Bears of the Pleistocene

[Spalea]

@brotherbear @GrizzlyClaws :

Your accounts are fascinating for a quite layman like me: such a profusion of big predators !

I don't want to be out of sequence but, if I may so, I would like just to believe a little bit more about the prospects of the American lion's way of living: in groups or in small prides. Being faced to a very violent environment, probably very closes ties governed the members of the pride, and just imagine 5 or 6 American lions defending a kill. 5 or 6 predators weighing each 250 - 300 kilos amount to a 1500-1800 kilos meat eater, do they ? In this case, perhaps it should have been enough to keep victoriously the kill perhaps not against a big short faced bear, but otherwise, against any other opponent ?

With this hypothesis, I make an analogy with the current model in Africa: the spotted hyenas standing against a lioness around a kill. We indeed admit that from 4 the numbers of hyenas prevails.

American lions were the biggest brained felids of all time, perhaps they were able to sustain the intense competition between these North American large predators (not enough for finally surviving to the end of the Ice Age though, being entirely predator like the short faced bear they disappeared, as you told only the grizzly survived). Reply