The Most Stunning Predator | I.E.R. Spec Evo

Ajouté : 2026-05-08

[00:00:00]Wandering through the dense brush of the living cities, foraging for various insectoids and berries and such as you've done for the majority of your life.

[00:00:08]Everything is calm. The wind is almost still, though it travels a static melody of distant creatures. The low hiss of the browsing Ophice occasionally interrupted by small animals rustling in the leaves. Ready to dine, you approach a bush that's home to plump colorful fruits coated in sporadic patches of dew. As you begin to feed, you notice two darker berries deep in the bush.

[00:00:30]They're small and yellow with a large black dot centered on each one, dissimilar to the large red berries you usually encounter on this type of plant.

[00:00:39]You stop what you're doing and analyze them. Maybe looking at them more intensely could jog your memory.

[00:00:44]They disappear for a brief moment.

[00:00:46]Realizing what they are, you jump back cautiously anticipating something to happen.

[00:00:51]The following seconds are so incredibly quiet. Staring at the bush, the world feels still again, but something's off.

[00:00:58]A terrible cascade of loud rattling hisses and deafening squeals come crashing out of the bush succeeded by a bright flash of yellow. Before you know how to respond, you are assaulted by a multitude of tiny knives ripping at your flesh taking your life with it.

[00:01:13]Above your vacant corpse stands the Tyaranazek, an undeniably stunning beast.

[00:01:20]Hello and welcome back or welcome to my world, IER.

[00:01:25]IER is a world that takes place on our Earth long after it has been abandoned by humans. The extinction event left in their wake has decimated the majority of endothermic, meaning warm-blooded, life forms. Rising from their ashes were non-avian reptiles, a large group of animals destined to take back their role as the dominant terrestrial animals after the fiendish mammals overstayed their welcome. In this series, I plan to describe species of this world to you, dear viewer, while teaching you cool ecological and evolutionary processes.

[00:01:53]Also, I provide supplemental speed paints in case that really tickles your fancy. Believe it or not, the animal we're talking about today is the Tyaranazek, which is the species I named dropped earlier. The point of view animal that was brutalized in that Shakespearean, possibly Lovecraftian, introduction was the Servosaurus, which is already described in this video on screen now.

[00:02:15]Also, did you know HP Lovecraft was incredibly racist and xenophobic? The Tyaranazek is a medium-sized predator that is distributed across much of the American landmass being most abundant in regions with dense foliage. It's a bipedal animal walking on its two hind legs saving its powerful hands for grappling and dispatching prey items.

[00:02:32]The head emphasizes this being wider and more blunt built for a deadly grip to take prey from 100 to 0 as quickly as possible.

[00:02:41]>> [music] >> Behind the head is a frill, kind of like a mane or headdress except with the movement of the lower jaw it can expand and contract opening and closing in sync with the mouth much like the >> [sighs and gasps] >> Jurassic Park Dilophosaurus, but they do share common roots, kind of. Other than being a very poor interpretation of Dilophosaurus, one of the Jurassic Park Dilophosaurus's characteristics, the frill, was a trait from another reptile, the Chlamydosaurus kingii, which was not a dinosaur even though saurus is in the name. Actually, saurus means lizard. Do you know that lizards aren't dinosaurs?

[00:03:16]Yeah. Real really love scientific naming. Anyways, this species that the Tyaranazek derives from is the Chlamydosaurus kingii. So, let's talk ancestry and history. As I just mentioned, the Tyaranazek is an evolved form of the Chlamydosaurus kingii, the frilled neck lizard. Now, there are a couple of basic things you should know about this species. One, it's a carnivore. The Chlamydosaurus's main source of food is insects, [music] though it does still dabble in the occasional vertebrate. Two, the Chlamydosaurus's frill is a defensive structure used almost entirely as a threat display to discourage predators or rivals by making itself look larger.

[00:03:57]Three, Chlamydosaurus are great at dealing with heat partially due to the frill. Four, Chlamydosaurus live in Oceania, specifically northern Australia, southeast Indonesia, and Papua New Guinea. Finally, five, their name is pronounced uh Chlamydosaurus, not Chlamydosaurus, but I assume Chlamydosaurus might hold your attention a bit longer.

