DrDeth
April 18, 2017, 8:12pm
101
astorian:
Oh sure, at SOME point, you accept animals as native even if they were introduced later than their neighbors.
Point is, the dingoes’ prey DIDN’T have any natural enemies 13,000 years ago. But by now, no one remembers when that was true.
Oh but they did:
Megalania (Varanus priscus) is an extinct species of giant monitor lizard, part of the megafaunal assemblage that inhabited Australia during the Pleistocene. It is the largest terrestrial lizard known to have existed, but the fragmentary nature of known remains make estimates highly uncertain. Recent studies suggest that most known specimens would have reached around 3 m (9.8 ft) or more excluding the tail, while larger individuals would have reached at least over 7 m (23 ft) long.
Megalania ...
Thylacoleo ("pouch lion") is an extinct genus of carnivorous marsupials that lived in Australia from the late Pliocene to the Late Pleistocene (until around 40,000 years ago), often known as marsupial lions. They were the largest and last members of the family Thylacoleonidae, occupying the position of apex predator within Australian ecosystems. The largest and last species, Thylacoleo carnifex, approached the weight of a lioness. The estimated average weight for the species ranges from 101 to ...
(Ok, both likely all gone by 13K years ago, but still a large carnivore that preyed on kangaroos)
The thylacine (/ˈθaɪləsiːn/; binomial name Thylacinus cynocephalus), also commonly known as the Tasmanian tiger or Tasmanian wolf, is an extinct carnivorous marsupial that was native to the Australian mainland and the islands of Tasmania and New Guinea. The thylacine died out in New Guinea and mainland Australia around 3,600–3,200 years ago, prior to the arrival of Europeans, possibly because of the introduction of the dingo, whose earliest record dates to around the same time, but which ne...
Sarcophilus - Wikipedia (maybe)
To add one more example, apparently deer aren’t averse to partaking in the occasional yummy human.
HoneyBadgerDC:
Pumas will hunt and kill smaller adult wolves as a food source.
Just wondering: Which could be honey badgers’ predators ?
If you are talking healthy adults I would suspect leopards and to a lesser extent lions.
If you made a list of animals with absolutely no natural enemies it would be very short. If you extended that description to include animals with less than a 4% mortality from natural enemies it would be a very long list.
DrDeth
May 7, 2017, 5:04am
105
HoneyBadgerDC:
If you are talking healthy adults I would suspect leopards and to a lesser extent lions.
If you made a list of animals with absolutely no natural enemies it would be very short. If you extended that description to include animals with less than a 4% mortality from natural enemies it would be a very long list.
Yes, there’s a lot of animals with “no natural enemies” if you dont include odd acts of killing or unusual predation.
orcas. Great whites. Polar bears. Tigers. That doesnt mean that once in a a while a odd tiger might not be killed.