Smilodon populator

[smedz]

From the sound of it, this animal was a beast. One question many have asked is whether this animal was social or not.  Well let's look at the situation shall we? 

Now just why in the world would Smilodon Populator be social, well we must look at why Lions today are social. Lions today live in open grasslands, and in grasslands, there are some advantages to being in a group. First off, studies in Etosha National Park show that Lions can overcome the problem of hunting in not much cover by coordinating their activities (Anton). In grasslands, they can face fierce competition, Lions have to compete with spotted hyenas, which live in clans, and a lioness on her own doesn't have a chance against a clan of them, and kills are much easily seen at a long distance. So being in a group helps the lionesses keep them at bay until the males show up. So as we can see, their are advantages for cats the size of Lions or bigger in grasslands to be social. Smilodon Populator was a good deal larger than a lion, and it lived in the open grasslands of South America. From that, we can guess that Smilodon Populator was social, but not in the same way as a lion. Male Lions are bigger then females, while both genders of Smilodon were about the same size, so their social structure wasn't like that of Lions unlike what Walking With Beasts would have you believe. However, wolves of both genders are of similar size, because of this, we can guess that if Smilodon were social, the social system was similar to that of wild canids (Anton). 

Overall, I do believe this animal was a social creature, and the source for this is from the works of Mauricio Anton. Reply