meal anyway for whatever reason (prey escapes, another predator nabs it as here, the kill gets pirated etc.) then all that time and energy spent goes right down the drain - "all eggs in one basket" as it were. Lions, like all cats, have a different strategy - the "ambush" or "pouncing" approach. They make comparatively many short, intense efforts but quickly drop unpromising hunts to cut their losses (and for that matter lack the baseline stamina to sustain extended, persistent chases). This naturally results in low average success rate but also spreads out the risks - it's no big loss if any single hunt fails to produce results. (Unless you're a cheetah anyway, but those kitties have over-specialised in a particularly strenuous variant.) As the bar of entry for the latter strategy is low and doesn't require particularly demanding or convoluted evolutionary adaptations it's something a lot of carnivores and omnivores at least dabble in opportunistically to supplement their primary strategies, "pursuit" hunters included. Remember this bit from the article I pasted earlier? "An analysis of 1,119 chases by a pack of six Okavango wild dogs showed that most were short distance uncoordinated chases, and the individual kill rate was only 15.5 percent." That's them engaging in exactly this kind of target-of-opportunity low-investment hunting. (The 2016 study, linked in the citation reference and available online, notes this appeared to be connected to the present range of that pack having been a mixed woodland environment.) And this is why your waving about your tendentiously ill-understood success rates is meaningless. You're comparing apples and oranges and thinking both are fucking lemons to boot.
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  464.  @samo6083  I am pointedly ignoring that because it's random bullshit you're pulling out of your ass, near as I can see. You've time and again demonstrated fathomless ignorance of everything relevant so your say-so has no value whatsoever. There's no reason for me to bother with that unsourced and implausible garbage. Reminder that Cape dog packs are at their core kin groups dominated by classic alpha couples; how the Hell do you figure that'd even work in 300+ hordes...? Prey migration seasons conversely are anything but quote NORMAL CIRCUMSTANCES unquote and such over-saturation of meat on the hoof if any would be a most excellent reason to suspend regular territoriality - which is fundamentally about securing sufficient feeding grounds after all. I mean, Hell, there's video footage here on YT of the dogs cheerfully putting aside their usual differences with spotted hyenas when a kill happens to be large enough to feed both. You seem to have some rather bizarre notions about animal behaviour, all the more so as it really should be apparent by now you really don't know very much about them at all to form any sustainable basis for such assumptions. Critters do be adaptable you know? Meanwhile I note that I was throwing pearls before swine by explaining How Shit Actually Works, which is about what I expected anyway. The Dunning-Kruger is strong in this one.
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  465.  @samo6083  I'd also remind you that the entirety of your soi-disant evidence for such huge packs amounts to an Appeal to Authority fallacy - that "authority" being an early 19th-century bird specialist who very likely was working off at-best secondhand information and notably misidentified the dog as a variety of hyena (a British naturalist corrected that 7 years later). And the whole matter is utterly irrelevant to what we are talking about in the first place. Do you perhaps buy your red herrings at wholesale prices? The world wonders.
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  466.  @samo6083  Welp, there goes any wind out of the sails of your claims about 300+ packs in the past then. Case closed. (For the record the mention of possible temporary large aggregations is cited to Nowak, Walker's Carnivores of the World (2005) - you're welcome to go delve into whatever debate might be going on about that somewhere but that's terribly unimportant here.) Now are you going to get back on to matters actually relevant to the topic? Like how you understand nothing about carnivore ecology and food webs?
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  467.  @samo6083  Your powers of self-delusion are impressive in a way. Takes some tortuous mental gymnastics to interpret the conversation like that - doubly so when it comes to sources. Or do I really need to reiterate the problems with the only one you could cite for an irrelevant fanboy power fantasy claim you made and later undermined yourself...? All the more so the countless times you made some wild and implausible claim and then cited no sources of any kind whatsoever. Also slightly puzzled why you're choosing to pick this up again a whole week later. Or did it just take that long for you to confabulate the convo into some kind of triumphant victory for yourself in absolute defiance of concrete reality? Presumably without reading through it again to refresh your selective recollection.
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  468.  @samo6083  ??? It's showing up for me just fine.
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  469.  @samo6083  And you still haven't proven or disproven anything less still addressed a long list of requests for some reliable sources for diverse wild & wacky claims, problems pointed out with a range of things you've claimed, and the repeat demonstration of your not having any understanding of related topics. Instead you point blank ignore such and proceed to make yet more equally unsupported and implausible wild claims while pretending you've magically already won something. Your feeble attempts at argumentation basically amount to spamming 😂😂 over and over. Bet you voted Trump. Or would have, should you lack the excuse of being Murrican.
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  470.  @samo6083  Doesn't matter, the above point stands. Cite sources and address issues raised instead of just claiming more unsupported nonsense while pretending you've achieved something. But here you are, still substituting smiley spam and hollow posturing for arguments.
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  471.  @samo6083  You. Did. Not. This entire farce of a debate has consistent of you making various wild, nonsensical and unsupported claims, my pointing out various problems with them and demanding some sources and evidence, followed by your entirely failing to do so and only making more far-fetched claims instead. While pretending you've somehow already presented satisficatory proof and somehow won. And spamming smileys, of course. That's very important. Relevant. Just like all the pointless red-herring claims you make. We're done here if you're going to insist on playing the broken record.
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  472.  @samo6083  You're delusional. I'm out.
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  473.  @samo6083  😂😂😂😂
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  474.  @samo6083  😂😂😂😂
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  475. Predators don't exactly give a flying fuck about the tender feelings of their dinner, only thing that matters is it's sufficiently subdued to be consumed.
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