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hi all,
regarding the discussion on pack hunting strategies
in extant animals, i think an extreme (at least on land) is the case reported in
the november issue of National Geographic , about the unusual (dangerously
unusual i'd say) hunting behavior reported for the lions of the Chobe
National Park(Botswana): they hunt elephants.
I've seen it before , but those were
isolated episodes and usually occured when some lions were "lucky"
enough to find weak individuals , old ones or really young ones and were able to
isolate them; in this case, however, it seems like they have begun
assaulting not only those kinds of elephatnts but also young adults (perhaps
sometimes unsuccesfully, but it isn't so important).
This unusual choice of the targets, is said(in the
article) to have been taken place because of the extreme conditions in that
area, where big groups of pachiderms are packed together with lions and other
animals near to the rare water pools present .
The result is that ,put in the need of drinking,
lions can't escape every time elephants get close;
from this condition to the opposite one, the step
should not be too big......
I think this could also be a possible explanation
of the causes that could have led to that mono-specific(is it correct?)
association; some theropods (perhaps members of the same group) could have
had some problem of comprehension with some big animals near a water pool, much
deeper than wide on its surface.
Given the possibility of a similar
enviroment , where and when those theropods died, and a modality of
deposition that could be interpreted as the result of this fact( theropods
fallen in a deep and somewhat muddy water pool), would it be so unlikely to have
happened in reality?...i really don't know and surely there are out there many
people knowing this kind of thing much better than me, so i hope someone will
have something to say.
Bye
Filippo Calzolari
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