Did Sabertooth Tigers Purr or Roar? The Answer May Lie in a Tiny String of Bones
Published:21 Sep.2023 Source:North Carolina State University
When a sabertooth tiger called out, what noise did it make -- a mighty roar or a throaty purr? A new study from North Carolina State University examined the data behind the arguments for each vocalization and found that the answer was more nuanced than they thought -- and that it could depend on the shape of a few small bones. The researchers looked at the hyoid structures of four species of roaring cats: lions, tigers, leopards and jaguars; and five species of purring cats: cougars, cheetahs, caracals, servals and ocelots. They compared these to 105 hyoid bones from the iconic sabertooth tiger Smilodon fatalis.
In fact, the researchers saw more shape variation in the bones closer to the vocal apparatus; i.e., the thyrohyoid and basihyoid bones. The uniformity of the upper bones between the two groups suggests that if the hyoid structure plays a role in vocalization, the lower bones are more important than the upper ones. So having these key hyoid bones shaped like those of purring cats could indicate that they purred rather than roared.
If vocalization is about the number of bones in the hyoid structure, then sabertooths roared. If it's about shape, they might have purred. Due to the fact that the sabertooths have things in common with both groups, there could even be a completely different vocalization. It is perhaps most likely that the size of the hyoids plays a role in the pitch of vocalization. Although Smilodon wasn't quite as big as the largest modern cats, its hyoid bones are substantially larger than those of any of their living relatives, so potentially they had even deeper vocalizations than the largest tigers and lions.