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I came up with a concept of an animal that "jousts" its prey. Basically, it has a set of very long claws that it uses to stab large prey while rushing at them, before breaking the claw off, similar to the breaking of jousting lances. As it only has six claws, it can only attack six times, but on the flip side it's a matter of whether its prey can survive being hit by what are essentially six keratin spears in vital areas.

It is a feathered maniraptoran dinosaur about 300 kg, with long, easily breakable claws that can be used for stabbing like the Therizinosaurus and also grow back after some time, as well as a crow-like beak that lets it eat both plants and meat (though meat makes up a significant portion of its diet). It also has a long tail, dromaeosaurid-style sickle claws that can be used to anchor or pin smaller prey and good jumping ability, as well as pseudo-flight feathers on its arms for good maneuverability while in the air. It usually hunts large, 1-4 ton hadrosaurs and is in competition with other dromaeosaurs as well as larger therapods. It dwells in a forested region. (Yes, I am aware that this description matches no known groups of dinosaurs. Just roll with it)

Taking into account its physical capabilities as well as its competition, I would like to know how it will deal with the issues that come with temporarily losing all its claws after killing something. This question predominantly focuses on the competition issue - i.e. how does it prevent other predators from stealing its kills. I have no real-world analogues to draw from - the closest I can find are cheetahs, which effectively use up their speed as they have to rest after each kill, but they are not able to defend their kills and are in fact going extinct. Clearly this wasn't always the case, as cheetahs have existed for many millennia, so there must be some way they could defend kills without having their greatest advantage. However, short of building a time machine, I don't know what this method could be.

Reiterating the main question, what behavioural adaptation could an animal that breaks its claws after each hunt use to defend its kill?

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    $\begingroup$ How long does it take for the claws to regrow? If we can assume that it manages to regrow them between each hunt, what stops it from trying to score a kill with 3-4 claws and keep a couple in reserve to make anybody else think twice about butting in? If it fails, it may just be out of luck if another predator comes along. Ultimately, it feels like the answer is up to you. If you make it exhaust its fighting ability during the hunt, it can't defend its kill. If you want it to defend its kill, you need to program some other fighting ability into it. $\endgroup$ Commented Apr 7, 2025 at 14:26
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    $\begingroup$ They wouldn’t evolve claws that break off. Therizinosaurus claws were used for slashing, and breaking off claws would be a massive waste of precious resources. If you must have a jousting animal, makes its claws retractable, like a cats. $\endgroup$ Commented Apr 7, 2025 at 14:35
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    $\begingroup$ It's a bit off-topic, but isn't this remarkably inefficient? Lances, used by cavalry, were long to get past the rider's own horse and, in combat, the intent wasn't necessarily to break. A long enough claw (given the size of the creature involved) to fall into this category would make it hard to gallop, the loss of the claws would change the creature's balance, and it's difficult to believe it would take less than a month (at least) to grow back. Evolution being the way it is, the creature would learn to use other of its attributes and eventually ... (*Continued*) $\endgroup$ Commented Apr 7, 2025 at 16:11
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    $\begingroup$ ... stop using the long claws. Evolution would then whittle them down. But, taking it for what it is (imaginative!), why doesn't the obvious "teeth, really nasty teeth" not solve your problem? $\endgroup$ Commented Apr 7, 2025 at 16:13
  • $\begingroup$ @JBH a dromeosaur-like animal wouldn't have a very good bite, and its not much of a deterrent to a larger predator which presumably has a bigger mouth. $\endgroup$ Commented Apr 7, 2025 at 22:44

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Frame challenge - something has to change

There are a number of problems with the basic scenario - let's run through them one by one:

  1. The reason for the frangible lance is because the 300 kg predator is rushing straight at its 1-4 ton prey that is charging at the predator. This makes no sense from an evolutionary standpoint. Predators, especially solo predators, are cowardly by nature because any injury that makes them unable to hunt is a death sentence. It does not matter if they will win and dance out of the way of the massive prey animal without injury 90% of the time, they cannot afford to take any injury even 10% of the time. (While it was not specified, if they need to charge head-to-head six times, once for each "lance" then the odds are much, much worse.) If the prey animal has zero chance of surviving a charge then it will have evolved a "flight" response rather than a "fight" response (that would negate the need for the predator's claws to break off given the lower relative speed in a chase), while if the predator has any significant chance of getting injured in a charge then it will have evolved an alternative tactic of "don't charge at the animal that masses 3-13 times as much as I do". Which leads to...
  2. A solo predator will not have evolved to hunt prey massing 3-13 times its body weight. It can feed itself far more safely on prey of comparable size to itself, which it can drag to a safe (or at least safer) location to hole up in until its next hunt. A pack hunter may have evolved to hunt a larger animal, but in that case the security issue is trivially solved - the pack members that did not break off their claws provide security until the next hunt.
  3. Charging is not a plausible combat method in a forest region. Without considering exactly what plants coexisted with dinosaurs, assuming that we are talking about a forest as having vegetation comparable to modern trees then the short sight lines and plentiful cover make it ideal for ambush predators. If the predator in question can only attack effectively where there is room both for it to charge and for the prey to notice the attack and charge into the attack... well, the prey will evolve very quickly to stay out of big, unobstructed clearings. At which point the predator will evolve a different hunting pattern.
  4. Having 6 claws that all must be expended every hunt is implausible. Some prey would logically die with only 1-5 claws embedded in them, leaving the predator with remaining primary weapon/s. If 6 is the minimum or even average to score a kill then it means some percentage of the time 6 will be insufficient - at which point the predator will die because it failed to take the prey that would provide the nutrients to grow the replacement claws. Again, this is an evolutionary dead end.

