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Do bear normally live on the prairie? Strikes me as a hard landscape to be a solo ambush predator in (From a really quick Google, looks like bison and bears hav

Do bear normally live on the prairie? Strikes me as a hard landscape to be a solo ambush predator in (From a really quick Google, looks like bison and bears have the same top speed, which implies they'd have to attack from cover, as they're not exactly great coursers like wolves). Especially given that a herd of bison would be more than capable of taking on a bear, like wolves, it would have to isolate an individual to escape unscathed. Also: humans is my other guess - we have a well earned reputation for extirpating predators that compete with us.

zmgsabst 4y ago
You can find both in the same area for mixed areas like Yellowstone, where there’s a blend of grassland, rivers, and forests.
- EdwardDiego 4y ago
  I'd imagine so, but out on the "great bison belt" of grasslands, I'd be expecting far less.
- moloch-hai 4y ago
  From New York to Louisiana were maintained as grasslands for the bison, via controlled burns. When smallpox swept through, trees grew. So many trees, it caused a little ice age for 200 years.
jandrewrogers 4y ago
Canids hunt on the prairie, wolves and coyotes. Bears aren’t usually found there, preferring forested regions though you see them in the boundary areas between forest and grasslands. Pronghorn are stupendously fast — second fastest animal, and they can maintain that speed over long distances — as an evolved defense against very fast predators, like the American Cheetah, which disappeared around the last ice age. Pronghorn tend to follow bison, only feeding after the bison have eaten the tall grass. This greatly reduces predation on pronghorn from ambush predators hiding in the grass; if they can see the predator with sufficient time, they are nearly impossible to run down.
- EdwardDiego 4y ago
  God, evolution is amazing, I love how the pronghorn came to exploit the behavior of bison. And, there was an American cheetah? Welp, down a wikihole I go. Cheers!
- the-printer 4y ago
  I’m asking this in earnest: do you have any information that supports the notion that the behavior of the pronghorn was a result of evolution and not something innately (i.e. immediately) present within the species?
  - jandrewrogers 4y ago
    I am confused by the distinction between “result of evolution” and “something innately present within the species”. To me, these effectively denote the same thing. Pronghorn are interesting animals and an evolutionary isolate. If science is to be believed, their closest living relative is the giraffe. North America used to have a wide range of very impressive predators that all disappeared around the last ice age. There was a strong selection pressure on the herbivores that were the food of these predators. While many of those predators are extinct now — American cheetah, dire wolf, saber-tooth tiger, et al — this has been a very recent change of circumstances in evolutionary terms. To put it another way, bison and pronghorn had apex survival skills in an environment where many capable predators were hunting them at the same time. It is easy to forget that now because the set of top predators in North America has been dramatically reduced over the last several thousand years but these species didn’t evolve in the current environment.
    - the-printer 4y ago
      Thank you for your detailed response. I was under the impression that “evolution” suggests a gradual process or development toward a given attribute as opposed to the sheer presence of the attribute “from the beginning of time”, so to speak.
      - moloch-hai 4y ago

zmgsabst 4y ago

You can find both in the same area for mixed areas like Yellowstone, where there’s a blend of grassland, rivers, and forests.

EdwardDiego 4y ago
I'd imagine so, but out on the "great bison belt" of grasslands, I'd be expecting far less.
moloch-hai 4y ago
From New York to Louisiana were maintained as grasslands for the bison, via controlled burns. When smallpox swept through, trees grew. So many trees, it caused a little ice age for 200 years.

jandrewrogers 4y ago

Canids hunt on the prairie, wolves and coyotes. Bears aren’t usually found there, preferring forested regions though you see them in the boundary areas between forest and grasslands. Pronghorn are stupendously fast — second fastest animal, and they can maintain that speed over long distances — as an evolved defense against very fast predators, like the American Cheetah, which disappeared around the last ice age. Pronghorn tend to follow bison, only feeding after the bison have eaten the tall grass. This greatly reduces predation on pronghorn from ambush predators hiding in the grass; if they can see the predator with sufficient time, they are nearly impossible to run down.

EdwardDiego 4y ago
God, evolution is amazing, I love how the pronghorn came to exploit the behavior of bison. And, there was an American cheetah? Welp, down a wikihole I go. Cheers!
the-printer 4y ago
I’m asking this in earnest: do you have any information that supports the notion that the behavior of the pronghorn was a result of evolution and not something innately (i.e. immediately) present within the species?
- jandrewrogers 4y ago
  I am confused by the distinction between “result of evolution” and “something innately present within the species”. To me, these effectively denote the same thing. Pronghorn are interesting animals and an evolutionary isolate. If science is to be believed, their closest living relative is the giraffe. North America used to have a wide range of very impressive predators that all disappeared around the last ice age. There was a strong selection pressure on the herbivores that were the food of these predators. While many of those predators are extinct now — American cheetah, dire wolf, saber-tooth tiger, et al — this has been a very recent change of circumstances in evolutionary terms. To put it another way, bison and pronghorn had apex survival skills in an environment where many capable predators were hunting them at the same time. It is easy to forget that now because the set of top predators in North America has been dramatically reduced over the last several thousand years but these species didn’t evolve in the current environment.
  - the-printer 4y ago
    Thank you for your detailed response. I was under the impression that “evolution” suggests a gradual process or development toward a given attribute as opposed to the sheer presence of the attribute “from the beginning of time”, so to speak.
    - moloch-hai 4y ago