Ancient Jaguars

[tigerluver]

On social habits, the Bocherens et al. study postulated P. spelaea was solitary given:
"In combination with evidence for fights between cave hyenas and cave lions and that cave hyenas sometimes consumed carcasses of lions during the Late Pleistocene (e.g., Diedrich, 2008, 2009a), this indicates that lions were at a disadvantage in the competition with hyenas. This could be linked to the solitary habits of cave lions in contrast with the clan behaviour of cave hyenas. This is in contrast with modern spotted hyenas and lions in Africa, where both predator species exhibit a large overlap in the prey choice (Hayward, 2006). Modern lions, even if they are smaller than the Pleistocene ones, may resist better the competition with spotted hyenas thanks to their collective behaviour."

There is this famous cave painting that potentially shows a group of cave lions:

*This image is copyright of its original author

However, given the concrete data of Bocherens et al., it is possible this is a dynamic depiction (a comic of sorts) of a single specimen hunting. Taking the depiction literally, we don't see modern lions hunt in such massive crowds as the painting shows. Doesn't rule out pride living necessarily, but does rule in a different social approach to the hunt.

Wheeler et al. postulated pride-living in P. atrox as they stated males were over-represented in the tar pits as compared to females with following data: "52% males based on femora, 59% on C, 68% on P4, 58% on the c1, and 63% on m1." More specifically, they also noted younger males specifically were over-represented based on aging via dental wear. Their line of thought is that in pride-living, young males have a higher risk of mortality. Young males would be cast out and at greater risk while young females could still have the safety of the pride and avoid death in the tar pits. As such, having more younger males in tar pits indicates pride living. There are a couple critical issues with this logic however. For one, dentitions are not necessarily good indicators of size or sex. Wheeler et al. do admit this deficiency, especially in the case of the m1. This is supported by the fact that the femora show less males as compared to what the m1 and canines indicate. Secondly, the association of increased young male mortality with social living is not supported by data. One study on leopards found that young males have equal or greater mortality than young females (Swanepoel et al. 2014). Another study on Amur tigers found subadult males had an even more dismal survival rate as compared to subadult females (Goodrich et al. 2008). With such disparities in these solitary species, increased sub-adult male mortality is not evidence for pride behavior. Reply