Tails and Tusks and Teeth, Oh My! | SciShow Kids Compilation

squeaks check out my new toothbrush I got at my visit to the dentist it is a good color and it'll help me keep my teeth healthy I use my teeth to help me take bites of food and chewed up really well so that I can eat it but I have to keep them clean to help my teeth stay strong see oh you're right my teeth do look different from Sam the bats different animals all have different kinds of teeth good for eating different things my teeth help me eat all kinds of people food from apples to grilled cheese sandwiches Sam's teeth are different because many bats eat by catching flying insects out of the air if you'd like to see me catch a flying insect out of the air using my teeth you're going to be waiting a long time now that I think about it I know an animal that had really impressive teeth that probably helped it to catch its food meet Smilodon Smilodon was a group of cats who lived long ago and had giant amazing teeth the name Smilodon even means knife tooth While most of Smilodon teeth were big and pointy like a lions or a Tigers Smilodon are known for their incredibly long top two K9 teeth which could be around 18 cm long that's 7 in of tooth like two bananas sticking out of your mouth yeah their teeth were so big many people call them saber-toothed cats because their teeth remind people of a type of curved sword called a saber and these teeth weren't just for show some paleontologists scientists who study ancient nature think smile aon's teeth also helped them catch their food think about modern day lions or Tigers what do they like to eat you're right squeaks modern lion and tigers are meat eaters or carnivores so they hunt other animals or prey to eat if we look at their teeth we can see that many of them are very sharp and pointy smile aon's teeth look pretty similar perfect for tearing into meat and paleontologists think that their special saber teeth might have helped them as Hunters smile Adon might have pushed an animal down with its paws and then killed it with one big bite from their long can9 teeth Smilodon were likely Ambush Predators who snuck up on their prey and then attacked once they got close so having giant teeth for weapons would have really helped them it's true that these saber teeth were helpful but they did have their downsides the super long K9 teeth could be broken so a Smilodon had to be careful to avoid kicks from prey with strong legs and try to bite only really soft places like a prey animal's belly or neck and having teeth that long could make eating tricky so Smilodon had to have mouths that could open extra wide so that they could actually get bites of food into their mouths past those huge teeth exactly those teeth were helpful but had some problems that came with them those big saber teeth weren't just helpful for these big cats though they also helped paleontologists no paleontologists don't have saber teeth squeaks but teeth are made out of really tough materials that can turn into fossils over time a fossil is a trace left behind by something that lived long ago so Smilodon gave us lots of good traces teeth fossils have helped lots of scientists to learn about life long ago including all about Smilodon and other saber-tooth cats one of the most famous places where paleontologists have found saber-tooth cat fossils is the laa tarpits in California they found fossils from thousands of saber-tooth cats there including lots of teeth in fact one kind of saber-tooth cat called Smilodon falis is now the state fossil of C California by studying the teeth and other fossils of Smilodon people have learned so much about what these animals eat how they hunted and even how they lived together fossils of Smilodon with long broken and healed bones suggest that these cats lived in packs like modern Lions oh how do we know think about it if you broke your teeth and you couldn't eat you might go hungry in unless someone else took care of you so we think Smilodon were sharing food with each other when they couldn't hunt these sound like some pretty amazing cats right squeaks squeaks squeaks whoa oh wow those are some pretty cool gay nines those make some pretty impressive saber teeth squeaks tell you what I'll go find my old toothbrush and maybe I can make some saber teeth of my own he everyone stay low I think there's a terrifying Smilodon in here and they're getting closer if I'm not careful I might find myself devoured by the terrible jaws of a saber-tooth cat no no it's got me what a world what a world all right all right I need a break from playing Sabertooth cats Smilodon teeth really were that big well waa they weren't the biggest teeth ever squeaks they're pretty big but I bet if you think a little bit you might come up with some bigger teeth oh you're right there were some huge dinosaurs but I'm actually thinking about animals living closer to today like elephants elephants belong to a group of animals called probia elephants are the only members of that group alive today but they have many extinct cousins extinct means they're not alive on Earth anymore most of these cousins had Trunks and tusks just like elephants oh good question squeaks tusks are