#maybe our cats just havent had enough time to grow their sabers yet

[tysonfurybattlepass]

It seems like there were a lot of saber toothed predators back in the day, why are there none now (apart from clouded leopards?)

that’s a good question! unfortunately “why” questions are very difficult to answer in paleontology; we just can’t definitively prove any of our hypotheses without observing the animals alive.

that being said, it’s a common trend in evolutionary biology that hyperspecialization tends to make an animal more vulnerable to extinction. things like saber teeth are really really good at one thing: killing very large prey quickly after immobilizing it. if that strategy is no longer viable, then the sabertooth doesn’t have any other plan to fall back on!

generalists, or jack-of-all-trades animals (think cougars and coyotes and black bears), tend to fare better when the environment shifts drastically. even if their preferred food source disappears, no worries! it’s not their only food source, because the generalist can do anything!

however, it’s entirely possible that saber teeth are actually a great evolutionary trait, and all the sabertooths just happened to go extinct for unrelated reasons. if that’s the case, then we just need to wait around until they re-evolve again in an extant group, since there are no living sabertooth lineages to work off of. we can only hope and dream :)