The Cave Lion (Panthera spelaea and Panthera fossilis)

[Spalea]

@peter :

About #241: I find your posts exciting (perhaps not the word I would use at first sight, but from the dictionnary it seems to be the good one). I find fascinating to take a space into 4 dimensions (the Earth through the time), to consider which species could be competing at a given time or at least which species could share a given environment at a particular time as you do with, for exemple, the Pleistocene lions with the Amur tigers. To also notice that cave lions could be a ferocious ennemy of the cave bear, or same thing with the American lion towards the grizzly and the short-faced bear. Without forgeting the Pleistocene hyenas and wolves with the lions and tigers. The multiple combinations allow to imagine all kinds of encounter. Really fascinating !

To notice that at a given time the bears were the perfect the top predators (arctodus simus), and after in North America, the grizzly bears after having spent a long difficult period (the Pleistocene) became the top predator of the North America whereas the bears in Siberia are still confronted to the tigers, and so on...

Now, in our present time, numerous animal species have disappeared as well as some (sometimes intense) rivalries. Candidly I am asking to myself if something of the spirit of these ancient rivalries have subsisted till the present days. I remember having read in some of your previous posts how ferocious and intense could be the animosity between the tigers and the bears within some zoos. Much more ferocious, I had this impression, than between the lions and tigers for exemple.

Here it is ! I'm enjoying your posts. Reply