英语听力：2013-05-24 完美捕食 Perfect Predators —10

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If you were to look at Deinonychus in slow motion chasing after a prey³ item, it would look a lot like a big cat today. If the prey item tries to dart⁴ away, it turns even faster, and it’s swinging its tail off to the side and can cut it off and intercept⁵ that prey item as it’s trying to get away. 

 

Put all these together, speed, agility⁶, a powerful sense of smell, and a young Sauroposeidon, even an animal nearly a ton in weight might just be staring death in the face, particularly if there’s more than one Deinonychus in pursuit. 

 

Stalking the Cretaceous are predators⁷ like Tyrannosaurus Rex with jaws⁸ that can bite down with nearly four tons of force, and Deinonychus, sporting claws that could slice straight through flesh. But the prey these carnivores hunt are heavily armed. 

 

Often in reconstructions⁹ of dinosaurs¹⁰, we just see the meat eaters attacking the herbivores, and it’s easy to miss the fact that, in the real world, herbivores fight back. 

 

The plant eater Sauroposeidon defends itself by growing to mammoth¹¹ proportions. This one is a juvenile¹², but it’s almost 6 meters tall, an animal on the edge of adolescence¹³, and an animal on the run.

 

It’s being chased by two raptors. These raptors are known as Deinonychus. These tiny killers¹⁴ work as a team. 

 

Deinonychus wouldn’t weigh much more than a human being. And when they’re attacking things like Sauroposeidon, it would be a big advantage for them to be able to act as a group.

 

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