actually teeth that stick out of the animal's mouth when it's closed and tusks are some pretty big teeth but tusks aren't the only teeth elephants and their cousins have some of the cousins that were around back in the Ice Age were pretty interesting looking my favorite was the plat belladon it had a trunk and tusks like modern elephants but its bottom jaw stuck out like a shovel scientists think it may have used its Strang looking mouth to scrape food off of trees and shrubs yeah it is impressive but probably the most famous of the cousins were the mastadons and the mammoths there were actually several different kinds of mammoths and mastadons but they all look a lot like big hairy elephants well at first they do look very similar but if we look carefully we can see some differences we can learn a lot about how animals behaved and where they lived by looking at their bones especially Their Teeth Let's Be detectives and see what Clues we can find about them first I notice both animals have fur what do you think that tells us about where they lived that's right it was cold both mastadons and mammoths lived back when Earth was colder than it is today some parts of the earth were still warm but these animals tended to live in the colder areas and needed fur to keep warm what else do you notice ooh yeah their tusks are different take a look at the shape or stri structure of their tusks the mammoth had longer and more curved tusks while the Mastadon had stockier and straighter tusks what do you think they use them for oh right they did defend themselves from predators with their tusks because there was stuff even more dangerous than saber-tooth cats out there including humans they also probably use their tusks to show off to other animals of their kind like how peacocks strut around with their glorious tails and mammoths may have also used their tusks to push away snow on the ground so they could get at the tasty grass underneath all right that's a great comparison the American Bison does the same thing and they also come from the Ice Age but are still alive today bison have something else in common with mammoths let's find out what it is by looking at their teeth there are three kinds of teeth an animal might have in their mouth each has a different job and US humans have them too there are incizors the teeth in the front we use for grabbing onto food like when we take a bite of an apple then there are canines the pointy teeth on the side of the incizors mine are very small but we already met Sabertooth cats with their huge canines and then there are mullers the teeth in in the back of your mouth that you use for chewing the tusks of mammoths and mastadons are a kind of incizors but we can learn the most about the kinds of foods they ate by looking at their mullers let's compare the mammoth and Mastadon MERS what differences do you notice oh yeah the mammoth had much flatter teeth these teeth are really good at grinding up grasses this is because mammoths were great ERS just like bison or horses they like big Open Fields of grass the Mastadon has much bumpier teeth because they were browsers browsers are like modern day deer or giraffes they eat Twigs branches and Woody material knowing what an animal ate can give us clues about where they lived too the place an animal lives that provides for what they need is called a habitat mammoths usually lived in wide open grasslands and Tundra habitats but browsers like mastadons are better suited for forests and wetlands oh great observation squeaks in this case looking at these animals teeth can tell us where they lived what their habitat was I know let's look at a modern day elephant tooth and see what we can learn these teeth are big and flat yeah like a mammoths but they're not as flat see The Ridges even though their tusks are smaller and they aren't as furry elephants are a lot more like mammoths than mastadons we can tell they tend to graze on things like grass but the riches tell us they can also eat leaves and bark like a browser we can learn so much about animals from today and the prehistoric past just by looking for clues in their bodies they are amazing but now that we've done that it's time for my turn to be the Ferocious Smilodon oh hey squeaks what are you doing oh I see you're looking at a map squeaks has been learning about animals that lived a long time ago creatures like the giant woolly mammoth or the nebor to Smilodon now he's trying to picture the places where they lived a map is a great way to do that squeaks a map shows us pictures of the land all across the Earth we can see the green and brown parts that are land and the blue parts that are water say do you know where the fort is on the map we're here in North America North America is one of Earth's continents continents are Earth's big pieces of land most people say we have seven continents Australia Africa Antarctica Europe Asia North America which we've just seen and South America which is right here oh you're right that skinny piece of land does look kind of like a bridge connecting North America to South America and it kind of is a bridge made of land that skinny little land bridge is one of the reasons that we see all the cool