Parallels between playbacks and Pleistocene tar seeps suggest sociality in an extinct sabretooth cat, Smilodon

This study tested whether Smilodon fatalis was social by treating the Rancho La Brea tar seeps as a fossilized natural experiment. Modern audio playbacks of distressed prey draw social carnivores in far greater numbers than solitary ones, because group-living competitors dominate carcasses. The authors compared the abundance of Smilodon and dire wolves trapped at La Brea against the proportions of social versus solitary carnivores attracted to contemporary African playback experiments. The high representation of these large predators in the asphalt matched the response signature of social, not solitary, species. The work offered a rare behavioural inference about an extinct animal and supported the contentious view that Smilodon hunted or scavenged in cooperative groups, reshaping debates about sabertooth social structure.