If weāre gonna talk about animals evolving to do things they werenāt meant to weāve gotta talk about Thylacoleo
Thylacoleo, for the uninitiated, was Australiaās 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.
Itās obvious when you check out Thylacoleoās teeth. Most mammalian carnivores have a similar setup: incisors, canines, premolars and molars. Dogs have it, cats have it, we have it. Thylacoleoās teeth look like this:
Youāve got pincer-like incisors in the front, giant sharp-edged molars in the back, and no canines to speak of.Ā
That last bitās the important part. Canines are most useful for holding meat, so herbivores tend to shrink them down to nothing. Thylacoleoās lack of proper canines show its ancestors were originally herbivores. But because you canāt just re-evolve features once theyāre 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 carnivoreās 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
