Mary Allen
Saber-tooth cats are cats with particularly long fangs. They died out 11,000 years ago, at a time when humans lived in the Stone Age. The saber cats were related to today’s cats. They are sometimes called “saber-toothed tigers”.
These cats lived almost all over the world, just not in Australia and Antarctica. There were different types of these cats. Today, many people imagine these animals to be very large, but this is only true of some species. Others were no bigger than a leopard.
The saber-toothed cats were predators. They probably also hunted larger animals like mammoths. Around the end of the Ice Age, many large animals became extinct. It could be that it came from humans. In any case, the animals that were hunted by the saber-toothed cats were also missing.
Why were the fangs so long?
It is not known today exactly what the long teeth were for. Possibly this was a sign to show other saber-toothed cats how dangerous they are. Peacocks also have very large, colorful plumage to impress their peers.
Such long teeth may even be a hindrance when hunting. The saber-tooth cats could open their mouths very wide, much wider than today’s cats. Otherwise, they wouldn’t have been able to bite at all. Perhaps the teeth were long enough to allow the cat to bite deeply into the prey’s body.