Showing posts with label carnivores. Show all posts
Showing posts with label carnivores. Show all posts

Tuesday, April 28, 2015

Another herbivore to the line-up, but it's a theropod

(Firgure 3 from article)The early theropods were seen as the "dominant carnivores" for the early age of the dinsaurs. But the carnivores were not alone for a leaf-toothed cousin that ressembled the other side of the dinner table.
There was a new discovery of a theropod in Chile that appears to have filled a gap between some carnivous theropods and non-coelurosaurian theropods. With stocky arms ended with blunt digits, it doesn't appear to be a threat when a beak and elongated body are put together. It was a confusing sight to determine it is next meal until the flatten teeth are revealed. It's named Chilesaurus diegosuarezi and reached up to 10.5 feet long during the Late Jurassic. It's size was considered "small" since it belonged to the same group as Trannosaurs rex.
When more areas of this dinosaur discovered, a larger adult fossil may be found. The fossils discover are relativity young in development and it would help to observe the skeleton at full size.

Thursday, March 22, 2012

Some Carnivores have no Sweet Tooth

Sciencenews.org and MSNBC both recently reported on a new study which has found that some carnivores lack the ability to taste sweet things because of mutations to certain taste receptor genes such as Tas1r2. The researchers studied 12 animals, 7 of which eat only meat and had gene mutations to certain receptors that normally enable the ability to taste sweets. These 7 animals included bottle nosed dolphins, sea lions, spotted hyenas and fossas; all of these animals are predators and hunt for their food, suggesting that they do not need to taste sweet things. However, this was not enough evidence to claim that all carnivores are unable to sense sweetness because other results showed that some carnivorous animals can taste sweet, that not all or any of their sweet receptor genes were inhibited by mutations. Carnivorous animals which can taste sweetness include domestic cats, raccoons, spectacled bears, Canadian otters and red wolves, among many others documented in the past. These animals often eat a broader variety of foods and do not always hunt for their food (they may scavenge). Although it is interesting that this study was able to identify specific gene mutations associated with sweet taste receptor loss, it is not enough to prove that all carnivores lack the sweet sense. Instead, it is much more likely that the study found an example of how evolution has led to some species being able or not able to taste sweet based on their foraging habits.