Re: late night thoughts: misunderstand what?

[don ohmes <d_ohmes@yahoo.com>]

Just to clarify; when you say "bite-and-hold", do you mean 'hold with the 
arms'? When I say "bite-and-hold", I mean 'bite-and-hold-with-the-teeth' as 
opposed to biting and then letting go (and maybe retreating) in preparation for 
another strike. Using "hold" to refer to the arms in this context never 
occurred to me before, but then I mostly speak in the vernacular. 

Lots of animals, including many dogs, lock on and then shake vigorously while 
pulling back.  I guess that could be called "wound-and-retreat" although most 
of the wounding seems to be done in the 'retreating'. 

It seems logical that longer arms would be useful to a biped in a 'shake and 
retreat' mode, as would cutting teeth. It opens the way to a shark-like 'break 
off a piece and then come back for more' mode.

Anyhow, is there a standard terminology for attack modes in the 'predatory 
behavior' community? If there is not, we should start making one up. If there 
is, I probably erred in calling T.rex a 'bite-and-hold' predator, as those 
teeny arms couldn't hold squat. :D

Don



----- Original Message ----
From: David Marjanovic <david.marjanovic@gmx.at>
To: DML <dinosaur@usc.edu>
Sent: Saturday, June 16, 2007 7:07:21 AM
Subject: Re: late night thoughts: misunderstand what?

----- Original Message -----
From: "Mike Taylor" <mike@indexdata.com>
Sent: Thursday, June 14, 2007 9:23 AM

> David Marjanovic writes:
> > Tyrannosaurids don't look at all like specialized
> > sauropod-hunters. From such an animal I'd expect the ability to
> > make huge wounds in a short time and then retreat. This is what
> > carnosaurs, especially carcharodontosaurids, look
> > like. Tyrannosaurs were pursuit-and-bite predators.
>
> That's an interesting perspective.  What features of allosauroids make
> them more suited for wound-and-retreat than tyrannosaurs?

Their teeth are cutting rather than crunching, and their arms, while longer, 
were weaker, indicating they didn't "bite-and-hold".