If we’re gonna talk about animals evolving to do things they weren’t meant to we’ve gotta talk about Thylacoleo
Thylacoleo, for the uninitiated, was Australia’s equivalent of the sabre-tooth cat. It was the size of a leopard, murdered rhino-sized marsupials with sharp teeth and huge claws, and looked like this:
Its closest living relative is this:
Yes, the most vicious mammalian carnivore Australia has ever produced is most closely related to a herbivorous furry cube.
What the fuck.
It’s obvious when you check out Thylacoleo’s teeth. Most mammalian carnivores have a similar setup: incisors, canines, premolars and molars. Dogs have it, cats have it, we have it. Thylacoleo’s teeth look like this:
You’ve got pincer-like incisors in the front, giant sharp-edged molars in the back, and no canines to speak of.
That last bit’s the important part. Canines are most useful for holding meat, so herbivores tend to shrink them down to nothing. Thylacoleo’s lack of proper canines show its ancestors were originally herbivores. But because you can’t just re-evolve features once they’re gone, it had to make do with what it had. Hence those ridiculous fucking teeth, which were nevertheless perfect for grabbing and chopping meat just like every other carnivore’s teeth do.
tl;dr: at some point in time a bunch of vegans decided to weaponise their limitations to kill everything and by god did they do it
I love thylacoleo’s bizarre dentition.
