Did Velociraptors Really Hunt in Packs?

Did real-life raptors work together they way they do in 'Jurassic Park' movies? Do we even have the right raptors? Learn the leading theories in this episode of BrainStuff.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to brain Stuff from How Stuff Works. Hey there,
brain Stuff lor and vogel bomb here whoever. The human
stars of the latest Jurassic Park movie are the velociraptors
are the fan favorite performers. Packs of raptors can gang
up on anyone or anything, from kids in kitchens to
a hybridized dino monster. Their attacks are organized, strategic, and

(00:24):
in most of the movies they rely on a chain
of command within the group. But is such team oriented
behavior supported by the fossil record. Before we can answer
that question, we should clear something up. The dinosaur that's
called Velociraptor in the Jurassic Park movies and novels was
based on a completely different animal known as Dano nikus,
and when it comes to size, there's a huge gap

(00:45):
between the two. Velociraptor wasn't much bigger than a turkey,
but the adult Dano nikes measured eleven feet or about
three point three meters long and may have weighed more
than two hundred pounds. That's both are classified as dromaeosaurids,
a family of bird like carnivorous dinosaurs. Members of this
group had a specialized toe on each foot, which famously

(01:07):
was held in an upright position while they walked. In theory,
that habit kept the large hook shaped claws on those
digits nice and sharp. Historically, it was thought that these
claws were slashing tools used to disembowel prey, but recent
studies have found that the claws would have been better
equipped for stabbing or puncturing Dremeosaurus. Therefore, it might have
used their remarkable toes to help them cling on to

(01:28):
large thrashing victims. Think of this as sort of a
prehistoric rodeo. Getting back to Dana Nikus. This particular dinosaur
was originally discovered in nineteen thirty one in Montana, but
it wouldn't be named until nineteen sixty nine. That's when
Yale paleontologist John Ostrom was overseeing a dig at a
Montana quarry and the bones of four dino Nikes were
found strewn around the partial skeleton of a much larger

(01:50):
herbivore called Tanantosaurus. Late in his career, Ostrom compared this
paleocrime scene to a wolf pack dispatching its prey. The
four dead Dino Nikus dinos he theorized had been killed
while attacking the big plant eater in a coordinated group effort. Later,
other members of their pack presumably killed that tenacious dinosaur.

(02:11):
Ostrom's work influenced author Michael Crichton, who wrote pack hunting
Dromaeosaurus into the first Jurassic Park book. The concept has
since taken hold of the public's imagination. Moreover, it's had
a significant impact on dinosaurs science. Therapods, the group containing birds,
and all known extinct carnivorous dinos, are often found fossilized
in close proximity to other members of their own species.

(02:34):
Because of this, it's been argued that plenty of non
dromosaur predators like Tyrannosaurus and Allosaurus might have hunted in
packs too, but then again, perhaps they didn't. In a
two thousand seven paper, paleontologists Bryan Roach and Daniel Brinkman
dissected the issue at length, and in their opinion, neither
dana Niicus, nor Velociraptor, nor any other non avian predatory

(02:55):
dinosaur would have formed packs via email. Brinkman's blamed mammal
like cooperative pack hunting is an extremely rare and complex behavior,
so let's talk terminology. Brinkman and Roaches paper defines true
cooperative pack hunting as a group effort carried out by
animals that habitually work together with others of their species

(03:16):
to capture and subdue prey too large for an individual
predator to kill alone. Furthermore, these team players also defend
their territory collectively and may share youngster rearing duties. No
living bird or reptile fits the criteria. It's true that
nile crocodiles sometimes gang up on big mammals like wilder beasts,
but they later disperse, and although Harris hawks have been

(03:38):
known to form hunting parties of up to nine birds,
they target small game while doing so. That said, there
is one living animal that, according to Roached Brinkman, might
offer us some insight into how Drameosaurus and other non
avian therapods behaved around big prey items, the Komodo dragon.
Komodo dragons are solo hunters and effective ones at that,

(03:59):
and adult can bring down victims ten times its own
body weight. These reptiles are also eager scavengers, and when
one of them kills a large prey item, others are
likely to come running. What follows is a gruesome feeding
frenzy with a dozen or more commodo dragons mobbing the carcass.
Such meetings get violent fast. While squabbling over a corpse,
kmmotos may attack one another. Sometimes they even kill and

(04:21):
eat their smaller competitors at the site. So when paleontologists
find a large collection of therapod bones and or teeth
in the same fossil deposit, what should they make of it?
Should they interpret the remains like a wolf style family unit,
or should they be viewed as the site of a
disorganized mob where side squabbles and cannibalism would have been rampant.
For their part, Brinkman and Roach find the latter scenario

(04:44):
more probable. Brinkman said Dana Nikus and other non avian
therapods were most likely solitary hunters who engaged in antagonistic,
commodo dragon like feeding aggregations, and they interacted with each
other in ways that were much more contentious, combative, and cannibalistic.
The has been widely believed. Okay, but what about dinosaur footprints?

(05:04):
Can they shed any light onto the pack hunting debate.
In two thousand and seven, a hundred and twenty million
year old dromosaur trackway was discovered in China, six different
sets of parallel tracks were found, each made by an
animal standing about four ft or one point two meters
tall at the hip, and judging by the nature of
the sediment, it looks like these prints were all laid

(05:24):
down within a very short span of time. Anthony J. Martin,
a leading paleo ichnologist a trace fossil scientist, thinks the
animals who made them were traveling in some kind of group.
He said via email. The trackways show these dromayosaurs were
moving at about the same pace, in the same direction parallel,
and spaced more or less the same distance apart, so

(05:46):
I'm fairly certain that this is evidence of group behavior. Still,
this doesn't necessarily mean the dromosaurs hunted in packs. Maybe
they were rushing toward a dead body like those independently
minded komodo dragons. In order to confidently cite any footprint
assemblage as the product of pack hunting or a similar activity,
would need, said Martin, more evidence, such as tracks of

(06:07):
a prey animal that was clearly preceding them and not
by much time. Best of all would be the drumsur
tracks ending at a kill site and acknowledgist can dream right.
Today's episode was written by Mark Mancini and produced by
Tristan McNeil. For more on this and lots of other

(06:27):
dynamite topics and dynamite visit our home planet, how Stuff
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