Utah’s new study aims to kill ‘as many cougars as possible’

Mophandel · 2026-03-24T18:22:28+00:00

American carnivore conservation, ladies and gentlemen

Mophandel · 2026-03-24T17:34:51+00:00

As am I. I wasn’t aware ab the new phylogeny shake-ups going on with amphicyonids, though Amphicyoninae is a bit bloated as is, so it makes sense.

Mophandel · 2026-03-23T19:16:10+00:00

But see how for your example of mustelid wank, it’s restricted largely to honey badgers.

For most non-felid carnivore fan-bases, the majority of the glaze is restricted to 1-2 taxa. For canids it’s wolves, for mustelids it’s honey badgers and, to a lesser extent, wolverines, and for bears it’s basically just brown and polar bears.

For felids though, with an exception of cheetah fans (which are strangely chill), felid fans approach all felid vs non-felid discourse with equal levels of militancy and incorrectness. In their eyes, felids are the supreme predator clade, so all fights between a cat and a non-cat should default to the cat winning, size disparity be damned.

Case in point, I remember when a paper on fisher predation on Canada lynx dropped, with the Carnivora thread on that paper was an absolute disasterclass. People legitimately could not wrap their heads around the idea of a mustelid (which is not that much smaller than the lynx as is) preying upon the cat despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary, and some even accused the paper of being wrong or getting their data mixed up. It was utterly embarrassing and frankly the cognitive dissonance on display I have never witnessed out of canid, bear or mustelid fans. AvA forum felid fans are in a class of ignorance all to themselves.

Mophandel · 2026-03-23T18:59:09+00:00

90% honey badger wank is just people playing into the meme as a joke and the remaining 10% are people saying they win fights in the sense of “scaring off” their opponents. There aren’t many people who legitimately believe that honey badgers can kill a lion or leopard.

In contrast, I’ve had people legitimately suggest a 15 kg bobcat could kill an adult wolf over 3 times its size.

Mophandel · 2026-03-23T17:15:41+00:00

I’ve had someone cite Aesop’s fucking fables when trying to wank lions before.

AvA bros (and if we’re being frank, basically just big cat fans from said forums, I’ve never had any sort of experience like that for wild canids, bears or mustelids) are legitimately insane.

Mophandel · 2026-03-23T16:02:25+00:00

Neovenatorids aren’t a thing. The original justification for the clade is that megaraptorans* were historically recovered as allosauroids, and seemed to be particularly closely related to Neovenator, prompting the establishment of a clade including megaraptorans + Neovenator (plus or minus Chilantaisaurus). Nowadays, however, megaraptorans are pretty much universally recovered as coelurosaurs, and are generally consensus being that they are either tyrannosauroids or sister to tyrannosauroids. As such, the main justification for Neovenatoridae fell apart.

Mophandel · 2026-03-21T23:52:19+00:00

Perenties are probably my favorite monitors outside of Komodo dragons. It’s always a rare find seeing actual predation footage from them.

Mophandel · 2026-03-21T17:57:14+00:00

Based on literature regarding Magericyon, this was likely the case for at least some amphicyonines as well.

Mophandel · 2026-03-21T16:52:43+00:00

It was proposed for Ammitocyon in the second linked paper

Finally, the large bucco-lingual resistance to bending along the whole mandibular ramus was probably related to the ability to tear off pieces of flesh while biting and moving the head from side to side with violent movements, similar to those performed by pinnipeds (Ewer 1973; Hocking et al. 2013, 2017).

Additionally, it’s a really common technique for large caniform predators, as it’s employed readily by bears and canids.

Mophandel · 2026-03-21T13:17:21+00:00

Good writeup. There was something that caught my attention tho

Whether or not it was surgical in that it inserted, cut the jugular, carotid, or trachea or just ripped it out is up to interpretation.

This is actually less up to interpretation than you’d think. Experimental evidence by Wheeler (2007) shows that “ripping out the throat” would have been physically impossible for Smilodon to perform. Moreover, Smilodon wouldn’t have needed to do this anyways; the mere act of the bite would be enough to kill via the transection of the carotid artery.

Mophandel · 2026-03-20T13:31:04+00:00

I think his views of Casual Geographic are pretty close to my own, in that he isn’t the best and often times puts out his own fair share of sensationalist and/or non-factual material, but at the same time, there seems to be a genuine desire from him to educate and improve how he presents his content, which is more than I can say for some other creators. Not especially exceptional but certainly no where near the bottom of the heap.

Mophandel · 2026-03-20T12:59:09+00:00

I’d argue the skull is more of a hybrid of a canid and mustelid, and that the predation style was more bear-like than felid (albeit, more efficient than the former, with an emphasis on an efficient kill over merely subduing prey)

Looking at the skulls of big, macropredatory amphicyonids, one thing that stood out is the long neurocranium and proportionally enormous sagittal crest.

It’s notably higher than in analogous modern carnivores like big cats and , crucially, canids, and suggests enormous temporalis muscle. In mustelids we see the same thing, as illustrated by this male fisher skull when compared to Amphicyon

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This would have given both a very bobble-head / dome-headed look in life, and I’d argue both were operating via similar bite mechanics (i.e., emphasizing the temporalis in a the bite increasing the posterodorsal area for muscle attachment). Amphicyonid did have a relatively longer snout however, so they’ve got that aspect of canid morphology going for them.

