February 16, 2010 • 15 mins
The Tyrannosaurus rex is one of history's most well-known, feared and misunderstood dinosaurs. Children often learn that this dinosaur was a ferocious predator ... but this might not be the whole story. Listen in and learn more in this podcast.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Yeah, Welcome to Stuff from the Science Lab from how
stuff works dot com. Hey guys, and welcome to the podcast.
This is Alison Madermelick, the science editor at how stuff
works dot com, and this is Robert Lamb, science writer
(00:21):
at how stuff works dot com. Today we're talking about
the tyrant lizard King a k a. The Tyrannosaurus Rex. Yeah.
This is a dinosaur that I grew up with, and
I think a lot of people out there grew up with. Um.
I've had the little plastic figuring of him. I was
having him beat up on Try Sarah tops attacking Stegasaurus,
is eating g I Joe men, you know, knocking down
(00:43):
wooden block castles. The Tyrannosaurs Rex was just no kidding,
a hero, I think to a lot of children, and
uh and I and I think still is today. Absolutely.
I have kids, have nephews, have all sorts of little
ones running around, and I went to one of the
what one of the toy stores recently and there's ginormous
amounts of dinosaur toys aimed kids. Actually some that are
(01:07):
I was pretty fascinated about. Yeah, and of course, if
you look at the depictions of what this guy looked
like you can you can tell why we're so attached
to it. I mean, he's just he's just awesome looking.
We're talking about a big bipedal dinosaur with just massive jaws,
enormous teeth, little bity front arms, but massive legs, an
enormous tale. I mean, it's it's like a dragon, just
(01:29):
a sheer monster. Yeah. I mean when I picture a dinosaur,
you probably think of a t rex. I know I do.
So let's quantify the two rex a little bit. He's
about forty ft long, which, if you think about it,
is the height of a four story building, assuming ten
ft per story um the sky, as Robert mentioned, had huge,
huge shoppers. I think his teeth were what seven seven
(01:51):
inches per tooth, and his jaw was about four ft long.
I mean that's the size of a small person. Yeah,
especially when you factor in that he probably had you know,
some more between four thousand and six thousand pounds of
pressure per square inch with that thing. I also read
the t rex could wolf down five hundred pounds in
one bite. Can you imagine? The t rex was probably
(02:12):
one of the last dinosaurs ever to walk the Earth,
right before the KT boundary extinction event, wiped everything out,
um and we found fossils in the United States, Canada,
East Asia, and the US. Actually, Montana has been a
virtual treasure trove of t rex is. So with all
these crazy attributes, you know, the huge shaws, the crazy chompers,
the big stature, you'd think that the t Rex was
(02:36):
the fiercest of the fierce. Yeah, naturally, And actually that's
how it was depicted by artists. Charles R. Night in
the early nineteen hundred's um Night was the first one
to to paint the t rex and he painted it
standing upright, the tail was dragging on the ground and
he's squaring off with the Triceratops. And the Triceratops is
that dinosaur with you know, the frill around its neck
(02:57):
and the two horns, and I think it's kind of
a peace loving animal, except for when it was facing
off against the t Rex. Yeah, but I've often heard
it put like the t Rex is like is the
little boy's favorite dinosaur and the try Saratops is the
girl's favorite dinosaur. You just made that up, Now, that's true.
I know my my wife's favorite dinosaurs to try Saratops,
and mine is the t Rex. I think mine was
the Prontosaurus. Well that's another peaceful even the not exactly
(03:21):
a real dinosaur, but still you can hold onto that fantasy.
I can, I can, and I will. Um. So Night
was was the first guy to really get down what
t rex look like on paper, and as such, there
are billions of toys spawn from this image and even Godzilla. Yeah, like,
basically Night's image looks like a guy in a dinosaur costume.
(03:43):
It's like the same stature. You know, you could say,
we're really throwing our anthropomorphic baggage at a bunch of
fossils and creating something that kind of looks like a
good dude in a suit. But film fans have also
um gotten to witness the emergence of new models for
how the t rex would have looked. And you guys
are gonna where we're going with this Jurassic Park classic scene, yep,
(04:03):
dinosaur chasing Sam Neil and company in the vehicle. This
is this is a very different take on the dinosaur.
