The saber-toothed tiger with a long mouth that is generally thought to be like this:
But in fact, their long mouths are like this:
Illustration: Saber-toothed tiger skeleton
From this fossil skeleton, it is not difficult to find that the saber-toothed tiger's mouth is much larger than we thought, and it seems that growing teeth is not a barrier.
It is also true that most saber-toothed tigers can open their mouths up to 120 degrees, and their mouths are a bit like today's snakes, while the lions and tigers we are now familiar with can only grow 60 degrees.
The largest longitudinal tiger tooth ever found is more than 28 centimeters, and it would have been impossible for saber-toothed tigers to have such long teeth without these adaptive evolutions.
Although their mouths are so wide open, their predation methods are still very different from modern big cats, at least they do not rely on such a large mouth to bite their opponents.
Since the 19th century, the question of how saber-toothed tigers hunt has puzzled many people, but with the advancement of science and technology, through computer simulations, and the emergence of more and more fossils, it can be said that the mystery of how saber-toothed tigers hunt has now been completely solved.
About saber-toothed tigers
As you may have noticed, I'm talking about most saber-toothed tigers, because saber-toothed tigers don't specifically refer to a single species, it refers to prehistoric cats that all had this remarkable tooth.
To be precise, they are all species of the saber-toothed tiger subfamily under the cat family, and the variety is very diverse, and these animals disappeared all about 10,000 years ago. Although some of them are considered to be among the largest cats, some are actually very small.
In addition, although they have the word "tiger" in their names, they do not have much to do with modern tigers, and what is more surprising is that they are more closely related to today's marsupial predators.
In fact, saber-toothed tigers only derive their name from their large canine teeth, which are the most prominent (at least in fossils) feature of their bodies.
But again, to your surprise, these animals are so successful that they don't rely entirely on these teeth.
The saber-toothed tiger's teeth are narrow and curved, and have very sharp edges that allow it to cut through soft tissue. But they are very fragile and can break if they hit the bone instead of the flesh.
Although the saber-toothed tiger's teeth seem to be "not very good", their bodies are indeed much stronger than modern cats, and their body shape is very similar to today's lions, and it is said that even the color is very similar to modern African lions (they are also unrelated species to lions).
Their limbs are short, and their short limbs tend to be accompanied by strong strength, and the stability of the whole body will be stronger. Their main diet is large mammals such as deer and bison, although some also believe they prey on mammoths.
In fact, they are not too large, the largest at 400 kilograms, modern tigers can sometimes reach this level, the reason why they think they have the ability to prey on mammoths, because they are not like most cats are acting alone, they are likely to be social animals, and the social way may be a bit similar to today's lions.
Evidence for this is that in the many bone fossils found, it has been shown that the bones of these prehistoric big cats had extensive healing and regrowth. This suggests that these big cats survived their injuries, most likely explained by being cared for by other big cats, at least, other big cats that enabled them to forage.
Saber-toothed tiger's predation method
Since this guy is stronger than the current tiger and lion, and is likely to live in groups, they must also face the prey.
In fact, they are ambush-type players, hiding and waiting for their prey to let their guard down and deliver a fatal blow.
Note: The saber-toothed tiger has a short tail
Evidence of this is that their tails are short.
We know that modern big cats such as lions and cheetahs have long tails, and the role of long tails is to ensure that big cats can maintain physical stability and balance when chasing prey.
Saber-toothed tigers are basically not tailed, so these big cats are more likely to hide and wait for prey rather than take the initiative.
As we said earlier, they do not use the bite force of their mouths to penetrate the "saber teeth" into the prey, which means that they have another adaptive feature - the head!
Their skulls are completely different from those of modern big cats, and they do not have strong bite force, but they have strong neck muscles, which helps to make their heads push downwards. This suggests that they hunted with neck force to drive their teeth to stab their prey, rather than by biting force.
Note: Saber-toothed tigers live at times that overlap with humans
At last
Although we live in an era without saber-toothed tigers, none of our existing big cats are hunted with "saber teeth", but in fact, the cats of our time are very special.
This long fangs has been continuously and frequently evolved throughout mammalian history to prey, a technique known in the biological world as iterative evolution.
Some scientists predict that it won't be long before saber-toothed tiger-like creatures reappear, estimated at 5 million years!
Well, that's astronomical for humans, but it's only a blink of an eye for the evolution of life on Earth.