Personal Opinion & Speculations

[LandSeaLion]

 Lone Predator

Quote:Since you are making such a claim, do you have any proof of Lions killing adult elephants? And even if it did happen it was likely done by a huge group of lions not a single individual so there is a big difference

Look up the Savuti pride of Botswana. They adapted to hunt elephants in the dry season. One of their kills (a smaller adult) was captured in the documentary Planet Earth in the 00s. The behaviour has also been documented by Beverly and Dereck Joubert (see Joubert 2006 - the majority of kills were of elephants aged between 4 and 15 years old, but there were also several kills of 15+ year-old elephants, at least one of which was classed as a full-sized adult. If that’s pay-walled, Power 2009 also has a discussion).

And yep, they did indeed hunt them in big groups.  That is what makes them such a threat - this is about the hypothetical situation of tigers learning to survive in Africa. They, too, would likely have to adapt to become social in order to stand a chance of survival in that particular environment, given the existing competition (a similar-sized cat that lives in big groups and already hunts the biggest prey available, plus also hyenas - themselves a very dangerous threat to lions when they form big enough clans). Reply