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This video has nothing to do with the topic but it blew me away:

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Note the somewhat tiger-like markings on the face.

Sabercats weren’t tigers, and the usual approach in reconstructions is to give them one of the more common cat patterns (in this scene, artists combined the top two — spots/tawny brown — for most of the coat).

Still, there were many grassy woodlands back in the day, and it might be that this whole-body disruptive coloration sometimes worked for sabercats, as it does for good old P. tigris today.

We’ll probably never know anything about sabercat fur until someone finds a preserved adult sabercat pelt in melting permafrost.

Bones, however, do come down to us, and recently some Smilodon throat bones made the news by raising a surprising question.

Did Smilodon purr?

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Deep, rhythmic purring in the dark would be a soothing sound from any small Pleistocene leopard cat or African wildcat that Neo(lithic) might have tamed — possibly not so much if they were camped out somewhere on a Pleistocene night.

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Still, I’d love to hear a sabercat. My guess is that, because they were cats, they had a unique set of vocalizations that also have vanished from the Earth.

Sigh.

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Some lagniappe:

Teeth come down to us, too —

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Actual comment: “This dude loves his job.” Yes. Yes, he does.

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Featured image: Esteban De Armas/Shutterstock

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