This isn't it's it's more streamlined. The tail it's up
in the air, and it's it's it's running. It's really
upgraded nights vision of what the animal consisted of into
like an even more awesome predator. Right, So before night
(04:24):
kind of had the t Rex standing as this big, plotting,
hulking dinosaur. But then you know, with the with the
advent of Jurassic Park and even earlier than that, Yeah,
the t Rex gotta makeover. And he was sleeker, and
all of a sudden, his body's parallel to the ground,
tails not dragging on the ground anymore. And and this
is this is the newer version of the t Rex
that that we now know, so even you know, even
(04:48):
more reason for kids to love him. But just as
kids get older and uh, suddenly they learned a little
more about their heroes and their their heroes, you know,
tarnish a little bit um. Also, a lot of studies
have come out to sort of tarnish the reputation a
little bit of the t Rex. The t rex is
has gone down. Yeah, no it's not so much, you know,
(05:09):
no drug scandals or anything transsi no, no, no, no,
you know, car Rex or anything. But but no, there's
been some new studies to to cast his role as
King of the Dinosaurs in doubt, namely that maybe he
wasn't so much a super predator as a pretty good scavenger. Scavenger,
(05:30):
it's just a totally different volume. Yeah, I mean, it's
that it goes from you know, king of the jungle
to like a vulture or you know, or something. And
there are a number of reasons for this. It's not
just people wanting to bad mouth uh that you know,
a hero to children. Some of the the attributes that
t Rex had huge nostrils, which is great if you
(05:50):
want to smell out some dead dinos out there in
the primordial jungle. All right, those teeth and jaws, yeah,
they're great for chomping into living things, but they're all
so great for busting through giant you know, Stegasaurus corpses, etcetera,
getting at that bone marrow that's so rich in nutrients.
And that's another thing they've in studying this stuff called
(06:13):
copper light, which is basically fossilized fossilized dino uh excrement.
Yeah uh. They found a lot of bone fragments making
it look like these guys consumed a lot of bones. Now,
this is a lot like a really interesting bird that
you find in the mountains of Ethiopia but also throughout
(06:35):
Europe Asian Africa called the lambur guyer. And this guy
looks like basically like a big vulture, really kind of
a beautiful animal. But he he shows up late to
all the the dead things. The other vultures get their
first pick over the flesh, the lambur guyer shows up.
He goes after the bones, takes the bones, drops them
from a really really high altitude. They crack open, and
(06:57):
then he just gulps down all these bone fragments. All right, there,
nothing really is wasted in nature, right, And there's a
lot of nutrients inside bones, um, you know, the bone marrow,
et cetera. And it's the stuff that not every scavenger
is going to be specialized enough to take advantage off.
So and then they also found, um, some t rex
teeth in the dino do basically ends up painting this
(07:20):
picture of the t rex is a like a giant
trash compactor going at these at the bones of dead animals,
just chomping it all down vicious so viciously. Yeah, that
it's just bone fragments and his own teeth getting snapped
off and you know, passing through his system. I just
had sort of a funny vision of you ripping into
some meal and losing a couple of teeth in the process.
But I'm imagining that's what it was like for the
(07:40):
t rex. Yeah, I've never been that hungry, but I've
never had to hunt down my dinner in in dinosaur times.
So one of my favorite supporting ideas that the t
rex was a scavenger um is on the basis of parents.
