Mighty Arms Helped Extinct Cats Keep a Mouthful of Fanged Teeth

Regardless of the semantics of 'arms', a very interesting discussion of a subject that has been seculated about for some time. I spent a summer at La Brea site years ago and wondered about those slim fragile teeth of Smilodon as killing weapons. They could be broken so easilty we found...not if the 'cat' had 40" "guns" holding down lunch....

Someone below already mentioned it, but such teeth could have evolved to attract mates. Many things about our appearance are solely because those features have been good at attracting many, and the best mates. For example, take the feathers of a peacock. Their purpose is to attract mates. If they get too fanciful, then they hinder survival. A balance is struck and evolves over time.
It would not be surprising for long fangs to be attractive to other cats for generations until they become so long as to be fragile to the point of liability. Co-evolving would be limbs to compensate and so on. That's how evolution works, in a nutshell.

I think more important is the development of the neck. Look at the ridges on the skull and the size of the neck bones atlas and axis, combined with the ability to virtually, drop the lower jaw and swing the head like a pair of ice axes into a victim. Other cats reach out and grab, these guys took a heavy strike and swipe also they did not have retractile claws such that they cannot, lock their claws into a target but would need to use more active muscular effort to hold on. Not well designed for pursuit probably more of an ambush predator. The teeth are pretty sturdy but even a dog or an elephant can break a tooth but look at the edge on the teeth they are almost like a knife for cutting deep and damaging a victim, rather than trying to hold them down. A 6-8" deep slash should severely, damage organs on any thing under 3 tons. It might be easier to fatally wound prey then wait for them to fall. less chance of injury. Probably the technique of ancient mammoth hunters.

Note that their were lions at the time of Smilodon and though the American big cat died off 10,000 years ago, they remained in parts of Europe, Asia, Africa, up to the present. Probably more adaptive to smaller and faster prey and their group hunting style is probably more efficient and safer. Man probably exterminated the European and most of the Asian lions.

Cats had arms! Clams got legs!

They probably got the big fangs 'cause the women liked it that way.

Yes, this has LONG been known. The powerful fore-quarters of the saber-toothed cats (not just 'the arms,' but the shoulders and chest as well) are all ideally suited to pinning prey so that the 'saber-teeth' can be employed to close both the windpipe and the jugular at the same time, thus killing large prey animals in a very short period of time with just one bite (compare this with the struggles a lion must put up with by clamping over the nose of a wildebeest or cape buffalo in concert with others biting the throat and pinning the animal as well). Altogether, a very efficient means of dispatching large prey that has evolved many times, and doubtless will evolve again (once we are gone, of course!).

Those feline canines may have caused the demise of this species, since their value as trophies would have caused them to be misappropriated by the long forelimbs of ancient humans.

Funny how many folks are upset or indignant about them calling an arm an arm.
Look it up. All 4-legged creatures have arms.

I am dreadfully tempted to joke about their "right to bare arms."

sorrrry fooor the bbbaddd sppelinng......my paws ache.

my dog has "fanged teeth" but skinny arms

So much for the "arms" and teeth. Anybody know how long their claws were? I have a big yellow tabby, about twenty pounds, and his claws are scary.

Seems like those teeth would get in the way while trying to eat smaller prey. Maybe they needed those arms to break them up into bite sized pieces.

"Mighty Arms Helped Extinct Cats Keep a Mouthful of Fanged Teeth'. It didn't do much to ensure their survival into the modern age though...

Here Kitty

fanged teeth?is this a tooth with it's own set of teeth?cat's with arms?what do the hands look like?how many fingers?

Could it be they also used the strenght of their arms to break things --like the prey's necks????? I seem to recall something about a mountaion lion could snap a cows neck. I know for a fact one drug a dead full grown cow under some low hanging tree branches (3 ft from ground to nearest branches) the cats foot prints were bigger than my hand

....and why would nature create a killing tool that is fragile and cumbersome extra weight which is counter effective in survival of the species? And yet they survived the hardship of disadvantages that resulted from it to leave an examinable and distinct fossil record. Elephants and walrus tusks often break as the animal ages, but still is durable enough to withstand the elements and labor of majority of its life time. If animal cannot re-grow the tool of its trade, so to say, it is doomed to go extinct, yielding to its more advantageous cousins. That is the basis of natural selection as classical Darwinian model tells us. But in reality, Nature, strangely enough, in the absence of natural predators tends to decorate its creations in most artistically extravagant ways, and it also experiments in a counter logical ways as well. An example of impracticality is this case with the saber tooth cats. Numerous fossil records indicate such evolutionary dead ends, and yet they invite a question on surprising scarcity of the fossilized species, while diversity is what you would expect. R. Sheldrake proposed an idea of morphogenetic fields, that retain the successful scenarios in some sort of a hyperspacial dimension and drive biological and informational complexity in an organized manner, based on step-wise refinement fashion - if something worked in the past, the successful principle will be employed again, not necessarily in the same area. This self organizing principle works great to explain a lot other strange ideas and phenomena, but fails to address why nature gravitates towards such self expression (mating dances, colored feathers, overall expressive nature of animals on this planet, so on..). If we to include a conscious observer in this scenario as the center piece of the entire equation, only then this idea begins to work and make sense. But then you have to assume the nature has artistically inclined, creative basis that sometimes is counter logical to the evolutionary process. And the idea of intentional creative force that detours the progress and preservation of species by so impacting the wholly grail principle of survival of the fittest, causes a lot of scientific academia to spit angry foam. But how can one ignore something so obvious? That there is a Gayan planetary mind (or call it an intelligent intent, if you will) guiding this gene swarming flow in an organized and beautiful way.

Pardon me but nimravids did not live from 7 million to 42 million years ago. They lived from 42 million until 7 million years ago. The distinction is important because we are moving forward in time...not backward. It is our educational system that is moving backwards as evidenced by the writer and editor of this article.

Funny, so many are up in arms about "arms," but "fanged teeth" are getting a pass. What's up with that?