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  1. - Top - End - #31
    Bugbear in the Playground
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    Default Re: Predators with poor camouflage?

    The feathers could be dull on the outside and vibrantly coloured on the inside, only showing their feathery glory when raised erect. This could occur during mating displays (because that's what they are there for) and when it attacks adventurers (because it looks cool and once it lunges it doesn't need to be hidden).
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  2. - Top - End - #32
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    Default Re: Predators with poor camouflage?

    Quote Originally Posted by Mr Beer View Post
    The feathers could be dull on the outside and vibrantly coloured on the inside, only showing their feathery glory when raised erect. This could occur during mating displays (because that's what they are there for) and when it attacks adventurers (because it looks cool and once it lunges it doesn't need to be hidden).
    They could also be dull colored from the front and bright when seen from behind, because a T. rex doesn't need to run and hide from anything.

    It's just not the same when it's attacking you.
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  3. - Top - End - #33
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    Default Re: Predators with poor camouflage?

    just a thought, it could be that movement is what allows some predators to distinguish between a tree and a meal.
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  4. - Top - End - #34
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    Default Re: Predators with poor camouflage?

    Quote Originally Posted by vasilidor View Post
    just a thought, it could be that movement is what allows some predators to distinguish between a tree and a meal.
    That's true for all predators, to an extend. You have an easier time spotting a hare in a field when it's running.

    Tyrannosaurus in particular has very large eyes, placed frontally, far apart with good overlap. If his brain was somehow wired for any sort of bad eyesight, even as a way to spare processing powers for other things, it would be a serious waste of some great eyes. The placement of the eyes would have made it particularly good at judging close by distances. For us binocular vision helps in seeing depth up to a few meters away, that would be dozens of meters with the size of rexie's head. That's the sort of depth vision it uses on things that are relative to its own size right in front of it. Like uneven ground it wants to run across, or animals leaping away from its jaws or fighting back. In us the overlapping frontal eyes evolved for leaping around in trees, the adaption doesn't have to mean an animal was a predator. This does seem the most likely explanation though on a creature with such relatively small arms and a size squarely in the "no tree climbing" range.

    (Many birds also use movement to judge depth, but they can use their own movement and they only need to do this because they're looking at stuff with one eye. Taking two shots with one eye in principal gives the same information as looking with two eyes. And that's why chickens and pigeons walk weird like that.)
    Last edited by Lvl 2 Expert; 2018-02-07 at 04:07 PM.

  5. - Top - End - #35
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    Default Re: Predators with poor camouflage?

    Quote Originally Posted by Lvl 2 Expert View Post
    That's true for all predators, to an extend. You have an easier time spotting a hare in a field when it's running.

    Tyrannosaurus in particular has very large eyes, placed frontally, far apart with good overlap. If his brain was somehow wired for any sort of bad eyesight, even as a way to spare processing powers for other things, it would be a serious waste of some great eyes. The placement of the eyes would have made it particularly good at judging close by distances. For us binocular vision helps in seeing depth up to a few meters away, that would be dozens of meters with the size of rexie's head. That's the sort of depth vision it uses on things that are relative to its own size right in front of it. Like unevenground it wants to run across, or animals leaping away from its jaws or fighting back. In us the overlapping frontal eyes evolved for leaping around in trees, the adaption doesn't have to mean an animal was a predator. This does seem the most likely explanation though on a creature with such relatively small arms and a size squarely in the "no tree climbing" range.

    (Many birds also use movement to judge depth, but they can usee their own movement and they only need to do this because they're looking at stuff with one eye. Taking two shots with one eye in principal gives the same information as looking with two eyes. And that's why chickens and pidgeons walk weird like that.)
    Its also because most birds don't have muscles to move the eye much, if at all. So they constantly have to move their heads to keep things in view and change focus. Unlike most simians which have very good muscle movement behind the eye and allow humans, and other apes, to track objects without necessarily moving our heads. This is the reason that owls have that weird stare and rotate their heads nearly 360 degrees by the way. Obligatory owl rap: R-r-r-otate your owl.
    Last edited by Beleriphon; 2018-02-07 at 04:00 PM.

  6. - Top - End - #36
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    Default Re: Predators with poor camouflage?

    Quote Originally Posted by Lvl 2 Expert View Post
    A land animal the size of T. rex cant sustain himself on scavenging. Vultures are the only modern animals of any halfway decent size that manage it, and they can travel fast and efficient while looking out for food across miles of landscape.
    It's worth noting that the size of the predator / scavenger depends in large part on the size of the food. A predator the size of a T. Rex could scavenge from today's road kill. She would need to scavenge from bodies the size of a Triceratops. But they had that option.

  7. - Top - End - #37
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    Default Re: Predators with poor camouflage?