[00:04:19]Chlamydia, you know, funny funny insert joke about a STI. [clears throat] Now, one of these facts might grab your attention. If you remember what I said earlier when talking about the Tyaranazek, you might have heard me say that the Tyara lives in America. A few sentences later, I said that the species that the Tyara evolves from, the Chlamydosaurus, is native to Oceania.

[00:04:42]Somewhere that is at least 7,000 miles away from North America. Now, if I had a nickel for every time a species of mine exists [music] in a region incredibly far from its ancestral species' native range, I'd have more than one nickel. Now, if I had another nickel for each great and convenient explanation for them being so far from their native range beyond where they could have reasonably or naturally have traveled, I would have double that amount of nickels. So, you know where this is going.

[00:05:10]How did the frilled lizards get to North America?

[00:05:13]Aside from the large number of exports for pets, for which I cannot find an exact number, one source tells me 79 over 10 years and another says 40,000 across 22 years, which lead to two very different responses.

[00:05:28]American farmers began using frilled lizards as pest control. As each passing year got hotter and hotter, Earth would see a decline in many endothermic, meaning warm-blooded, species including those like barn owls and cats, common animals that farmers used for dealing with small rodents and similar. Though the drop in barn owls could also be attributed to the decrease in suitable nesting spots, but yeah that's a story for another day. Also, yes, there would generally be a natural decrease in the endothermic pest population caused directly by the heat, which would also lead to a decrease in predators. Yeah yeah yeah that. Still, insects and some small mammals would remain. Farmers would need to find a new and innovative way to deal with those pests. Enter predatory reptiles. Unlike the pitted shud mammals and birds, the absolute alphas of clade Squamata, yes, I did write that sentence, throughout generally thrive in hot conditions that formerly cool or mild regions of the mid-latitudes would transition to much better than would endothermic species of mammal and predatory bird, which both make their own body heat but still need to cope with the heat surrounding them.

[00:06:35]They need to hunt to actually maintain their incredibly quick metabolisms while simultaneously not dying from heatstroke. To get the point across, let's look at the numbers. I went to my dear web browser and asked, "Hello my dear clanker, would you like to tell me how many rodent/birds a cat hunts per day?" I got [music] two very different answers. One tells me that they consume one mouse every 17 hours and the other said they eat roughly 12 a day.

[00:07:00]Personally, I believe the latter, but I decided that maybe I'll just crunch the numbers myself to figure out how many animals a feral cat actually needs to eat per day. According to a paper on the National Library of Medicine entitled Body Size and Bite Force of Stray and Feral Cats, Are Bigger or Older Cats Taking the Largest or More Difficult to Handle Prey? The average body mass of feral rural cats, which are cats that were not fed by humans, was [music] 6.7 kg or 14.7 lb. Plugging this number into a calculator on petobesityprevention.org, called the Cat Calorie Calculator, and selecting the moderately active lifestyle instead of the indoor option, [music] it tells me that a that a cat of 6.7 kg should eat roughly 420 to 510 kilocalories [music] a day, which is the same kilocalories as like what we see [music] on our like food labels. Like, I'll be using the average of these two numbers to base the daily average amount of feral cat would need to eat. And that comes out to 465 calories. The Pleasant Hill Animal Hospital says that [music] the average mouse is about 30 to 35 calories.

[00:08:11]465 calories divided by 32.5, which is the mean of 30 and 35, comes out to about 14.3 [music] mice. So, 14 mice per day and like throw in the limbs of another.

[00:08:25]Now, on the other hand, if we look at the frilled lizard, according to these [music] Spurs Pets, which is apparently a highly regarded uh pet veterinarian website, frilled lizards need to eat like 20 [music] crickets a day, which might sound like a lot but is equivalent to like one calorie a piece totaling 20 calories, which is almost 24 times less than the daily food requirement for cats. Also, just to note, they can deal with the annual fires by climbing above them.

[00:08:55]So, yeah. Also, they're ambush predators.

[00:08:59]All this is to say that cats and other endothermic animals would have a pretty hard time sustaining themselves as the heat rises [music] and prey become more scarce.