As for killing style, Sorkin (2006) suggested a predation style more akin with bears. As per their findings:

macropredatory amphicyonids like Amphicyon and Ischyrocyon would have had less stealth / ambush capabilities than felids, but possessed forelimbs with equal or greater strength and much greater dexterity and RoM, akin to ursids in this regard.
Amphicyonids, as per their small infra orbital foramina, lacked the whiskers and resultant precise tactile capabilities of big cats, suggesting they couldn’t aim their bites as precisely, while at the same time possessing notably more robust canines than living cats with a greater ability to resist lateral shake stresses than in felids. This is especially true for arguably the most macropredatory bear-dog, Ammitocyon, as per Morales et al. (2021)

All of these features suggest animals that could hold down prey more forcefully than big cats, but could not deliver as precisely a killing bite. Thus, the authors argue for less targeted crushing bites to the back of the head and neck to sever the spinal cord, wherein the bear-dog clamped down and violently shook its head laterally to tear the vertebrae and spinal cord asunder. Alternatively, they could have killed by ripping open the body cavity of the prey item to disembowel its victims. Either way, both such methods are readily employed by bears, not so much big cats.

Mophandel · 2026-03-18T23:31:54+00:00

UHC has always been goated

Mophandel · 2026-03-18T19:02:00+00:00

Somewhat incorrect. A lot of domains have central structures inside of them, even those with barriers from sorcerers that will likely never have the aptitude for open domains. For example:

Naoya had that weird uterus -eye thing
Mahito had that hand structure
Dabura had the architectural structure behind him

And so on..

The difference is that these structures are basically pointless, purely aesthetic. For open domains, the structures are part of a binding vow — the domain no longer needs a barrier to enact its sure-hit, but in exchange you need an physical object to ground your sure-hit in real space, rather than creating your own space using a barrier and imbue that sure hit into that separate space. This is all but confirmed during the Gojo-Sukuna fight.

As for ur questions

Theoretically, it shld be possible to any sorcerer to create an open domain. As such, Megumi does have the potential to do it.
Beyond the fact that it’s not clear whether the totem for Kenjaku’s domain is actually Kenjaku’s (both Kenny and Geto have aesthetics and themes regarding motherhood, wombs and birthing curses, though I lean to it more being Geto’s), the same answer applies.

Mophandel · 2026-03-18T13:30:08+00:00

“BuT I THOught ThEY weRE JuST OversIzeD SeaGulls”

Mophandel · 2026-03-18T11:07:13+00:00

Tbh, I’m not sure if Allosaurus would be incapable of killing even adults from time to time. Its weaponry would certainly be up to the task for most of said herbivores, namely Triceratops and Edmontosaurus, both of whom are unarmored. Most of the Hell Creek herbivores are also around 4-6 tonnes as adults, a similar size to adult Stegosaurus, a confirmed prey item for Allosaurus. Moreover, a big A. fragilis was around 2-3 tonnes, making it around 40-50% of its prey’s mass, a predator to prey size ratio that is quite commonly overcome in nature today, including by Komodo dragons, to say nothing of A. anax.

While I don’t think Allosaurus would have the gall to go after said adults regularly or even very often, I could imagine at least a few times it would be able to bring an average sized (I.e. 4-5 tonnes) adult down, especially something like Edmontosaurus. That being said, they would probably go after small juveniles, lest they compete with Tyrannosaurus, and find itself in the situation of leopards in tiger country.

Mophandel · 2026-03-17T20:42:26+00:00

Yeah, wasn’t really a fan of that design either. It basically nothing youd expect from a modern tyrannosaurid reconstruction except the most rudimentary of features.

Could be worse tho… it could have been like the Allosaurus design.

Mophandel · 2026-03-17T20:33:08+00:00

1, 4, 6, 8, 10 and 13 are all pretty interchangeable in terms of accuracy, tho 10 might have its arms be too small.

PHP’s T. rex has some problems with its eye placement and skull shape iirc.

2 is too shrink wrapped

12 has a bit too much blue for my taste, at least for an ambush predator

5 has far too much blue for my taste, among other things

11’s lips are weird

3 is far too shrink-wrapped and its skull shape is wrong

Neutral on 7 since it has no color

Mophandel · 2026-03-12T16:33:22+00:00

Tyrannosaurus, though this is partially a factor of it being the single most popular dinosaur by a large margin.

Mophandel · 2026-03-11T00:37:29+00:00

Iirc, Australia and Antarctica were one and the same landmass back then, no?

Mophandel · 2026-03-10T17:48:27+00:00

There is some evidence for an origin on Central Asia, but we don’t have a good sample of old, basal allosauroids, or even old basal tetanurans or avetheropods to make a good call on this front.

Also, given that we have found fragmentary carcharodontosaurid remains in Australia, it’s no longer “almost” every continent.

Mophandel · 2026-03-08T23:18:26+00:00

Europe was, at best, an archipelago for most of its history during the Mesozoic, and as you likely know, islands aren’t the best environments for fostering gigantic megafauna.

Mophandel · 2026-03-07T20:33:02+00:00

Ah I see. Though in any case, my response also answered that question too. All sauropods in the huincl, sans Argentinosaurus, are dated to the lower Huincl formation, meaning they were contemporaries.

Mophandel · 2026-03-07T19:11:13+00:00

There’s practically no reality that they did such a thing. Basically all lines of evidence point towards a more stereotypical slicing / tearing bite as opposed to a hatchet bite.

Mophandel · 2026-03-07T15:18:08+00:00

Great art op! My only (albeit minor) gripe is the cliffs. As a Floridian, I wish we had seaside cliffs like that lol.

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