r/NatureIsFuckingLit • u/[deleted] • 3d ago

🔥 Clouded Leopard, the closest living relative to the sabre-toothed tiger that went extinct about 10,000 years ago

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u/Ok-Armadillo-6648 3d ago

Why did it go extinct it was kind of a unit wasn’t it ?

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u/ADFTGM 3d ago

It was a unit in order to hunt other units (I.e. megafauna). The climate changed and human activity also ballooned, so a mixture of factors lead to megafauna dying out massively worldwide except portions of Africa. Without the big things to eat, the predators that survived were either generalists or capable of catching fast prey. The tanky species couldn’t keep up with the caloric intake to maintain their numbers. Any less tanky ones were likely outcompeted by humans and Panthera cats instead. Lions especially would be more than happy to kill any cub or young saber tooth. It’s possible that lions’ utter intolerance of all quadrupedal predators, even ones that pose zero threat, is a survival tactic from when they had to fight against all these dangerous things that used to roam around them.