page_title: Machairodontinae
section_title: "Belly shearing"
hierarchical_section_title: Machairodontinae / Functionality of the sabers / "Belly shearing"
caption_attribution_description: English: a diagram of a group of feline machairodont Homotherium individuals using the "shearing bite" hpythesis to wound a prey animal. i have no scanner at my disposal, so i used a samsung camera to take a picture of the drawing, created with an ultrafine sharpie and a sheet of standard printing paper. from there it was uploaded, the contrast and brightness modified to be as clear as it was on the sheet origionally, and uploaded here.
context_page_description: Machairodontinae is an extinct subfamily of carnivoran mammals of the family Felidae. They were found in Asia, Africa, North America, South America, and Europe from the Miocene to Pleistocene living from about 16 million until about 11,000 years ago.
  The Machairodontinae contain many of the extinct predators commonly known as "saber-toothed cats", including the famed genus Smilodon, as well as other cats with only minor increases in the size and length of their maxillary canines. The name means "dagger-tooth", from Greek μάχαιρα, dagger. Sometimes, other carnivorous mammals with elongated teeth are also called saber-toothed cats, although they do not belong to the felids. Besides the machairodonts, saber-toothed predators also arose in nimravids, barbourofelids, Machaeroidinae, Hyaenodonta and even in two groups of metatherians.
context_section_description: In 1985, American paleontologist William Akersten suggested the shearing bite. This method of killing is similar to the style of killing seen in hyenas and canines today. A group of machairodonts captured and completely subdued a prey item, holding it still while one from the group bit into the abdominal cavity, pulled back and tore open the body.
  For this technique to work, a specific sequence of motions would have to be followed. First, the animal must be completely subdued, and the predatory machairodonts must be social, so that several individuals can hold the prey animal down. The individual preparing to deliver the killing bite would open its mouth at maximum gape, and with its mandible, press up on the skin of the belly. Creating a depression where the lower canines and incisors press into the skin, a slight fold is created in the skin above the lower teeth as the mandible is shoved upward. Next, the upper canines are pressed into the skin and the muscles of the neck are used to depress the head, so instead of pulling the jaw 'up', the skull is pressed 'down' . When the canines pierce the skin, they are lowered until the gape of the mouth is roughly 45°, where the mandible is pulled up in addition to the skull still being depressed. The small flanges on the anterior portion of the mandible of most machairodonts would be used to aid the depression of the skull. When the animal's mouth is closed, it holds a thick flap of skin between its jaws, behind its canines, and the animal uses the muscles of its lower back and forequarters to pull back, tearing the flap clear of the body. This large gash, once opened, leaves intestines uncovered and arteries and veins torn. The bleeding animal would die within minutes, and the shock of repeated bites, tearing innards from the body, could speed up the process.
  This method allows social machairodonts to inflict large wounds on prey animals. Massive blood loss would ensue, and though bloody, the social group would be able to fend off almost any animal attracted to the area. The bite would not need to be specific, and could be repeated to hasten the death of the animal, and it is already seen in the killing methods of several extant species, such as the spotted hyena. Canines are not as likely to be broken due to the softer nature of the abdomen when compared to the throat and jerking movements are not as amplified in the abdomen as they are in the neck. The abdominal-tearing hypothesis has generally been regarded as highly plausible. In the La Brea tar pits, occurrences of broken canines in Smilodon are rare, and this less risky method might have contributed to this.
  However, a shearing bite may have been problematic for machairodonts for several reasons. Most ungulates are highly sensitive around the belly and hindquarters, and most predators find it much easier to capture and subdue an animal similar to the domestic cow, by manipulating the head and forequarters. By lowering the animal to the ground and placing itself between the pairs of legs, a machairodont would have suffered great risk of being kicked. The power behind such a kick would easily break teeth, a mandible, or a leg, and cripple or kill the cat.
  Sociability might have solved this issue by having one individual deliver the killing bite while others held the animal still. Furthermore, the diameter of the abdomen of a large ungulate such as a bison might have been too large, and the skin too taut, for a machairodont to grasp a flap of skin at all, much less tear it away from the body. A third issue with the shearing bite is that the canines would need to tear a large hole in the belly of the animal to be successful, but might instead simply flay the skin and produce two long slits. This wound may be painful and bleed, but the animal likely would not bleed to death and could still escape and survive, instead of bleeding to death.
  In 2004 an experiment used a pair of mechanical aluminum jaws, cast from the CT scans of a Smilodon fatalis from the La Brea tar pits, to simulate several biting techniques possibly used by 
caption: A diagram of a group of five Homotherium serum restraining an adolescent mammoth on the ground while one individual (marked with an arrow) applies the shearing bite
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