Re: Rex Fall part 2

[Jeffrey Martz <martz@holly.ColoState.EDU>]

Peter Buchholz wrote:

> I would probably bet money on the fact that when a bipedal animal learns to 
> walk it falls a lot and learns how to take falls to lessen the impact of 
> falling hard.  Humans learn to fall on their butts, but not their tailbones 
> if they fall backwards, and learn to break their fall with their arms, so 
> they don't smash their head if falling forward.

      Do whatever you want, I'll still bet your butt hurt like hell.  Be 
glad you don't weigh five tons.  What would be the T.rex equivalent of a 
gluteus maximus?  T.rex would have to land on SOMETHING, and as massive 
as it was, this means that something would be very likely to get broken.    
     
> When was the last time you fell?  The last time I fell (besides this
> morning) was probably four years ago (not counting skiing etc..)
> when I fainted.  Tripping in bipeds is probably very common, but
> actually falling down isn't.

    If you ran every time you needed to get dinner over uneven and 
possibly obstacle ridden ground, especially if your attention was focused 
largely on your dinner which was trying really hard not to get caught,  
tripping and falling might well be more common. 
    Habitually jogging on nice, straight, flat sidewalks and tracks, or 
even frequently tripping over cracks in the sidewalk while you are walking 
don't really illustrate a T.rex's situation. 

> animal because it'd be scared of falling.  The overall gains from being a 
> big, fast carnivore outway the possible hazards by a tremendous margin.  So 
> what if one T rex couldn't recover from being tripped?  One hundred more are 
> eating fresh Triceratops.
 
       Getting killed one out a hundred times you chase your prey isn't 
a tremendous overall gain.  Catching prey isn't a once in a lifetime 
occurrence, but something that is done habitually throughout a predator's 
lifetime.  How often would one have to be unlucky?  
    What exactly are you arguing?  That falling for a T.rex 
wasn't much more likely, dangerous, or even potentially lethal then 
it is for modern predators, that it HAD to run faster then 15 
mph to catch its prey, or that it HAD to catch its prey every single time 
to get by?                  

LN Jeff
O-