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What would the future hold for big cats? #cats #natgeowild #speculative evolution
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00:02Big cats. Top predators past and present. Yet, we could never see their future. Until now.
00:15Lions. Tigers. Jaguars. Leopards. They're the ultimate survivors.
00:27They've stood atop the food chain for millions of years. But what if Mother Nature changes
00:33the game? Can they deal with extremes? Like jungles. Deserts. Ice. Big cats have been
00:51tested before. Now, a radically altered future could pose even bigger obstacles. How will
01:01their superior anatomy triumph? Against the odds? Will they evolve?
01:19Will they survive the extreme future? Big cats are big time survivors. Speed, stealth, power,
01:36power, intelligence, grace, beauty. For millions of years, their skill as predators has kept
01:46them at the top of the food chain. But how would they survive on a planet that's dramatically
01:55different? Picture Earth millions of years from now. There are thousands of possible
02:09ways it could evolve. But scientists are focusing on four potential future worlds that descendants
02:18of today's big cats could adapt to. First possibility. Time could push the continents together into
02:26one giant landmass. If big cats were to stay just the way they are today, how would they adapt
02:34to a world where they are forced to share their food? In the big cat hunger games, could the stealth
02:42of a cougar match the coordination of a pride of lions? And how would the speed of the cheetah
02:48fare against the size and strength of a tiger? It may sound far-fetched, but this planetary scenario
02:56has historical precedent. Sarah Pruce is a paleontologist at Smith College who has studied the Earth's
03:03past in detail, looking to unlock its secrets. We actually saw this when the land bridge formed
03:09between North and South America. When the North American cats and other top predators found that
03:14land bridge, they migrated south, and that was devastating to the South American marsupials.
03:19Those marsupials were distant cousins of the marsupials still living in Australia today.
03:26Dr. Luke Dollar, a Duke University biologist, has been studying animals in the field since 1994.
03:32He knows cats inside and out. Those true cats, they were just better at what they did than the
03:40marsupials of South America. They were able to better hunt, to catch prey. Competitively speaking,
03:46those marsupials in South America just didn't stand a chance. Those early marsupials just couldn't
03:54compete with the true cats. And although certain future habitats like grasslands or jungles would
04:04favor different cats, there would likely be some losers right off the bat. Dr. Julie Meachin is a
04:12paleontologist and anatomy professor at Des Moines University. She studied big cat evolution for almost
04:19ten years. It might be very hard for the smaller cats. They may even have to go underground into
04:26hiding to survive. If that happened, we might see them develop giant eyes so they could see
04:34underground and stay away from those big cats upstairs. Habitat would be huge in this case.
04:40Those continents as they collide are going to create more mountains. And cats like snow leopards that live in
04:45that kind of environment, they're going to have a step up. They're going to have an advantage. Those
04:49that have those characteristics are going to do so much better.
04:53Today, jaguars are found only in Central and South America and aren't known for their snow survival.
05:00But they have the same basic predatory skills as a snow leopard.
05:04In the short run, if you drop a jaguar on a mountain top and have it compete in a habitat
05:08that snow
05:09leopards are already so well adapted to, that jaguar is going to have a really tough time.
05:16Extreme competition would tend to favor bigger cats like tigers and lions. In this contest, would there be one clear
05:23winner?
05:25Dr. Larissa DeSantis is a paleontologist from Vanderbilt University who has made a mark studying the evolution of cats and
05:33other animals.
05:34If I had to bet on a survivor, it would be tigers and cougars, even though they're more solitary. Tigers
05:40are killing machines and they would likely get bigger.
05:43That means they could kleptoparasitize or steal a kill that any other animal made.
05:48Cougars can adapt their diets. Even today, they can eat anything from an armadillo on up.
05:55They could probably find a way to survive in spite of the competition.
05:59Leopards are also a solitary cat. And like cougars, they are diverse hunters.
06:04They are better climbers than lions or cheetahs and adapted to blend into their surroundings.
06:09Whatever prey might be living in this world, leopards would likely find a way to eat it.
06:16This large continent also could be dominated by a dense, humid jungle, ideal for ambush hunters like tigers.
06:26Tigers would do great here. It's their element.
06:30Competition for food could bring epic battles.
06:34Yet millions of years from now, each cat could still dominate the landscape if they carve out their own territory.
06:42I don't think you'd see all the different cat species going biblical on each other.
06:46They're already so well adapted to whatever habitats they're engaged in.
06:50You might expect that most of these big cats would find a way to live on.
06:54What would set them apart and what sets anything apart in the evolutionary scale is its ability to adapt with
07:01whatever the environment, whatever nature hits them with.
07:04Feelids are predators, each with skills perfected over millions of years.
07:12Tigers hunt alone, ambushing prey. Few escape.
07:18Lions work together, coordinating their deadly attacks.
