CARNIVOROUS APES?

Carnivores are crucial to most ecosystems, but these roles are usually filled by animals other than primates. How would a great ape adapt to fill this niche?

The tarsier is, as far as I'm aware, the only fully carnivorous primate. That doesn't stop great apes from being terrifying.

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[Alien_Evolution]

I didn't have any any music in this video. Let me know if you prefer my vids with music or if this was better. And would you like to see more videos like this? Which animal should it be next?

[jgr]

Carnivores usually are intelligent, but not as intelligent as chimps. These hunters would be terrifying.

[bal]

A video on how a sophont crow could evolve would be cool

[tanagerbirds]

lots of ideas on turning herbivores into carnivores, but what about the other way around? a herbivore bear that turns into a bison-like animal? a herbivore cheetah that fills the role of the antelope its ancestors chased? any apex predator as 'giant armored herbivore' like a charging bull or stomping elephant.

[natanmarinho]

In the first type of hunting I realised that humans are very likely to fill this niche,
We are one of best long term runners of animals
We have long legs
Social hability to form packs
Our bipedalism demand less energy than the other apes

We are the predator ape (tam tam taaaam)

[SpecEvoGuy]

2:00 _Lycaenopithecus carnifex_ ("Butcher wolf ape")
3:00 _Teratopithecus populator_ ("Ravager monster ape")

[PillocksAnimationCentre]

Be honest, AE, you denied bipedal chimps because you didn’t want any Planet Of The Apes references in the comments, didn’t you?

[Daisythepage]

This video made me realize how weird of a predator humans are.
Like imagine you’re like an average sized ungulate and you see this weird bald thing that’s just kinda walking towards you with a long stick.
You run and get far away enough to where you think your safe. But then you realize, it’s back, it followed you.
You continue this cycle until you’re exhausted but the humans are fine, they’re still following you, and there’s more of them now.
You continue running, until you literally can’t run anymore and you’re impaled with sticks that the humans threw are you when they were in range.
we sound like the terminator or something, no wonder animals that evolved alongside humans run from human noise more than lion hunting calls.

[JLAvey]

That would be us. Of all the living apes, I'd say sapiens eat the highest percentage of meat. Crickey, we look over entire herds of animals for the purpose of food production.

[viniciuspaiva]

A video from Unnatural History Channel pointed out that a real murder monkey would be something like the Camouflage Beast from Primeval, except for the camouflage

[LotBFOC]

1:39 - Carnopan vulpavus
3:03 - Tyrannogorilla giganteus

[ParallaxMotive]

An idea I had was for an omnivorous baboon that occupies a niche similar to elephants, where it uses a prehensile tail instead of a trunk to grab objects while being large enough to deter predators. I also imagined it would evolve to use its hands more to grab the jaw of a crocodiles that try to attack them at water holes and keep it shut, since crocodile jaws don’t have very much opening power.

[stewartgames]

I can see trap making being a big part of an ambush predator ape's arsenal. All great apes already build primitive tree houses out of leaves and sticks, I can see them chewing pointy sticks and building walls full of spikes to chase prey into. Shrikes, a carnivorous bird species, use thorns in a similar way, to stab their prey to death with.

[Gandalf-The-Green]

Since chimps already use tools, I imagine a shortcut to carnivory could be using more and better tools. Like building walls out of branches between trees and driving prey into these. Sticks and rocks for clubbing deer over the head, which eventually leads to primitive spears. Throwing sticks to hunt birds and small monkeys. Primitive fish traps. Maybe the selective pressure for chimps to get more meat would lead to bigger brains and more dexterous hands long before their bodies could adapt for endurance hunting.

[malachimorey]

I honestly think carnivorous chimps’ hunting techniques would revolve around the treetops and canopies, such as the ambush hunters gaining more mass and muscle to make ambushing from above in the branches a very viable strategy, while the pursuit hunters could probably evolve longer and stronger limbs like spider monkeys in order to swing through vines and branches, using gravity and momentum in order to maintain speed without spending as much stamina.

[Shayne]

The carnivore chimps look really cool 😊

[FrogOnAHorse]

It honestly surprises me that you didn't use the fact that chimps are very agile in the trees as a potential option for where they could ambush from but more so just went with the basic options for each choice.

They're just as arboreal as they are terrestrial, so it wouldn't be unreasonable for a potential evolution for a carnivorous chimp to include that aspect of their lifestyle instead of "What if chimp but dog" or "What if chimp but it was a carnivorous gorilla"

[Mardanzo]

Bears are omnivores in general and the only fully carnivore bear is the polar bear... which means that in order to become fully carnivore the ape would need to live somewhere with no vegetation whatsoever

[muhammadfarid]

I love it when he says

"... assuming these chimps aren't climbing or using tools."

[suggiethames]

My favorite D&D monster was the Carnivorous Ape, they had a pretty well thought ecology. You can find it as a pdf online