Can this idea work with some changes? Maybe, but it requires a team predator in an non-forested environment, preferably savannah. Some predators spook the prey to start stampeding towards the designated jouster/s, which make the kill. The pack then feeds, with the flanking/spooking predators still fully armed with their claws. There are still problems with how this would evolve - it is hard to justify the food/energy expenditure to re-grow 6 claws after each hunt compared to other attack forms where the claws are re-used - but readers may be willing to suspend disbelief.

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    $\begingroup$ How it would work: The claws aren't for the hunt, the hunt is fairly regular. They are for protecting the catch from other carnivores. Because they will come charging, walking or at least stand still (aka higher relative velocity). Furthermore, the high-risk nature of jousting fighting tells any potential threat to better look elsewhere. Because while the jouster may get injured, the attacker will very likely die. But now the attacker is making the decision and may as well walk away. $\endgroup$ Commented Apr 8, 2025 at 13:51
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    $\begingroup$ @QuestionablePresence Yeah... we don't joust cows. We joust fellow humans $\endgroup$ Commented Apr 9, 2025 at 19:15
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Stanley Claws

Rather than breaking of completely, parts of the claw are still in a certain stage of the growth process where they remain sturdy, so they don't break off. When jousted, the claws snap about 1/2 or 2/3 off while the rest remains to function like a shorter claw. This shorter claw is somewhat more sturdy and can -in emergency- be used to fight off predators.

The animal will sharpen its claws into a point later by scratching stones.

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Frame Challenge: Jousting Lance were deliberately designed to break, so that they wouldn't harm the person they hit. It was a safety measure for friendly tournaments.

(And, as a bonus, made for a visual spectacle with which to wow the crowd)

By contrast, War Lances were designed not to break. They were designed to kill.

If your animal is "jousting" at prey in an attempt to kill and eat them, then why would it have "safety claws" to keep them alive?

The six claws are a redundancy, in case one of them breaks (which would be a bad thing, not the design), and to allow the animal to cycle through and reduce wear on the claws as they heal between uses.

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Müllerian mimicry.

Vocal mimicry is often used by creatures to appear different than they are. Some fake being dangerous, in the case of the burrowing owl, when threatened in its burrow will makes rattling and hissing sounds - just like a rattlesnake.

Müllerian mimicry is a bit different, it's when an already dangerous creature (de-facto yours), mimics another dangerous creature.

Your creature needs to signal over greater distances to prevent scavengers from coming close enough to get the visual. It will mimic the biggest meanest creature that it knows - if a lyrebird can mimic a chainsaw, your creature can make a territorial cry of a {whatever will deter the dyno-hyenas}. Bonus effect if it also emits a smell like the big bad, and spreads that around right after the kill.

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Instead of claws, make it have specialised feather lances.

This allows for a more believable regrowing of the weapons and the animal can keep its claws for normal usage, eating, climbing etc etc

Also, it will have a number of these feather/quills at various states of growth at any given time. If the biggest, lance-worthy, ones are all used up, the smaller ones can be used defensively, or to hunt smaller prey.

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Other Creatures do Steal the Kill

But that's ok.

Cheetahs expend a lot of energy chasing down their prey, so losing their kill is a big deal.

If your dino is an ambush predator, then it doesn't need to expend a lot of energy, and instead it expends keratin which it can recover by eating plants. Plants don't run away. [citation needed]

So the dino spears its prey in an ambush, then follows it at a leisurely pace until it collapses from blood loss. Now it scarfs down as much as it can before a larger predator / scavenger arrives, and when that happens it simply leaves, and the other predator gets whatever is left.

Since the dino is killing a creature ~5x its size without expending a lot of energy chasing it down, it doesn't need to eat the whole kill to be successful.

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  • $\begingroup$ However what is the benefit of killing a large and dangerous creature if you can't eat it in one sitting and also have to give up the leftovers? At that point attacking smaller prey instead seems to have only upsides. The cheetah in comparison also goes for smaller prey, in approximately their own weight class. $\endgroup$ Commented Apr 9, 2025 at 11:48
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Rather than actual claws on the hands/feet of the creature, these "jousting claws" are actually quills, horns, or spurs that grow out of the shoulder or arm, and much like a joust with humans on horses, the "lance" is designed primarily to unhorse the prey. That is, stun or even knock them down, rather than kill them outright. Extra lances normally face backward along the arm with the wing feathers, but once the main lance is broken, the next lance pops forward.

But, like a medieval knight, not all fighting is done with a lance. It's a great weapon for charging, but it's too long and unwieldy to fend anyone off in close combat, and too fragile to use for protection. That's where the sword comes in, or in this case, the real claws. In addition to the lance-spurs, sharp claws on the hands and feet are designed to grab and tear, not merely for feeding, but for killing their prey after they are downed with the lance. Even after breaking off all available lances, the creature is not helpless, and can still fight or even hunt smaller creatures.

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