I noticed that pronghorns have hypsodont teeth but they are mainly
browser[s], not grazer[s]. Why?
- When there are no other browsers, hypsodont grazers will happily return to
browsing. They don't have a reason not to.
- This seems to be the only way for the pronghorns to survive. For a long
time they were the only ruminants in America, and there were a lot more
species of them. Then bovids immigrated from Asia, and most of the pronghorn
diversity seems to have died out at that time. Competition is generally
suspected to be the explanation.
- Wrong mailing list. :-)