Re: Stegosaur plates as protection......

[Randy King <randyk@informix.com>]

I've seen pictures of lions attacking spring buck and wildebeasts
by the throat.  That is the normal attack for cats.  Likewise
for most dogs.  I've also seen it in, uh, aaarg, I think I've got
a brain cramp, I can't think of its name...  Anyway, when I think
of animals that attack the hard parts, I think of the tasmanian
devil, squid, perhaps a few birds - er dinos?  It was noted earlier
that a lion attacks cape buffalo by the spine.  I am not at all
familiar with this pair confonting.  I suspect this may be a 
learned method of dealing with the buffalo, but I'm guessing at
that.  Most large cats suffocate their prey. 

Now that I think about it, bats will attack the neck because of
the large blood vessels near the surface, but they are just as
likely to attack upper arms and legs.  

I believe bear attacks are also at random, they may attack the back
more if the prey curls up?  Birds also attack the back when an animal
curls up or clings to the ground.  I don't know if that is preferred
either.  

Well, that suggests that if a stegasaur could cling to the ground the
back may be its only vulnerable point?  Could it curl up like an
armadillo?  Or maybe those plates are just organic toothpicks. :)

I think I like the idea of a stegasaur curling up into a ball.  

-Randy


Dann Pigdon wrote:
> 
> Randy King wrote:
> >
> > A few animals may attack through the back, but most will attack the
> > soft vital organs; this is usually either the throat or the abdomen.
> > Animals with defenses based on the back tend to be smaller and can
> > protect their stomach and throat through other means, like the
> > armadillo or porcupine.  Otherwise, I think the soft areas are more
> > important to protect.
> >
> > Perhaps this is different for a therapod; though, that has the strength
> > to crush through the bones.  But that still assumes that the giant
> > therapods were the primary threat to teh stegasaur. This almost feels
> > like a circular argument to me: If the stegasaur was only preyed upon
> > by therapods, he would develop a therapod defense; the therapods would
> > go after easier prey; the stegasaur would lose the genetically costly
> > defense.
> 
> For a start there are no modern analogies that come close to the size
> of a large theropod. Lions may come close, and when attacking cape
> buffalo they DO attack the spinal colomn. They leap onto the hind
> quarters and bite and claw persistantly at the base of the tail.
> This way they avoid the pointy end of the beast and at the same time
> may cripple it so it can not run away so quickly.
> 
> As for the evolutionary synopsis put forward, creatures do not
> evolve in turns, but at the same time. In Crichton's JP sequel he
> mentions many chaos theory buzzwords, one of them being the "Red
> Queen" effect, whereby creatures evolve at a frantic rate just to
> stay even with each other. AS for stegosaurs loosing their plates if
> no theropods attack them for long enough, even modern predators will
> occationally try to take a porcupine or an armadillo, so no defence
> is perfect.
> --
> ____________________________________________________
> 
>         Dann Pigdon
>         Melbourne, Australia
>         http://www.geocities.com/capecanaveral/4459/
> 
> ____________________________________________________

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Marc: http://www.cs.ruu.nl/~hansb/d.chessvar/makerule.html