[00:09:09]So, farmers use reptiles, animals that can weather the heat, don't need to eat as much, and are able to tackle insectoid pest populations. [music] A variety of foreign reptiles [snorts] would become a common sight on farmlands with the species that concerns us, the frilled lizard, being most common among orchards and bamboo farms as they're great with dealing with insects [music] and do enjoy climbing.

[00:09:31]Farmers also like to utilize them because of their frills. It helps scare off larger pests like squirrels [music] and related. Also, I'm not really sure anyone really taught these farmers any lessons in herpetology because they made some rather questionable decisions. One being is that multiple farmers incredibly overstocked their farms with reptiles, which [music] led to behavioral issues because some species weren't being as productive as the marketers implied. That's a story for another day. Anyways, skipping forward sometime, boom, human abandonment event happens leading leaving these frilled lizards to grow their large wild breeding populations.

[00:10:05]Their frills make them incredibly intimidating to similar and smaller sized animals and [music] allow them to sometimes fend off larger animals they'd regularly be subordinate to by simply using their frill display. The American population of frilled lizards, Chlamydosaurus kingii americanus, very creative I know, gives rise to the clade Chlamydosaurids, which contains every extant animal thought to have evolved from the American population of Chlamydosaurus kingii.

[00:10:30]Many members of this group aren't as arboreal as their ancestors. They don't need to hide from predatory birds in trees and a more terrestrial based lifestyle allows for larger sizes. One of the groups that belong to this clade are the Chlamydauropodines.

[00:10:44]The Chlamydosaurids that evolved to be primarily [music] bipeds in their own fun little way of warm-bloodedness.

[00:10:49]Their frontal limbs have become smaller and depending on the species have either shrunk or become a prey dispatch tool.

[00:10:55]>> [music] >> The Tyranizek follows the latter.

[00:10:59]Just past the two and a half page mark and we're finally talking about the species. Tyranizek, wow, how fun.

[00:11:06]So, here is the character sheet we are working with today.

[00:11:09]I was thinking about remaking it, but nothing too extreme about the design would change, only like the layout cuz between you and me, I'm not the happiest with it, but I've got deadlines to make, so here we are. Also, of course, Twitter in your style post, which I will not be doing for the next one.

[00:11:28]So, here are all your guys's really cool Twitter creations. I'm very thankful as per usual. Thank you guys. Thank you.

[00:11:34]Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank [music] you. Anyways, I think the best flow of information would be if I started with where it lives and its preferred environment.

[00:11:43]As previously established, the Tyranizek lives in what we now know as North America, but subspecies can be found throughout the entire American continent, including South America, being most prevalent in densely forested areas. Some common examples are the cores of living cities, the Hyreans.

[00:12:00]This is a large broadly forest that expands roughly across the same area our real world Appalachia is. The Sellerwi Jungle, a jungle in Southeast North America, and maybe even some in the Grill Shrublands that spans portions of the interior of North America.

[00:12:17]But wait, that's a lot of names to remember. A lot of names I've never even mentioned and that basically mean nothing to you. Here's a simpler understanding. Generally, the Tyra thrive in any forested area that provides at least low to medium growing foliage that obscures the Tyra's bodies while it hunts. Typically, the more open an area is, the less likely you are to encounter one, but it's still not impossible. It would be untrue to say that the Tyra can't functionally hunt in more open environments. While you're not going to find one of these in the desert or on some open plain, as mentioned earlier, there's a chance you'll come across one wandering a shrubland.

[00:12:50]>> [music] >> While their hunting success rates are generally lower in shrublands in comparison to denser forests, they're not low enough to justify the complete abandonment of hunting there, especially since they're so abundant with perfectly sized snacks and detecting said prey is usually a lot easier when there are fewer obstructions. The thickets of shrublands usually serve as great places to hide and wait for a prey item to stumble on by, similar to how a crocodile waits at a shoreline. [music] However, actually sneaking up on a feasible prey item unnoticed in such an environment can be tricky.

[00:13:21]This is, of course, why they prefer dense forests as they greatly accommodate the Tyra's hunting style.

[00:13:26]But that's not the only reason. Not only do they greatly accommodate their hunting style, but dense forests also hinder competition from larger carnivores.