animals we do around the fort like foxes and even mountain lions here let me explain how one tiny piece of land gives us so many cool creatures about 65 million years ago when the dinosaurs went extinct North and South America looked like this they weren't touching and there was no land bridge there were certain animals in North America and other other animals in South America and unless they were really good flyers or swimmers and could cross a lot of ocean that's where they stayed but then things changed a continent is a huge heavy piece of land but it can move oh you'd like to see them have a race to see who's fastest well you'd be watching for quite a while continents move so slowly that you or I would never notice the difference even if we watched our whole lives yeah it is very very slow but very slowly over a very long time changes can happen North and South America moved close enough together for that little land bridge to form and when that happened things began to change in both places animals did what animals will do they moved around looking for things like food and places to live about 3 million years ago some of the animals in North America moved over that skinny piece of land into South America and some animals in South America crossed into North America this switch was so important that scientists gave this movement a name the Great American interchange right an interchange that word just means the animals on the two continents swapped places some went north to south and some went South to North animals that moved from North America to South America included ancient kinds of foxes horses llamas and big cats like Jaguars and pumas Bears moved across the bridge into South America too big ones much bigger than even our biggest bears today when standing on all four legs the short-faced bear was about as tall as an average grownup if they stood up on two legs they were about as tall as an African elephant it would be cool to see one but unfortunately we can't because these huge Bears became extinct that means they died out so they're no longer around today like the dinosaurs or saber-tooth cats oh good question squeaks wants to know how we know these animals existed we know these ancient animals lived in South America because we found fossils of them there fossils are traces left behind by ancient creatures either body parts like bones and teeth or other signs like Footprints and even poop fossils also give us a good idea of what these animals looked like for example they showed us that the snouts on short-faced bears were shorter than the snouts on Bears we see today shorter than on most Bears anyway because one cousin of the short-faced bear still exists and guess where they live that's okay South America these animals called spectacled bears are much smaller than their ancient relatives but they still have a short snout they're probably related to the large short-faced bears that cross the land bridge into South America good question squeaks what about animals that went the other way there were some giant animals that made the trip from South America to here in North America gPad Don were a lot like giant armadillos some kinds were over 4 M long about half the length of a school bus and weighed as much as a rhinoceros they had a hard shell that looked like a turtle shell and other bony parts that acted as armor yeah I can't imagine carrying so much armor around all the time another animal that moved as part of the Great American interchange were the giant sloths I love sloths too they're super adorable with the way they hang upside down and move so slowly the sloths we see today are less than a meter long and spend almost their entire lives in trees but the sloths that moved into North America millions of years ago were about the size of elephants they were too large and too heavy to hang out in trees instead they walked on the ground using their huge claws to knock down branches and dig up roots to eat yes these animals are also extinct about 10,000 years ago they got some new neighbors humans some scientists think that humans might have hunted some of the sloths and glyptodon because they needed food scientists also think that big changes in Earth's temperature and weather made it too hard for some animals to find food and places to live I know I'd like to meet a giant sloth too but at least thanks to fossils we know a little bit about them and it's so amazing that thanks to the super slow movements of continents we got to see all of these animals live in brand new places I have an idea let's look up some museums online and see if any of them have exhibits about giant sloths thanks for joining us if you want to have fun with me squeaks and all our friends you can subscribe to sow kids and we'll see you next time here at the fort

Channel: SciShow Kids

Views: 240,925

Keywords: scishow, scishowkids, Jessi Knudsen, Jessi Knudsen Castaneda, Squeaks, science, kids, children, learning, education, school, sci, show, hank, green, home, curriculum, kindergarten, activities, ice age, pleistocene, mastodon, smilodon, tusks, fossils

Id: wbQMPXcIP60

Length: 19min 49sec (1189 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 22 2024