    Quote Originally Posted by Jay R View Post
    It's worth noting that the size of the predator / scavenger depends in large part on the size of the food. A predator the size of a T. Rex could scavenge from today's road kill. She would need to scavenge from bodies the size of a Triceratops. But they had that option.
    Larger prey just means less prey per square kilometer. Neither creature speed nor distance traveled per day nor distance over which something can be smelled scale linear with creature size let alone weight or apetite, so since there are no present day land based primary scavengers over the size of a large beetle or something a beast the size of rex is not going to be able to survive that way either. No matter how large the prey animals. If anything it would do better if all the prey was the size of a cow: it provides as much food as rex can eat in one sitting but there can be more of them, and thus more death ones, per square kilometer than would be the case with larger prey.
    Last edited by Lvl 2 Expert; 2018-02-08 at 11:50 AM.

  8. - Top - End - #38
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    Default Re: Predators with poor camouflage?

    Quote Originally Posted by hamishspence View Post
    That's been a theory for a long time.

    The presence of partially healed T. rex bite marks on herbivore bones though, strongly suggests otherwise - that T. rex tended to attack live prey rather than dead prey, with the prey sometimes escaping with scars to tell the tale.
    Related: I remember a scientific paper that posited that they were actually an anti-Ceratopsian specialist, and they had the highest bite strength of any carnosaur. But I will note that very few predators would actually pass up carriorn.

    Also, prey species that are highly poisonous tend to be brightly colors, so predators realise they're poisonous and leave them alone. This may just be me being gonzo, but I am highly amused by a) the idea of poisonous carnosaurs and b) a predator big enough to regularly target carnosaurs. But it's easily the least logical option here.
    Last edited by Doorhandle; 2018-02-13 at 11:57 PM.
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  9. - Top - End - #39
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    Default Re: Predators with poor camouflage?

    Quick question: what's the definition of carnosaur here? Because that last bit about poisonous carnosaurs hunting other carnosaurs by being big confuses me. It's about meat eating theropods?
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  10. - Top - End - #40
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    Default Re: Predators with poor camouflage?

    Quote Originally Posted by Doorhandle View Post
    Related: I remember a scientific paper that posited that they were actually an anti-Ceratopsian specialist, and they had the highest bite strength of any carnosaur. But I will note that very few predators would actually pass up carriorn.

    Also, prey species that are highly poisonous tend to be brightly colors, so predators realise they're poisonous and leave them alone. This may just be me being gonzo, but I am highly amused by a) the idea of poisonous carnosaurs and b) a predator big enough to regularly target carnosaurs.
    I think is true that there was a healed Triceratops as well as a healed hadrosaur bone found, with bite marks suggestive of T. rex.

    Quote Originally Posted by Lvl 2 Expert View Post
    Quick question: what's the definition of carnosaur here? Because that last bit about poisonous carnosaurs hunting other carnosaurs by being big confuses me. It's about meat eating theropods?
    I presume they're using ye olde definition that just meant "big theropods".

    The modern definition just refers to allosauroids (since T. rex is not an allosauroid, I presumed it was the old term they were using, for convenience)

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnosauria
    Last edited by hamishspence; 2018-02-14 at 02:32 AM.
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  11. - Top - End - #41
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    Default Re: Predators with poor camouflage?

    Quote Originally Posted by hamishspence View Post
    I think is true that there was a healed Triceratops as well as a healed hadrosaur bone found, with bite marks suggestive of T. rex.



    I presume they're using ye olde definition that just meant "big theropods".

    The modern definition just refers to allosauroids (since T. rex is not an allosauroid, I presumed it was the old term they were using, for convenience)

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnosauria
    Yeah, I meant "Just the big theropods". Paleontology evolves very quickly, considering it's all about extinct organisms.

    So the idea I was postiting was that the multicolored T.Rexs are like that to warn their even bigger predators that they're poisonous. Because in a D&D-style universe, there are probably a few creatures that would actually qualify a T.Rex as a "light snack."
    Last edited by Doorhandle; 2018-02-15 at 10:46 PM.
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    Quote Originally Posted by Craft (Cheese) View Post
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  12. - Top - End - #42
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    Default Re: Predators with poor camouflage?

    Quote Originally Posted by Doorhandle View Post
    Yeah, I meant "Just the big theropods". Paleontology evolves very quickly, considering it's all about extinct organisms.
    Paleontology actually evolves very slowly, compared to most other biological sciences. Paleotological papers regularly cite sources from many decades ago, which would be unimaginable in a field like genetics or even ecology. The paleontology of dinosaurs happens to evolve much more rapidly because there's a disproportionate amount of money in it and because the fossil record is so comparatively poor that it is particularly vulnerable to new fossil evidence.

    Biological classification in general has been evolving rapidly for the past few decades due to the combination of the cladistics revolution with high end statistical number crunching, but that's largely a temporary blimp and many groups are starting to settle down now.
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