[00:13:35]Relatively large carnivores generally don't inhabit incredibly dense forests like jungles and rainforests. This little factoid can be a bit more difficult to notice in the modern day given megafaunal carnivore size and distribution are at the lowest they've been in a long time, but you can still see the patterns if you look hard enough. There are two primary reasons I can think of for why this is. The first simply being that the foliage and terrain might be too difficult to efficiently travel through or effectively hunt in. The second is that in forests with incredibly dense foliage, food is sparse.

[00:14:06]That sounds wrong. Surely a denser forest would imply a larger bulk of plant matter, which would sustain a larger population of herbivores, which in turn would sustain a larger population of large carnivores, right?

[00:14:18]Wrong. That is not how it works.

[00:14:20]>> [music] >> Let's look at the Amazon rainforest, probably one of the best examples of a dense forest. For context, the Amazon rainforest is the densest and most biodiverse forest in the modern [music] world. Also, it's in Brazil, a tropical region and is apparently home to about 10% of all extant animal and plant species.

[00:14:39]Yet, if we look at the largest endothermic predator of the region, the jaguar, while it is heavily built, it does not come close to the size of the largest endothermic predators in other regions of the world like polar bears, [music] Siberian tigers, and lions. This is because of prey availability. The regions that the previously listed live in are much more open and allow the existence of larger groups of herbivores.

[00:15:03]In dense and fast-growing forests, maintaining a large size or large group as a herbivore is difficult. One small reason is the aforementioned traversal thing. It's a lot easier to get around and away from predators if you stay small and nimble compared to being large and restricted, but also because many of the plants around you are trying to hurt you or are just generally low quality in nutrients. Tropical forests are able to get so dense due to their climate facilitating incredibly fast plant growth and because of this, plants have to deal with a lot of competition, be [music] it from plants or herbivores, and since there are so many plants growing so incredibly quickly, the ones that become most successful are usually those that can adapt the fastest, >> [music] >> usually utilizing bizarre defense mechanisms or incredible efficiency to grow in poor soil. Some examples of these >> [music] >> plant defense mechanisms are incredibly sharp thorns or quills, chemical warfare, or just [music] plain old poison.

[00:16:00]The fast growth and abundance of plants have also caused the soil to be very low quality and that is reflected in the plant matter. This requires that large herbivores in the region can to consume much higher quantities of plant matters as nutrients aren't very saturated.

[00:16:15]>> [music] >> As you might imagine, high quantities of plant matter are hard to come by due to so much of it being either imbued with toxins or covered in spice. [music] These factors make being a large herbivore very difficult with many species favoring smaller body size and specialization with a small subset of herbivores opting for a generalist lifestyle.

[00:16:33]These generalists can achieve greater sizes than specialists. As well, food is of lower quality, it is more abundant, but these herbivores, like the tapir, are still relatively small by biggest herbivore in ecosystem standards and live almost completely solitary lives.

[00:16:50]This is reflected in the size of the jaguar being limited to feasting on relatively small animals that live relatively solitary lives, which finally brings you back to the point of this whole side tangent, which [music] is that dense tropical forests, like the ones that the Tyra live in, generally struggle in supporting large populations of large carnivores as they don't supply enough food and are difficult for huge animals to traverse and therefore, [music] the Tyra would face less competition from larger predators in such a region, which is [music] a reason as to why they prefer it.

[00:17:21]But do not forget the other reason of accommodating their hunting style, which we should probably talk about, but before we do, I want to address the 400-lb lizard in the room.

[00:17:31]What about the carnivorous reptiles?

[00:17:34]The green anaconda holds the record of being the largest living squamates [music] with the largest recorded weighing more than 225 kg or over 500 lb. There's also the black caiman. It's the largest living alligatorid and reaches sizes of about 350 kg or 770 lb. [music] Does this not fly in the face of everything I just talked about with dense jungles not being able to support large carnivores? This is clear evidence of notably large predators existing in the Amazon.

[00:18:05]Well, dear viewer, there was a reason I specified endothermic earlier. Both the anaconda and black caiman are cold-blooded ectothermic, meaning they require a lot less energy to function as they aren't constantly needing food to sustain constant body heat production and therefore require a lot less food.

[00:18:24]For example, an adult anaconda only needs to eat maybe four or five big meals in a year.