Yeah yeah, so, Uh. The idea is that the t
rex is not too attractive of a dinosaur, and well,
(08:03):
let's just call spade a spade. Uh, the t rex
is ugly, and h his ugliness he has in common
with hyenas and vultures and and the legs. So this
is uh. I really hate to imagine that one being
taught in school two kids and saying, since the t
rex was an ugly dinosaur, he had no choice but
to eat things that others wouldn't, you know, That's just
(08:25):
it's it's very silly. Saratops, however, is beautiful and she
used to eat whatever she wants. I also heard that
the those powerful legs could have been made for walking
long distances as opposed to running down pray. Right, Yeah,
if you're if you pray is not going anywhere. Um,
and it's just a matter of running off some other
scavengers when you get there. You don't necessarily need to
(08:47):
run like a freight train. People have also made the
argument that well they have they have museless little arms,
all the more reason that they're just scavengers. But that
goes both ways. People point out, well, all snakes, you
have plenty of excellent snake predators, and obviously snakes don't
have arms, so that one's kind of a stupid one
in my opinion. However, the predator side still has some
(09:10):
has some supporters and there, and they really like to
put out this just awesome image in my mind, and
I think all the children out there will agree of
of this guy running just at a at a really
fast speed, opening his jaws wide and just crashing into
his prey. Yeah, and that's where and then that ends
up shattering teeth as well, Like just opening his jaws
(09:32):
and just running smack into the side of a stegosaurs.
I kind of just picture the t rex going running
full speed and either way they definitely not on each
other a lot um. But but then that's one of
those things you have. You have beetles in the wild
that have basically evolved large mandibles just for wrestling with
each other, so that that doesn't you know, necessarily mean
(09:54):
one thing or another. But you know, even if they
were scavengers, they were probably getting into some pretty serious
scrapes with each other. So the the whole argument of
whether the t rex was a scavenger predator also leads
us into whether the t rex was fast or slow. Right,
So if he's a scavenger, then he can be a
little bit you know, less zippy to his next meal,
whereas if he's a if he's a predator, then he's
(10:16):
probably likely to be more agile and fast, fast on
his feet, right. And it's important to mention too that
this is something that's that's very hard to track down
evidence for. There's almost no direct evidence. Um, we have
these things called track ways, which are basically fossilized dinosaur footprints,
and they tend not to be long enough though to
encompass the stride of a t rex. So a lot
(10:39):
of this we're having to look at other factors. It's
not just a matter of looking at the footprints. Yeah, So,
exactly how fast was a t rex? Well, some say
that he could run at forty five miles per hour,
and others have suggested a more moderate twenty five miles
per hour. Again, I mean, think about one of these
guys coming after full speed forty five miles per hour.
It's I mean, you couldn't take him out on the freeway,
(11:00):
but in an animal speed, that's pretty that's pretty good,
Which leads us to your next area of a scientific argument.
Was this guy warm blooded or cold blooded? Well, if
you're thinking that he's kind of a zippy being and
he's chasing down prey and or even walking long distances
to get out carry on, then then chances are maybe
(11:21):
he wasn't cold blooded, but he was warm blooded. So
just just a little refresher course in case you guys
can't remember this body of the cold blended animals such
like such as a snake or a lizard is is
one that changes with the ambient temperature. So, um, a
lizard is going to be more active when it's warm,
and it's going to be kind of sluggish and I
don't feel like getting out of bed when it's cold,
(11:42):
whereas warm blooded animals such as mammals and birds and
maybe dinosaurs are are active all the time regardless of temperature.
Where this ties into the whole speed issue too, is
it's basically a matter of looking at these bodies, the
body of this dinosaur, and saying how much energy would
it need to run at this speed? And in some
(12:03):
instances the scientists argue that it would that the body
would require more energy than a cold blooded system would
be able to create. Okay, yeah, So then that leads
to people saying, well, dinosaurs were cold blooded, so they
couldn't possibly run that fast, or people saying, uh, the
dinosaurs ran fast, so they have to be warm blooded.
(12:23):
So basically it seems like we have we have to
get to know the t rex a little bit better. Yeah,
and uh, and and also there's you know, we talked
about applying anthropomorphic baggage to dinosaurs earlier. I think part
of that too is when we think of think of
a dinosaur like a t rex is being like a
predator or being a scavenger. We tend to think of
(12:44):
our most iconic modern examples the right or you know,
a vulture or you know something else that runs in
front of your car, you know, to eat a dead possum,
and their nature doesn't always work in such well defined uh.
