by Matthew Cobb
While Jerry lies on his bed of pain, here’s a great drawing by Jorge Cham of PhDComics, describing the research of Jack Tseng. Scroll down – there’s a 2-minute video, too!
Hyenas and d*gs: convergent evolution
May 6, 2013 • 2:33 am
17 thoughts on “Hyenas and d*gs: convergent evolution”
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“This tells us something about the generality of evolutionary mechanisms.”
Only if we make the mistake of generalizing from a single case. This particular case is probably telling us much more about constraints on the evolution of durophagy if you start with a stem-carnivoran skull. How does it shed light on convergent evolution in general?
Very very cool, sounds like he had a great time doing his PhD!
Though I knew about convergent evolution (thanks to reading Jerry’s book), I had no idea that hyenas were more closely related to cats than dogs.
Is there evidence for bone-crushing dinosaurs with analogous skulls?
Looks vaguely like the boxy, crushing-optimised T.rex skull. Do we have good enough specimens to ascertain how similar they are structurally?
Dinosaurs didn’t have mammalian style mixed teeth (the only exception I can think of being the heterodontosaurs), but I think there were similarities in the skull structures of some of the mesonychids and creodonts.
This is great! I had thought hyenas were related to dogs for some reason.
In, what I am now forced to consider as ‘my youth’, rather than just ‘a few years ago’, I was lucky enough to do some tourist guiding in S. Africa – telling people that hyaenas were more closely related to cats than to dogs resulted in many flat denials of belief. It seemed obvious and unarguable to most that hyaenas were dogs.
I remember I thought they were related to cats then must’ve read somewhere they were related to dogs. Damn misinformation!
Hyenas are feliforms? I had no idea. Convergent evolution indeed. I always thought they were caniforms.
Shows what I know.
Why is it that domestic dogs are illustrated? Domestic dogs, for whatever “bone crushing” abilities they might have, are an example of just that – “domestication”, or artificial selection – not convergent evolution. I’m sure the actual study involved borophagines and hyenas, not recent dogs and hyenas. The science writer must have changed things for simplification and communication.
Way cool.
I used to raise Chow Chows. Amazing dogs, with one of the highest bite pressures of any dog.
When my male was about a year old, I gave him a ham bone, about 1″ in diameter and 2″ long, to chew on. Well, he picked it up, got a good grip on it with his molars, and crushed it in one bite…chewed…swallowed. It lasted about 5 seconds.
Yes, a bone crushing machine.
The close relation between cats and hyenas surprised me. I had always assumed hyenas were closely related to the canines. Live and learn.
Thanks to ZooBooks, I knew that hyenas were more closely related to cats than dogs.
I feel special now.
I think I learned it from a PBS special on hyenas.
Love this stuff. Thanks for posting
The thylacine, or “marsupial wolf”, is another example of convergent evolution to a dog-like form, from an even more phylogenetically divergent group:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6vqCCI1ZF7o
Another interesting example would be Andrewsarchus, a carnivorous member of the Artiodactyla groups of hooved ungulates, possibly belonging to a sister line to the whales and hippos:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lovzp01gma8&t=6m57s
The frequency of independent lines of carnivores among mammals is not really mysterious, in that the appearance of herbivorous mammals, particularly large ones with lots of meat and fat, represents a tremendous available niche for other mammals with the means to take them down or at least scavenge their dead bodies for food. What’s interesting, though, is that such a similar body plan has been arrived at in so many carnivore lines. Probably there are only so many ways to be a mammalian carnivore, involving a similar set of adaptations that have been selected for again and again.
Isn’t there some current speculation about just how carnivorous Andrewsarchus actually was, due to the fragmentary nature of the fossils of it? I seem to recall reading that somewhere.
Personally, I find the number of times that the sabretooth trait has evolved independently among mammals to be fascinating. IIRC, it’s appeared four times among true mammals (sabretoothed cats, nimravids, creodonts, and the marsupial Thylacosmilus) plus among the gorgonopsids.