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Saber Tooth Tiger Facts
Wouldn’t it be cool if the Earth still had a living saber tooth tiger today? With their distinctly long canines, these animals became one of the most well-known prehistoric animals aside from dinosaurs. Around 37 million years ago, these animals also sat on top of the food chain until their extinction. While they may not be around today, there are still a lot of interesting things to know about them. Find out more about these creatures with these saber tooth tiger facts.
"Saber tooth tiger" is technically an incorrect name.
Based on fossils recovered from Brazil, scientists classified the smilodon under the Felidae family. Under a completely different family, this also meant that it wasn’t closely related to neither tigers nor domestic cats. That said, it is still commonly referred to as the saber-tooth tiger.
Woolly mammoths became extinct 6,000 years after the saber tooth tiger's extinction.
Around the same time that the saber tooth tiger went extinct, the American lion (Panthera atrox) also died out 10,000 years ago. Meanwhile, the famous Ice Age characters, wooly mammoths Manny and Ellie (Mammuthus primigenius) went extinct only 4,000 years ago.
The saber tooth tiger had a thick coat with a yellowish-beige color.
To survive the icy climate of the Pleistocene era, smilodon had thick coats that came in yellowish-beige tones similar to lions. Generally a stocky species, the saber tooth tiger had a broad chest, muscular body, and a short tail.
Saber tooth tigers may have behaved like lions.
According to research, saber tooth tigers lived in enclosed habitats such as bushes and forests which provided them enough cover for attacking its prey. Although it’s undetermined whether saber tooth tigers were social creatures, it’s more likely that they behaved comparably to modern lions.
Saber tooth tigers and the early humans may have hunted each other.
Some recovered skulls of prehistoric people bore wounds from long canine teeth, suspected to be from the saber tooth tigers. This evidence strongly suggests that humans and saber tooth tigers may have hunted each other during the Pleistocene. Due to this, it’s also a possible theory that humans hunted smilodon to extinction since smilodon had no natural predators before humans.
The canines of the saber tooth tiger grew two times faster than wild cats.
According to studies, their teeth grew two times faster than most current species of wild cats. At the age of 3 years, they would have already replaced their milk teeth with fully-developed canines that could easily tear apart meat.
Scientists believe that their lifespan is around 20 to 40 years.
Since they no longer exist, the exact lifespan of the saber tooth tiger remains a question. However, many scientists agree that they could live between 20 to 40 years in the wild.
And as always have a chilled day from the Viking
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