You know, examples like for instance, takee commodo dragon. This
is a large predator and it is at the top
(13:04):
of its food chain, and it's in its respective ecosystems,
but it's not running down gazelle or anything, you know,
and it's it's not even depending on like that kind
of energy to take its prey. It'll come up to,
say a water buffalo, and will bite it, and then
it'll set around and wait weeks for that water buffalo
to die from the venom, and then once it gets
(13:24):
week we can off. All the other commodo dragons will
come over and they'll feast on it. So that's not
you know, a very iconic view of a predator's role.
And on the other end, scavengers aren't necessarily the skulking,
horrible little creatures in the night that you know, run
from every light. Right if you kind of think of
the whole green movement that's going on today, I mean,
you could regard scavengers as kind of heroic and that
(13:47):
nothing is wasted in nature and everything is eaten. And yeah,
so maybe it's not as much that the t rex
um is losing its appeal to kids, but it's like
it's like an image makeover the t Rex isn't necessarily
the king of the jungle, but hey, look how how
much of a you know, a green ICONI is eating
(14:07):
all that bone and well and and maybe he's a
little bit of both. And in fact, I think that's
what Tracy Wilson was getting at in her article was
the Tyrannosaurus rex a predator or scavenger? And you can
find that article, of course, on how staff Works. But
I mean, maybe the t Rex did have a little
bit of both. Yeah, I for one, I'm still gonna
continue to put t Rex at the top of my
(14:27):
list favorite dinosaur, top of your food chain. Robert, huh,
yeah about you? Do you like the t rex? If
this this has changed your view on him? I think
the t rex is pretty cool. You're still sticking to
that Bronosaurus it doesn't actually exist. I still do like
the purple Bronosaurus a little bit. Ak If Windstones. If
you have questions or you want to tell us about
your favorite dinosaur, she just an email at science stuff
(14:49):
at how staff works dot com and they, meantime check
out some cool articles like our Komodo dragon's mouths deadlier
than Cobra's venom or was Tyrannosaurus rex, a predator or scavenger.
And you can also check got the blogs where you
can read about everything from robot dogs to no tech science,
and you can find that at the homepage and how
stuff works dot com. That's all we got, Thanks for listening.
(15:16):
For more on this and thousands of other topics, is
it how stuff works dot com. Want more how stuff works,
check out our blogs on the house stuff works dot
com home page.
Yeah, Welcome to Stuff from the Science Lab from how
stuff works dot com. Hey guys, and welcome to the podcast.
This is Alison Madermelick, the science editor at how stuff
works dot com, and this is Robert Lamb, science writer
(00:21):
at how stuff works dot com. Today we're talking about
the tyrant lizard King a k a. The Tyrannosaurus Rex. Yeah.
This is a dinosaur that I grew up with, and
I think a lot of people out there grew up with. Um.
I've had the little plastic figuring of him. I was
having him beat up on Try Sarah tops attacking Stegasaurus,
is eating g I Joe men, you know, knocking down
(00:43):
wooden block castles. The Tyrannosaurs Rex was just no kidding,
a hero, I think to a lot of children, and
uh and I and I think still is today. Absolutely.
I have kids, have nephews, have all sorts of little
ones running around, and I went to one of the
what one of the toy stores recently and there's ginormous
amounts of dinosaur toys aimed kids. Actually some that are
(01:07):
I was pretty fascinated about. Yeah, and of course, if
you look at the depictions of what this guy looked
like you can you can tell why we're so attached
to it. I mean, he's just he's just awesome looking.
We're talking about a big bipedal dinosaur with just massive jaws,
enormous teeth, little bity front arms, but massive legs, an
enormous tale. I mean, it's it's like a dragon, just
(01:29):
a sheer monster. Yeah. I mean when I picture a dinosaur,
you probably think of a t rex. I know I do.
So let's quantify the two rex a little bit. He's
about forty ft long, which, if you think about it,
is the height of a four story building, assuming ten
ft per story um the sky, as Robert mentioned, had huge,
huge shoppers. I think his teeth were what seven seven
(01:51):
inches per tooth, and his jaw was about four ft long.