07:24But what if, millions of years from now, the earth entered into a period so extreme, even lions and tigers
07:32could not survive?
07:33A landscape dominated by snow and ice.
07:37It's happened before, when there were no cats.
07:43There are two intervals in the earth's past when we think the earth was completely entombed in ice, essentially a
07:49snowball earth.
07:50This happened once at 720 million years ago and then again at 650 million years ago.
07:57For us to ever experience some kind of snowball earth again in the future,
08:01what we would have to have happen is a drawdown of a lot of the CO2 that currently exists in
08:07our atmosphere.
08:07If that were to happen, it would make it very difficult for large life to survive.
08:12A true snowball earth would likely kill all life as we know it.
08:17But a less frigid world could give big cats an opportunity.
08:25There is a scenario where we could experience widespread glaciation or the buildup of ice on continents and in the
08:33oceans in the future.
08:34There are times in the past where we've seen continents sort of accumulating at the equator and reflecting back sunlight
08:40and energy and allowing for global cooling.
08:43Global cooling in the future could create a scenario where you have land masses dominated by ice and snow.
08:50That world would be very intimidating, very cold and forbidding.
08:55Parts of the ocean would be covered in ice.
08:57It would be really hard for a larger life to survive in this kind of world.
09:02But as we've seen, life can do lots of amazing things.
09:06For the big cats most successful on the African savannas, surviving a frigid world would be a challenge.
09:14They would need to be furry, very furry, with huge under and overcoats and fur growing between their toes.
09:22They would need to be wooly cats.
09:26We would see crazy dense fur evolving.
09:29They would need really highly specialized feet, maybe even like big snowshoes.
09:33But they would still have to retain agility that would allow them to move on rocks.
09:38These cats would need to be bigger.
09:41It's Bergman's rule.
09:42Larger animals tend to be found in colder climates.
09:45And in this scenario, that would be true.
09:48I think in this scenario, tigers would have to do what polar bears do.
09:52Anytime they have prey, just eat and eat whenever they can.
09:56Amp it up.
09:56Gorge.
09:57Pack on lots and lots of fat.
09:59Tigers are the species that would probably do best in this future world.
10:03Because we have Siberian tigers that live in similar, although less extreme, circumstances.
10:08But surviving a frozen landscape might be too much of an evolutionary stretch for other species of big cats.
10:16In this world, you might see lions and cheetahs go bye-bye.
10:21Cheetahs would be too long-legged and gracile to be well adapted.
10:25And their hunting style would not fare too well in this type of world.
10:30Lions like to hunt in groups.
10:32But this kind of environment would favor solitary hunters like it does today with Siberian tigers.
10:38Cougars, like tigers, would stand a much better chance at dominating their pieces of this cold new world.
10:45I think cougars would do really well in this world.
10:47They already live in cold ranges like Canada and the Andes.
10:51And they can eat just about anything.
10:52So they keep their kills to themselves.
10:55And they have a hunting style that's well-suited to this rocky environment.
10:59As adept as they already are in cold climates, tigers and cougars would still need to change to survive and
11:07rule a snowbound planet.
11:10They would need to change their colors.
11:12They'd have to be camouflaged.
11:14You could also see an adaptation that would allow cats to change their fur color.
11:19They could match the environment like Arctic hares do today.
11:23It's possible in this situation, with larger cats dominating, that you could see the saber tooth pop up again.
11:31These cats of the future could also draw on millions of years of hunting and survival skill already used by
11:38the snow leopard.
11:42They are solitary hunters that eke out a living in the highlands of Central Asia, where they feed on sheep,
11:49goats, rabbits, even rats and birds.
12:04They love rocky outcrops and ravines, using them as camouflage to stalk unsuspecting gray.
12:11Snow leopards attack from about 60 feet, a range where they do not miss.
12:18It helps that their back legs let them leap up to 30 feet.
12:22That's almost six times their body length.
12:25This would be another example of evolution at work.
12:28The cats that adapted those that could hunt and climb better, those would be the ones that survived.
12:33A dark and frigid earth would be another imposing challenge for the big cats.
12:39But snow leopards and Siberian tigers prove that felids can survive cold and altitude.
12:46In fact, cat species have always shown a knack for survival.
12:53How did these magnificent creatures claw their way to the top in the first place?
13:00The journey has more surprises than you may think.
13:15No matter how they adapt or what they end up looking like, the cats of tomorrow will likely follow a
13:21trend that started more than 30 million years ago.
13:24In fact, researchers have recently discovered a mammal that lived in what is now Belgium.
13:30And by sifting through 14,000 teeth, it's clear this meat-eating creature is a distant relative of all cats.
13:38And even dogs.
13:41It's called Dormala Scion Latorre, after the Belgian village of Dormal, where it was found.