[00:18:31]On some occasions, only one or two. They can simply consume something as large as a capybara or caiman and spend literal months sustaining themselves on that one meal given their metabolisms are so slow. Caimans are similar, but to a lesser extent. They eat once or twice a week, but can go months without food if needed. They also have pretty ample access to large fish populations to sustain themselves.

[00:18:55]Jaguars, on the other hand, can't go long without food and can starve within two to three weeks, preferably making a kill at least every three days. The existence of these large carnivorous reptiles do not tear down my argument that large endothermic animals struggle in dense forests at all. It actually reinforces it. It suggests that the best strategy for being a large animal in a dense rainforest, like the Amazon, is to have a slow metabolism so you can suffice yourself off of the limited resources. Actually, there's one more important thing to note.

[00:19:26]I I swear this is the end, but I I feel like there might be someone in the comments, so I'm going to address this so I don't have to respond to them.

[00:19:34]During the most recent glacial ice age, the modern day Amazon region was inhabited by multi-ton ground sloths and Smilodons, which goes against what I've been saying. Looking closer, however, you'll notice that the modern Amazon looks a lot different from it did even 10,000 to 20,000 years ago.

[00:19:52]The Earth was cooler and drier with the Amazon resembling clusters of savannas or open woodlands. The jungle regions were not as dense as they were today.

[00:20:01]Colder temperatures wouldn't have promoted as much plant growth, but would have promoted larger body sizes resulting in more open areas for larger animals to exist in.

[00:20:10]And I don't I don't know if this is a good assumption to make, but probably higher quality greenery because there's not as much density in the greenery growing, but that that could just I could just be making that up. So, take that with a take that part in specifically for a grain of salt. There's actually a name for one of these two things.

[00:20:29]Bergmann's rule. It's an evolutionary principle that states in colder areas body sizes are generally larger to conserve heat.

[00:20:38]As time moved on and approached the modern age, the world got hotter, the Amazon grew tremendously, and its forest got denser.

[00:20:45]Now, this is unfavorable for a large beast like the Megatherium. And actually, there is a solid argument that the species of that size would have gone extinct in the Amazon even if there was no human influence. Just simply an extinction caused by the environment shifting to be warmer and more dense.

[00:21:00]Well, it would have gone extinct or would have gotten much smaller.

[00:21:04]That's a better way to state that. But, I think you have the idea. The Tiara benefits from living in dense forests because they would not face much competition from larger endothermic predators and it benefits their hunting style.

[00:21:18]Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.

[00:21:21]Let's finally move on.

[00:21:24]Now, the natural flow of information coming off of where the Tiara lives and hunts is obviously how it hunts. But, before we get there, I do think there is something I think is important to mention.

[00:21:35]The Tiara's bipedalness.

[00:21:37]In the introduction to my videos, when I say something along the lines of "This is speculative, but I'm forgoing some evolutionary rules." What I'm typically referring to is the evolution of an erect hip posture evolving in so many different families. Currently known in the real world, the components for upright posture have evolved three times. This being in mammals, dinosaurs, and pseudosuchians.

[00:21:59]Though pseudosuchians are a bit strange and happen to change their stance quite often throughout their evolutionary history. In my world, after the Holocene extinction event, it would make more sense for maybe one or two lineages or if two to develop an erect posture and endothermy and then dominate the other clades and diversify.

[00:22:18]But, that's boring.

[00:22:20]I want more as I also say as following that, I want more >> [music] >> um what's the word?

[00:22:27]Ancestral diversity.

[00:22:30]But, all of that is to say I find the evolution of bipedal frilled lizards not that shocking.

[00:22:36]When it comes to evolving an erect posture, there are usually three huge hindrances that lizards would have to overcome.

[00:22:43]Weak hips, carrier's constraint, and ectothermy. The frilled lizard, however, only has to overcome one of these things. See, frilled lizards are facultative bipeds already, meaning they shift between walking on four legs and two.

[00:22:57]By the way, you might have heard the term facultative bipeds when referring to hadrosaurs or chimpanzees, and it's the same idea.

[00:23:04]When running, the frilled lizard rears up and runs bipedally, having quite strong hips for a lizard and not being held back by carrier's constraint as their spine doesn't need to do the left-right lizard flail, rather held straight while the hind limbs do all the running work, meaning it can breathe while it runs.