I mean that's the size of a small person. Yeah,
especially when you factor in that he probably had you know,
some more between four thousand and six thousand pounds of
pressure per square inch with that thing. I also read
the t rex could wolf down five hundred pounds in
one bite. Can you imagine? The t rex was probably
(02:12):
one of the last dinosaurs ever to walk the Earth,
right before the KT boundary extinction event, wiped everything out,
um and we found fossils in the United States, Canada,
East Asia, and the US. Actually, Montana has been a
virtual treasure trove of t rex is. So with all
these crazy attributes, you know, the huge shaws, the crazy chompers,
the big stature, you'd think that the t Rex was
(02:36):
the fiercest of the fierce. Yeah, naturally, And actually that's
how it was depicted by artists. Charles R. Night in
the early nineteen hundred's um Night was the first one
to to paint the t rex and he painted it
standing upright, the tail was dragging on the ground and
he's squaring off with the Triceratops. And the Triceratops is
that dinosaur with you know, the frill around its neck
(02:57):
and the two horns, and I think it's kind of
a peace loving animal, except for when it was facing
off against the t Rex. Yeah, but I've often heard
it put like the t Rex is like is the
little boy's favorite dinosaur and the try Saratops is the
girl's favorite dinosaur. You just made that up, Now, that's true.
I know my my wife's favorite dinosaurs to try Saratops,
and mine is the t Rex. I think mine was
the Prontosaurus. Well that's another peaceful even the not exactly
(03:21):
a real dinosaur, but still you can hold onto that fantasy.
I can, I can, and I will. Um. So Night
was was the first guy to really get down what
t rex look like on paper, and as such, there
are billions of toys spawn from this image and even Godzilla. Yeah, like,
basically Night's image looks like a guy in a dinosaur costume.
(03:43):
It's like the same stature. You know, you could say,
we're really throwing our anthropomorphic baggage at a bunch of
fossils and creating something that kind of looks like a
good dude in a suit. But film fans have also
um gotten to witness the emergence of new models for
how the t rex would have looked. And you guys
are gonna where we're going with this Jurassic Park classic scene, yep,
(04:03):
dinosaur chasing Sam Neil and company in the vehicle. This
is this is a very different take on the dinosaur.
This isn't it's it's more streamlined. The tail it's up
in the air, and it's it's it's running. It's really
upgraded nights vision of what the animal consisted of into
like an even more awesome predator. Right, So before night
(04:24):
kind of had the t Rex standing as this big, plotting,
hulking dinosaur. But then you know, with the with the
advent of Jurassic Park and even earlier than that, Yeah,
the t Rex gotta makeover. And he was sleeker, and
all of a sudden, his body's parallel to the ground,
tails not dragging on the ground anymore. And and this
is this is the newer version of the t Rex
that that we now know, so even you know, even
(04:48):
more reason for kids to love him. But just as
kids get older and uh, suddenly they learned a little
more about their heroes and their their heroes, you know,
tarnish a little bit um. Also, a lot of studies
have come out to sort of tarnish the reputation a
little bit of the t Rex. The t rex is
has gone down. Yeah, no it's not so much, you know,
(05:09):
no drug scandals or anything transsi no, no, no, no,
you know, car Rex or anything. But but no, there's
been some new studies to to cast his role as
King of the Dinosaurs in doubt, namely that maybe he
wasn't so much a super predator as a pretty good scavenger. Scavenger,
(05:30):
it's just a totally different volume. Yeah, I mean, it's
that it goes from you know, king of the jungle
to like a vulture or you know, or something. And
there are a number of reasons for this. It's not
just people wanting to bad mouth uh that you know,
a hero to children. Some of the the attributes that
t Rex had huge nostrils, which is great if you
(05:50):
want to smell out some dead dinos out there in
the primordial jungle. All right, those teeth and jaws, yeah,
they're great for chomping into living things, but they're all
so great for busting through giant you know, Stegasaurus corpses, etcetera,
getting at that bone marrow that's so rich in nutrients.
And that's another thing they've in studying this stuff called
(06:13):
copper light, which is basically fossilized fossilized dino uh excrement.
