An animal that puts its prey to sleep
Hunting is dangerous; even for the predator, hunting can result in death. There have been countless example where a predator was killed by what was supposed to be prey. Animals have evolved many ways to combat this; from a cat's pouch, to a wolf's pack, to a bear's size. Another idea that to my knowledge does not exist is putting prey to sleep.
Could a predator that uses heavy amounts of pheromones as sleeping gas exist? What would the evolution of such a creature be?
This post was sourced from https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/q/50626. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
1 answer
Check out the cone snail.
Cone snails like to stupefy their victims (see also Safavi-Hemami et al. (2014)) by either
- Using an extremely fast "harpoon" with venom to stab their prey.
- Releasing a small cloud of dense insulin to daze their prey, which is used for slower-moving animals. The cloud may then kill the prey. This isn't used quite as often, but it's still possible.
Note that cone snails are aquatic, and so the cloud forms and spreads underwater. However, I see no reason to believe that a) this couldn't be used in the air, and b) a larger terrestrial creature couldn't evolve to use it.
The tobacco hornworm also releases a cloud of gas into the air (see also Kumar et al. (2013)), but it's used as a defense mechanism against predators, and it can kill the predators, rather than put them to sleep. However, it shows that clouds of gases can be released in the air and have potent effects against enemies; a predator could use the same mechanism as the tobacco hornworm.
0 comment threads
0 comment threads