[00:23:22]Now, the only big thing that the frilled lizard needs to overcome is developing endothermy, which as you can guess, the frilled lizard did. Hunting, hunting, hunting. How does the Tiara hunt? We are finally here. When talking about predator hunting styles, you can generally place them on a spectrum of ambush to cursorial.

[00:23:42]Ambush predators are those that utilize quick striking attacks to take down prey as quickly as possible, i.e. crocodiles, while cursorial predators are those who use endurance to run down or wear out prey items, i.e. wolves.

[00:23:55]Now, note that this is a spectrum and many predators possess qualities of both ambush and cursorial hunting styles.

[00:24:03]Now, this opens the obvious question.

[00:24:06]Where does the Tiara fall on the spectrum?

[00:24:09]Well, the Tiara is an almost complete ambush hunter, relying on a burst of speed and power to grab and finish a prey item at an instant. They hunt along game trails, hiding in nearby foliage waiting for a Servosaurus-sized prey item to stumble on by and then striking, similar to a leopard.

[00:24:30]For the Tiara, this seems to be the most effective strategy when hunting in an area with low density and low visibility.

[00:24:36]>> [music] >> I would like to speak more in depth on their hunting, but first there's like the seventh "but first" you've heard in this video. I'm just going to list off some adaptations that the Tiara has for its hunting style. I think it communicates the point more clearly as the current writing I have, where I do both explain and introduce the adaptations at once, is both repetitive and slightly confusing.

[00:24:57]And I can't find a great way to mend it.

[00:24:59]Here are some notable adaptations that help the Tiara facilitate prey capture.

[00:25:04]Relatively short, but compact and muscular legs. Powerful arms, hands, and claws. A short, but broad snout with a frontal conical fangs that project slightly backwards. Serrated hind teeth.

[00:25:16]Forward-facing eyes, and of course, the frill. These adaptations are key for the animal to grab and keep hold of a prey item to prevent escape as the Tiara is not built well for sustained running.

[00:25:28]Its short legs hinder its speed and its short snout hinder its endurance.

[00:25:32]As I mentioned previously, the Tiara is a firm believer in the sit-and-wait hunting philosophy.

[00:25:38]Why wander aimlessly when you could wait for a prey item to come to you? It hides in the brush alongside game trails waiting for the arrival of a suitable prey item.

[00:25:47]Generally, the Tiara aren't picky eaters and will eat anything they can overpower, usually Servosaurus-sized or smaller. In some cases, they will even try younger Ophites or Iguaniformes.

[00:25:59]Inside the brush, the predator lies motionless. Though it is [music] perched to strike at a moment's notice, keeping watchful eyes staring intently forward awaiting a suitable prey item.

[00:26:10]Once detected, [music] it will wait until the prey item is at the perfect angle and then attack.

[00:26:17]>> [music] >> What is this perfect angle of attack, you may ask?

[00:26:20]It's the front.

[00:26:22]The Tiara takes its prey head-on, which is kind of strange. In the frilled lizard, the frill opening mechanism is linked directly with the jaw opening mechanism, meaning if the jaw opens, the frill does too. If the jaw closes, the frill folds. In frilled lizards, the tool is used to intimidate threats and win over the ladies.

[00:26:42]>> [music] >> Please stick with me. This is tying back to the point. I just need like five more sentences.

[00:26:47]It dramatically increases the perceived size of the animal, making it much more frightening. Another benefit of the frill is that it increases the animal's surface area while being thin and not adding too much weight. Great for thermoregulation.

[00:26:59]As the species evolved, the frill would stick around as an incredibly important tool in most aspects of the animal's life.

[00:27:05]In the Tiara's case, it would become it would become a tool incredibly handy while hunting.

[00:27:11]Upon leaping out of the brush at a prey item, the Tiara will let out a bloodcurdling scream and open its frill, flashing the prey item with bright yellow and loud noises. Now, in most cases, a predator wants to be as discreet as possible before launching an attack on a prey item to catch them off guard.

[00:27:27]Able to get that attack in without being detected.

[00:27:30]>> [music] >> Commonly attacking from behind to avoid getting shoved or stabbed by the head.

