Pliocene (Pt 9): Coyotes, Cats, and Spectacled Bears

A modern spectacled bear

When it comes to the extinct mammalian predators of North America, few are more famous than the sabretooth cat Smilodon, with the dire wolf likely coming a close second. But both of these animals lived during the Ice Ages, and, of course, with all those tasty horses, deer, and so forth wandering the steppe-lands of Pliocene North America, there were plenty of carnivores there before the Ice Ages began. Indeed, scary though Smilodon undoubtedly was, unless you're the kind of person that enjoys wrestling hungry tigers in the modern world, many of these others were probably quite dangerous enough.

But not, it has to be said, all of them - at least, from a human perspective. There were, as you might expect, many small carnivores in North America at the time, including badgers, weasels, skunks, raccoons and early wolverines and otters. While we can't know the details of their coat colours, it's quite likely that many of these creatures would have looked not too different from their modern relatives and possibly would have been hard to tell apart from them on casual inspection.

Fast-Running Hyenas of Tibet

Spotted hyena

The hyena family is one of the smallest families amongst the living Carnivorans. Only four species survive today, of which by far the best known is the spotted or "laughing" hyena (Crocuta crocuta). Hyenas are, oddly enough, closer in their evolutionary origins to cats than they are to dogs, despite their appearance, and, to be honest, much of their behaviour. Having said that, of course, they're hardly very close relatives of cats (they're closer to mongooses), but they do happen to be on that half of the family tree.

Today, hyenas fall into one of two basic body types. There's the one everyone knows, typified by the spotted hyena, which involves a relatively heavy build and adaptations to crunching up bone. These hyenas have a reputation for eating carrion, and they certainly do that, although spotted hyenas in particular are pretty good at hunting. Still, they'd rather jump out on their prey from a short distance away than have to chase it for long distances, as a wolf would. If their prey isn't going anywhere, because it's already dead, that's even better, and spotted hyenas are strong enough to chase leopards off their kills (the fact that they hunt in packs, and leopards don't, is doubtless helpful here).