Violent and constant attacks by large groups of huge carnivorous animals, including saber-toothed tigers and extinct giant lions much larger than today, depleted the population of mammoths, mastodons and other species of herbivores, and thus prevented the massive destruction of ecosystems in the Pleistocene.
And it is that for years, evolutionary biologists have been wondering how it is possible that many forests and other plant habitats could survive despite the presence of a dense population of hungry and gigantic herbivores, such as mammoths, mastodons and bears . In fact, studies currently carried out with elephants show that with abundant populations of these animals, plant ecosystems would not thrive.
But research carried out by several British and American universities such as UCLA, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences , establishes that super-predators saved the environment by keeping herbivore demographics at bay. Groups of huge lions and saber-toothed lions carried out violent hunts that depleted their prey and saved Pleistocene plant habitats. The researchers believe that this model can serve as an inspiration for current conservation policies.
Van Valkenburgh, an evolutionary biologist at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), who led the study, says that due to their large size, these ancient carnivores could hunt young mammoths, mastodons and other superherbivores. In this way they reduced their population and saved the Pleistocene habitats, a period that ended 11,700 years ago. The researchers also suggest that the progressive disappearance of their favorite prey – mammoths and mastodons – was the cause of the extinction of these ancient megacarnivores, such as giant lions and hyenas and saber-toothed tigers.
From the observation of today’s large herbivores, such as elephants, rhinos, giraffes and hippos, scientists believe that thanks to their size and the maternal care and protection of the cubs, these species are almost completely safe from predators. The limited success of lion attacks on elephants, even young ones, shows that the larger the herds, the more successful they are in survival. That is why the authors of the study believe that those ancient large carnivorous hunters of the Pleistocene must have formed large groups, which made it easier for them to attack and hunt large herbivores.