Yeah uh. They found a lot of bone fragments making
it look like these guys consumed a lot of bones. Now,
this is a lot like a really interesting bird that
you find in the mountains of Ethiopia but also throughout
(06:35):
Europe Asian Africa called the lambur guyer. And this guy
looks like basically like a big vulture, really kind of
a beautiful animal. But he he shows up late to
all the the dead things. The other vultures get their
first pick over the flesh, the lambur guyer shows up.
He goes after the bones, takes the bones, drops them
from a really really high altitude. They crack open, and
(06:57):
then he just gulps down all these bone fragments. All right, there,
nothing really is wasted in nature, right, And there's a
lot of nutrients inside bones, um, you know, the bone marrow,
et cetera. And it's the stuff that not every scavenger
is going to be specialized enough to take advantage off.
So and then they also found, um, some t rex
teeth in the dino do basically ends up painting this
(07:20):
picture of the t rex is a like a giant
trash compactor going at these at the bones of dead animals,
just chomping it all down vicious so viciously. Yeah, that
it's just bone fragments and his own teeth getting snapped
off and you know, passing through his system. I just
had sort of a funny vision of you ripping into
some meal and losing a couple of teeth in the process.
But I'm imagining that's what it was like for the
(07:40):
t rex. Yeah, I've never been that hungry, but I've
never had to hunt down my dinner in in dinosaur times.
So one of my favorite supporting ideas that the t
rex was a scavenger um is on the basis of parents.
Yeah yeah, so, Uh. The idea is that the t
rex is not too attractive of a dinosaur, and well,
(08:03):
let's just call spade a spade. Uh, the t rex
is ugly, and h his ugliness he has in common
with hyenas and vultures and and the legs. So this
is uh. I really hate to imagine that one being
taught in school two kids and saying, since the t
rex was an ugly dinosaur, he had no choice but
to eat things that others wouldn't, you know, That's just
(08:25):
it's it's very silly. Saratops, however, is beautiful and she
used to eat whatever she wants. I also heard that
the those powerful legs could have been made for walking
long distances as opposed to running down pray. Right, Yeah,
if you're if you pray is not going anywhere. Um,
and it's just a matter of running off some other
scavengers when you get there. You don't necessarily need to
(08:47):
run like a freight train. People have also made the
argument that well they have they have museless little arms,
all the more reason that they're just scavengers. But that
goes both ways. People point out, well, all snakes, you
have plenty of excellent snake predators, and obviously snakes don't
have arms, so that one's kind of a stupid one
in my opinion. However, the predator side still has some
(09:10):
has some supporters and there, and they really like to
put out this just awesome image in my mind, and
I think all the children out there will agree of
of this guy running just at a at a really
fast speed, opening his jaws wide and just crashing into
his prey. Yeah, and that's where and then that ends
up shattering teeth as well, Like just opening his jaws
(09:32):
and just running smack into the side of a stegosaurs.
I kind of just picture the t rex going running
full speed and either way they definitely not on each
other a lot um. But but then that's one of
those things you have. You have beetles in the wild
that have basically evolved large mandibles just for wrestling with
each other, so that that doesn't you know, necessarily mean
(09:54):
one thing or another. But you know, even if they
were scavengers, they were probably getting into some pretty serious
scrapes with each other. So the the whole argument of
whether the t rex was a scavenger predator also leads
us into whether the t rex was fast or slow. Right,
So if he's a scavenger, then he can be a
little bit you know, less zippy to his next meal,
whereas if he's a if he's a predator, then he's
(10:16):
probably likely to be more agile and fast, fast on
his feet, right. And it's important to mention too that
this is something that's that's very hard to track down
evidence for. There's almost no direct evidence. Um, we have
these things called track ways, which are basically fossilized dinosaur footprints,
and they tend not to be long enough though to
encompass the stride of a t rex. So a lot
(10:39):
of this we're having to look at other factors. It's
not just a matter of looking at the footprints. Yeah, So,
exactly how fast was a t rex? Well, some say
that he could run at forty five miles per hour,
and others have suggested a more moderate twenty five miles
per hour. Again, I mean, think about one of these
guys coming after full speed forty five miles per hour.