13:49The first cats appeared about 30 million years ago in what is now France.
13:54How they came to thrive is a surprise.
13:57This was a very interesting time.
14:00You have grasses first becoming abundant on the land, and organisms like herbivores were starting to evolve and thrive.
14:06We take grass for granted today.
14:09It's something that is ubiquitous that we see all the time.
14:11But when grass first appeared on our planet, it was actually a game-changer.
14:15It completely changed ecosystems.
14:20Grass really set the stage for a major evolutionary event, especially for mammals.
14:24Grass is good food for vegetarian animals.
14:27They eat more and get bigger.
14:29And then they end up being big food for meat-eaters.
14:32That helped set the stage for the evolution of the big cats we know today.
14:37The first cats looked like cats, and they were great hunters.
14:42Even millions of years ago, these first cats were developing and perfecting the skills that would help them survive and
14:49thrive.
14:50Now, in most cases, they were solitary.
14:52But in cases where perhaps there was more competition or it was at an advantage because maybe there were bigger
14:58prey, there were more prey, they became social.
15:01They can look and they have binocular vision so they can tell how far away the prey items are.
15:06They have good depth perception.
15:09They took advantage of their excellent night vision, and they adapted hunting styles that suited their strengths.
15:15They killed their prey by clamping down on their necks and just holding it.
15:20They may have been small, but those first cats were deadly.
15:25And they had millions of years to get bigger and badder.
15:29They became skilled at ambushing and chasing down prey across grassy plains.
15:35But there have been casualties along the way.
15:39Some of those ancestral cats simply did not make it.
15:44Among them were an early group of animals known as nimrabids, what scientists call false saber-toothed cats.
15:51They were big and strong, with big, powerful arms and chests.
15:56They were also frightening, with canine teeth like narrow, sharp swords.
16:02They looked a lot like cats, but they weren't cats.
16:05They evolved separately.
16:09Then came a group of even larger, saber-toothed animals.
16:13But they weren't cats either.
16:16They lived in Australia and South America, and they were marsupials.
16:20Closer to kangaroos and wombats than cats.
16:26The marsupial lion in Australia was more like a killer wombat.
16:30It evolved from that group.
16:31But it was quite amazing.
16:33Relative to its smaller size, it had a greater bite force than lions, tigers, and even hyenas.
16:39The marsupial lion is believed to have survived until about 30,000 years ago.
16:44And it may have hunted the earliest humans down under.
16:47No one is really certain what killed off the marsupial lion.
16:51But it could be a combination of climate change and competition from humans.
16:56The marsupial saber-tooths that lived in South America didn't even last as long as their Australian cousins.
17:04After millions of years, they faced an invasion of true cats that were better hunters.
17:10Three million years ago, it was over for these marsupials.
17:15So the true cats.
17:16In North America, they were bigger.
17:18They were better at what they did.
17:20They were faster hunters.
17:22As soon as they crossed that land bridge, those marsupials could not compete.
17:26The rules of evolution are the same.
17:28If you can eat and you can breed, especially better than the next guy, then you get to stay at
17:34the party.
17:34If you can't, you don't.
17:38It is estimated that the first big cats began to emerge in some form about 10 to 12 million years
17:44ago.
17:46So from a plant perspective, a lot of the grasses and the trees and the flowers might actually look very
17:52similar to things that we see today.
17:54From an animal perspective, it would look completely unfamiliar.
17:58If we want a perspective on the recent past, we can look at the La Brea Tar Pits for a
18:03record of what animals would have looked like from 10 and 55,000 years ago.
18:07The animals in La Brea Tar Pits were massive and bizarre.
18:10Can you even imagine what L.A. would have looked like with those animals running around?
18:16In geological time, 10,000 years is a tick of the clock.
18:20But it shows how quickly things can change when dictated by the realities of evolution.
18:27At the time of La Brea, Los Angeles and many other landscapes around the world were dominated by a cat
18:34that is still considered one of the most fearsome predators to ever walk the Earth.
18:45They were big and they were fierce.
18:49Although they vanished about 10,000 years ago, their legacy lives on.
18:55They were the Sabertooths, known for the massive teeth curving down from their mouths.
19:01They first emerged about 12 million years ago in Asia.
19:05Over the next 10 million years, they went global.
19:09The most famous of these apex predators was Smilodon, a name that has nothing to do with being happy.
19:17These Sabertooths sported quite a smile.
19:20They had five inch long swords in their mouths.
19:24They were very muscular and beefy.
19:27Ambush cats.
19:29They would find their prey, knock them down with their powerful forearms, and then they would use their canines to
19:35rip out their throats.
19:40No one knows exactly what killed off Smilodon.
19:45Perhaps a food shortage was responsible.
