Thylacoleo vs Lioness

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vs

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If the Thylacoleo was actually sluggish and dumb the lioness would school it due to being way more explosive and used to fast paced action catching wildebeest and fighting leopards.

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Why does Thylacoleo's teeth look like a beaver's mouth with 4 pizza cutters used for each of its molars? 

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@ajay moral obligation to chime in because you ''requested'' it.

[lincoln]

Dec 15, 2022 22:39:39 GMT Bolushi said:

Why does Thylacoleo's teeth look like a beaver's mouth with 4 pizza cutters used for each of its molars? 

Because it’s closest relatives are not predators but actually wombats and koalas, so it had to make “predator teeth” out of “non predator teeth”, apparently it’s teeth would have actually been pretty effective

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Dec 16, 2022 3:18:13 GMT lincoln said:

Dec 15, 2022 22:39:39 GMT Bolushi said:

Why does Thylacoleo's teeth look like a beaver's mouth with 4 pizza cutters used for each of its molars? 

Because it’s closest relatives are not predators but actually wombats and koalas, so it had to make “predator teeth” out of “non predator teeth”, apparently it’s teeth would have actually been pretty effective

Seems like it could slice shit up quite bad, out of everything I've seen that looks like the worst thing to be bitten by. A crocodile or alligator death roll could be just as bad but a mere bite won't do shit.

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The Thylacoleo seems to be more robust as well as having far more devastating jaws. I also think it was the better grappler. The only advantages I’m aware of for the lioness are (claws?) speed and agility.

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Dec 15, 2022 22:39:39 GMT Bolushi said:

Why does Thylacoleo's teeth look like a beaver's mouth with 4 pizza cutters used for each of its molars? 

They remind me of Dunkleosteus teeth-

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Dec 16, 2022 4:07:45 GMT @packhunter said:

The Thylacoleo seems to be more robust as well as having far more devastating jaws. I also think it was the better grappler. The only advantages I’m aware of for the lioness are (claws?) speed and agility.

Yes but it's also a marsupial. The best analogue we have is the opossum which is a low tier bullshit animal that relies on defensive mechanisms. And Tasmanian tigers which were powerful it seems but got killed by mediocre dogs. One did crush a bull terrier's skull, hence the potential for jaw power, but I feel like they were a lot like wolfy hyenas.
This animal was a proto-feline and evolved in a land full of slow retarded lame animals, so it's only reasonable to believe that to some degree it was slow, retarded and lame. I think that even if on paper it's the better grappler in real life they wouldn't be. For example, on paper hyenas should be this devastating bone munching hell beast but they're actually shitty, but if we had nothing but hyena fossils we'd end up with something like this:


So yeah I think if Thylacoleo was as fast twitch and quick as a lioness it could win but I think the lioness could school Thyla if it's anything like the animals it coexisted with. Speed and agility is a great advantage when your opponent is slow and meant for taking on slow animals.
If the lioness ended up on the ground it would likely die quickly.

[Deleted]

Dec 16, 2022 4:18:52 GMT Bolushi said:

Dec 16, 2022 4:07:45 GMT @packhunter said:

The Thylacoleo seems to be more robust as well as having far more devastating jaws. I also think it was the better grappler. The only advantages I’m aware of for the lioness are (claws?) speed and agility.

Yes but it's also a marsupial. The best analogue we have is the opossum which is a low tier bullshit animal that relies on defensive mechanisms. And Tasmanian tigers which were powerful it seems but got killed by mediocre dogs. One did crush a bull terrier's skull, hence the potential for jaw power, but I feel like they were a lot like wolfy hyenas.
This animal was a proto-feline and evolved in a land full of slow retarded lame animals, so it's only reasonable to believe that to some degree it was slow, retarded and lame. I think that even if on paper it's the better grappler in real life they wouldn't be. For example, on paper hyenas should be this devastating bone munching hell beast but they're actually shitty, but if we had nothing but hyena fossils we'd end up with something like this:


So yeah I think if Thylacoleo was as fast twitch and quick as a lioness it could win but I think the lioness could school Thyla if it's anything like the animals it coexisted with. Speed and agility is a great advantage when your opponent is slow and meant for taking on slow animals.
If the lioness ended up on the ground it would likely die quickly.