[00:27:35]Not the Tiara, though. The Tiara is still discreet leading up to the ambush, but once that ambush does happen, the goal is to seem too big and too loud to [music] either startle the prey item so it tries to run instead of fighting back, in which case the Tiara will quickly grab the prey item as the prey item would need to take a 180 and shift directions to run away quickly or startle the prey item to the point they become frozen in fear, something the Servosaurus is susceptible to due to its ancestry. [music] The hook-like claws and conical fangs make grabbing and holding prey items pretty easy. Once grabbed, the Tiara will try its best to either break something with its powerful neck and arms or strangle its prey by squeezing its neck around its jaws.

[00:28:18]In either case, the goal is to immobilize the prey as fast as possible to prevent retaliation.

[00:28:23]If the Tiara loses hold of the prey item or just doesn't grapple it all together, the Tiara will likely not pursue it.

[00:28:31]Unless the prey item is incredibly immobilized from the scuffle, chasing it would be futile. The Tiara would not be able to keep up with it in speed or in endurance. So, any attempts to follow it would be a waste of energy. Instead, the Tiara would return to its ambush perch or locate a new one.

[00:28:47]The frill is also useful following the hunt. Good for scaring off predators interested in taking your food.

[00:28:54]Now, the frill is also useful in social function.

[00:28:57]Let's talk about it. Now, generally, the Tiara are not social animals. They are highly territorial and generally do not tolerate each other. They especially don't take lightly to other individuals treading on their hunting grounds.

[00:29:09]>> [music] >> Prey is limited enough, there's no reason to lose resources by sharing with your neighbors.

[00:29:14]Most Tiara-on-Tiara conflicts result in a lot of frill flashing and screaming.

[00:29:18]>> [music] >> That's about it.

[00:29:20]When it comes to physically throwing hands, usually the initiator wins.

[00:29:25]Neither Tiara wants to sustain injuries as that could impair their hunting.

[00:29:29]But, if your enemy gets to the point they're willing to risk injury, it's probably safer to just back down and leave.

[00:29:36]Besides, there are greener pastures on the other side of the fence or something.

[00:29:39]There's also, of course, the sexual display part of the frill. Sexual dimorphism isn't really prevalent in the Tiara. Both males and females look about the same. The key difference is mainly in size, males being slightly larger than females.

[00:29:53]Other than that, as a human, it would be nearly impossible to tell them apart, likely due to the importance that the pattern plays in hunting being greater than a different pattern looking more attractive.

[00:30:04]Despite this, the frill does play an important role in the mating ritual utilized by the male in the dance that consists of a lot of head bobbing to display his size and health.

[00:30:15]The species breeds in the early parts of the years for children to hatch in the middle.

[00:30:20]That's about all the care that goes into their children, though.

[00:30:23]They're born into a world equipped to deal with its challenges, feeding on insects while they're young and gradually eating larger prey as they advance in age.

[00:30:32]Also, young tayra are capable of climbing to escape possible predators.

[00:30:37]So, that's just peachy.

[00:30:39]From birth, full maturation takes about 3 to 4 years. Much of that time is spent scurrying around the forest floor to become skilled at maneuvering in high foliage density areas.

[00:30:50]Period. Thank you.

[00:30:52]Come again.

[00:30:54]Okay, now here I'm throwing in the fan art. Now, um [music] while I do that, I'm going to talk about my current state.

[00:31:01]I had spent four uh I think I was either three or four days just like completely get home from school, don't work on this at all, sc- scram for my SAT, spend like three or four days doing that.

[00:31:16]So, that took away a lot of time that I would usually devote to this.

[00:31:19]And then I've also just had been piled with homework on top of homework on top of homework. So, I've been trying my hardest to get this out Friday, but Friday is in What is it? Friday's in like 5 days from right now.

[00:31:37]And all of those days are school days.

[00:31:40]And I have two full drawings that I need to complete within that time span and complete video to put together. So, I'm going to try my hardest. If I'm not, I'm sorry.

[00:31:50]But, I hope you enjoyed.

[00:31:53]Thank you. I'm also sick right now. If I sound funny, that's why. I am sick again. I cannot beat sick. That It's got to be some kind of chronic illness at this point.

[00:32:03]Okay, bye-bye.