It's I mean, you couldn't take him out on the freeway,
(11:00):
but in an animal speed, that's pretty that's pretty good,
Which leads us to your next area of a scientific argument.
Was this guy warm blooded or cold blooded? Well, if
you're thinking that he's kind of a zippy being and
he's chasing down prey and or even walking long distances
to get out carry on, then then chances are maybe
(11:21):
he wasn't cold blooded, but he was warm blooded. So
just just a little refresher course in case you guys
can't remember this body of the cold blended animals such
like such as a snake or a lizard is is
one that changes with the ambient temperature. So, um, a
lizard is going to be more active when it's warm,
and it's going to be kind of sluggish and I
don't feel like getting out of bed when it's cold,
(11:42):
whereas warm blooded animals such as mammals and birds and
maybe dinosaurs are are active all the time regardless of temperature.
Where this ties into the whole speed issue too, is
it's basically a matter of looking at these bodies, the
body of this dinosaur, and saying how much energy would
it need to run at this speed? And in some
(12:03):
instances the scientists argue that it would that the body
would require more energy than a cold blooded system would
be able to create. Okay, yeah, So then that leads
to people saying, well, dinosaurs were cold blooded, so they
couldn't possibly run that fast, or people saying, uh, the
dinosaurs ran fast, so they have to be warm blooded.
(12:23):
So basically it seems like we have we have to
get to know the t rex a little bit better. Yeah,
and uh, and and also there's you know, we talked
about applying anthropomorphic baggage to dinosaurs earlier. I think part
of that too is when we think of think of
a dinosaur like a t rex is being like a
predator or being a scavenger. We tend to think of
(12:44):
our most iconic modern examples the right or you know,
a vulture or you know something else that runs in
front of your car, you know, to eat a dead possum,
and their nature doesn't always work in such well defined uh.
You know, examples like for instance, takee commodo dragon. This
is a large predator and it is at the top
(13:04):
of its food chain, and it's in its respective ecosystems,
but it's not running down gazelle or anything, you know,
and it's it's not even depending on like that kind
of energy to take its prey. It'll come up to,
say a water buffalo, and will bite it, and then
it'll set around and wait weeks for that water buffalo
to die from the venom, and then once it gets
(13:24):
week we can off. All the other commodo dragons will
come over and they'll feast on it. So that's not
you know, a very iconic view of a predator's role.
And on the other end, scavengers aren't necessarily the skulking,
horrible little creatures in the night that you know, run
from every light. Right if you kind of think of
the whole green movement that's going on today, I mean,
you could regard scavengers as kind of heroic and that
(13:47):
nothing is wasted in nature and everything is eaten. And yeah,
so maybe it's not as much that the t rex
um is losing its appeal to kids, but it's like
it's like an image makeover the t Rex isn't necessarily
the king of the jungle, but hey, look how how
much of a you know, a green ICONI is eating
(14:07):
all that bone and well and and maybe he's a
little bit of both. And in fact, I think that's
what Tracy Wilson was getting at in her article was
the Tyrannosaurus rex a predator or scavenger? And you can
find that article, of course, on how staff Works. But
I mean, maybe the t Rex did have a little
bit of both. Yeah, I for one, I'm still gonna
continue to put t Rex at the top of my
(14:27):
list favorite dinosaur, top of your food chain. Robert, huh,
yeah about you? Do you like the t rex? If
this this has changed your view on him? I think
the t rex is pretty cool. You're still sticking to
that Bronosaurus it doesn't actually exist. I still do like
the purple Bronosaurus a little bit. Ak If Windstones. If
you have questions or you want to tell us about
your favorite dinosaur, she just an email at science stuff
(14:49):
at how staff works dot com and they, meantime check
out some cool articles like our Komodo dragon's mouths deadlier
than Cobra's venom or was Tyrannosaurus rex, a predator or scavenger.
And you can also check got the blogs where you
can read about everything from robot dogs to no tech science,
and you can find that at the homepage and how
stuff works dot com. That's all we got, Thanks for listening.
(15:16):
For more on this and thousands of other topics, is
it how stuff works dot com. Want more how stuff works,
check out our blogs on the house stuff works dot
com home page.
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