Fair points. What about Tasmanian devils for a living analogue? They both have powerful jaws and I don’t think either animal is speedy. I’ve read about Thylacoleo being an ambush predator. Both the lioness and marsupial lion take on larger animals but lionesses kill Cape buffalo which I’m confident are faster than Diprotodon or giant kangaroos.

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Dec 16, 2022 4:23:00 GMT @packhunter said:

Dec 16, 2022 4:18:52 GMT Bolushi said:

Yes but it's also a marsupial. The best analogue we have is the opossum which is a low tier bullshit animal that relies on defensive mechanisms. And Tasmanian tigers which were powerful it seems but got killed by mediocre dogs. One did crush a bull terrier's skull, hence the potential for jaw power, but I feel like they were a lot like wolfy hyenas.
This animal was a proto-feline and evolved in a land full of slow retarded lame animals, so it's only reasonable to believe that to some degree it was slow, retarded and lame. I think that even if on paper it's the better grappler in real life they wouldn't be. For example, on paper hyenas should be this devastating bone munching hell beast but they're actually shitty, but if we had nothing but hyena fossils we'd end up with something like this:


So yeah I think if Thylacoleo was as fast twitch and quick as a lioness it could win but I think the lioness could school Thyla if it's anything like the animals it coexisted with. Speed and agility is a great advantage when your opponent is slow and meant for taking on slow animals.
If the lioness ended up on the ground it would likely die quickly.

Fair points. What about Tasmanian devils for a living analogue? They both have powerful jaws and I don’t think either animal is speedy. I’ve read about Thylacoleo being an ambush predator. Both the lioness and marsupial lion take on larger animals but lionesses kill Cape buffalo which I’m confident are faster than Diprotodon or giant kangaroos.

Tasmanian Devils are pathetic carnivorous quadruped penguins. They have no place in a combat discussion, can't do shit. If the Thylacoleo was like a Tasmanian Devil it will get its ass beat very empathetically. 

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I think Bolushi is making some terrific points and has said just about everything I was thinking. It's a hard one to call, just how agile and game was the Thyla? I admit there's a chance it wasn't very.

Regarding the "small brain" issue, I tend to differ from virtually everyone in generally seeing a small brain as more of advantage than a disadvantage for death-matches, as usually to accommodate a large brain we give up more powerful (morphological) traits such as a large jaw. And imo morphology is usually the superior trait for winning fights. And a smart animal is a superior survivalist, a trait that doesn't help in a fight to the death. You want the small-brained, pig-eyed "bulldog" to win deathmatches.

But I think there's definitely a case for the Thyla being too slow, dumb and lame to be an effective fighter. Although it does differ from the hyena in being designed to far more effectively take large prey alone, which I guess requires a reasonably dynamic creature. Like if I try to think of all the extant carnivorans that are designed to take large prey alone, irrc none of them are that lamely hyena-like.

This matchup is really hard to call without more definitive information on the Thyla. But I will go with the Thyla here as I'm going to assume for the moment that while slower and "lamer" than the lioness, it's not on the level of the hyena. It's got too many tools in its toolbox, and I assume if it has those tools, it is obviously able to use them. A lame animal just wouldn't evolve all those tools to begin with, I'd imagine.

So I guess in this case I'm putting morphology, and in particular strength and robusticity (as I tend to do), before all other traits and favouring the Thyla over the lioness.

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Another point I'll make is if the Thyla has such lame competition and lame large prey, then why would evolution evolve a creature with such extreme predatory tools in the first place? Doesn't evolution evolve things out of "need", because of requirement?

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In relation to the inference Antonio made about the Thyla being a poor fighter because it was a poor survivalist, I'm not sure I follow with that logic, the survialist traits isn't very exclusively the fighter's trait, in fact I'd argue the better fighter are terrible survivalists. Case in point the fighting dog. The good fighter is usually the stupid small-brained "bulldog" that thinks nothing of survival and wouldn't last a minute as a species in the wild.

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Dec 16, 2022 21:45:02 GMT @ajay said:

Another point I'll make is if the Thyla has such lame competition and lame large prey, then why would evolution evolve a creature with such extreme predatory tools in the first place? Doesn't evolution evolve things out of "need", because of requirement?

Good point, but I wouldn't call them ''extreme'' really. Their teeth are repurposed wombat teeth, so not too extreme. Primitive evolutionarily.
I do believe that yes being dumb could allow for better morphology to compensate for the stupidity, that makes sense. If it was not like a dexterous hyena and instead just a brainless big cat with somewhat close stats, it should win.