19:49But a research team that included Larissa DeSantis used 3D analysis of fossil tooth wear features to prove the Sabertooth
19:58didn't face a long food shortage.
20:03They were taking down larger prey.
20:06They were living the good life.
20:07And then they were gone.
20:09Mass extinction.
20:12A change in climate or human competition?
20:15It's still a big question.
20:17The demise of the Sabertooth may be down to something even domestic house cats are famous for.
20:23Finicky eating.
20:26DeSantis believes that cougars survived the mass extinction that claimed Smilodon because they didn't really care what they ate.
20:33They could adjust their diets to what was available.
20:36Other cats couldn't.
20:38So the cougars made it and the other cats didn't.
20:42American lions and Sabertooth cats were relatively finicky eaters, with American lions preferring flesh and Sabertooth occasionally munching on bone.
20:50Cougars, on the other hand, were generalists that hunted and occasionally scavenged.
20:54They ate bone or anything else they could.
20:57This more generalized diet probably helped them make it through the extinction.
21:06As the first true cats began to spread out around the world, they began to evolve to fit their environments.
21:14In the forests, the first tigers and leopards started to appear.
21:19In the grasslands, lions and cheetahs were becoming dominant.
21:25They also began to develop the camouflage markings that would become their trademarks.
21:31Scientists have long debated where and when did modern big cats originate.
21:39An incredible recent find has placed the earliest branch at about 4 million years ago.
21:45And in an unusual place.
21:48Tibet.
21:51Finding this skull has changed everything believed about the evolution of big cats.
21:58When we finally came to the conclusion that we have one of the oldest big cat skulls of all, it
22:03was really an exciting moment.
22:05Sang is a paleontologist at the American Museum of Natural History.
22:12The team was excavating what probably was an old river delta on the Tibetan Plateau.
22:17They found a pile of bones from many animals that had been washed down the ancient stream.
22:23A fossil treasure chest.
22:26And the crown jewel was the skull of a very old relative of today's snow leopard.
22:33We didn't really know what we had. It wasn't a eureka moment.
22:36It wasn't until much later when we got it back into the lab when we started to realize what we
22:41really had.
22:42The fossils of the big cat that we found really changed what we know about big cat evolution.
22:47It showed that big cats in general began to diverge and spread out much earlier than we thought.
22:54The fossil records really show how tough big cats can be because four million years ago, the Tibetan Plateau was
23:00no Garden of Eden.
23:02Besides the snow leopard, we also have fossil records of mega herbivores like the woolly rhino and other predators like
23:09the Arctic fox.
23:10From studying their teeth, we could tell that they not only had to hunt in very uneven terrain, but at
23:15times they also had to catch and kill prey that are much bigger than themselves.
23:21But these ancient cats managed to outmaneuver their prey, setting the stage for the apex hunters of today.
23:30By about a million years ago, some of the modern big cats even looked as they do today, but not
23:37all.
23:37There is one cat I have to give a shout-out for, Panthera leoatrox, the American lion.
23:43They were 30% bigger than the living lions today.
23:47Imagine that, a 900-pound lion.
23:51They coexisted with humans.
23:53We've seen cave drawings of their cousins, Panthera leospoleia, the cave lion in Europe.
23:59If you saw that thing coming at you, you would crap your pants. They were scary.
24:04But as big and bad as they were, evolution didn't save a seat at the table for Panthera leoatrox either.
24:13Soon, big cats would face their greatest challenge.
24:17Man.
24:26After millions of years, the distant relatives of today's lions and tigers woke up to a new reality about 200
24:34,000 years ago.
24:35So the first humans have arrived, but we're just about to make a huge climate change and move into an
24:42ice age.
24:42Ice ages are times when temperatures around the globe plummet and ice sheets and glaciers form and dominate the planet.
24:51Ice ages are marked by periods of warmer temperatures called interglacial cycles.
24:57Right now, the Earth is in one of these periods.
25:04When the ice age ends, that's when the arms race between man and beast really begins.
25:12For thousands of years, big cats and people managed to coexist, sharing the land and the food.
25:21In Africa, where the first humans evolved, they managed to strike a balance with their ecosystems, with the predators in
25:27their ecosystems.
25:28They certainly had a very healthy fear and respect for those things that could kill them and eat them.
25:35We all have a place in nature, and those first humans in Africa, they found a way to coexist with
25:40the big cats.
25:41Now today, we've lost both of those things.
25:46It became very easy to eradicate what had taken millions of years to evolve.
25:55Big cats today face huge obstacles to survival, vanishing prey, and few places left to live.
26:04But big cats are predatory marvels, and the same skills that have carried them this far can help them face
26:12the future.
26:13Cats are like machines, a perfect storm.
26:17Stealth, teeth, claws, instant death.
26:21Cats are prepared. They're built to be what they are.
26:25Even though big cats evolved with different hunting styles, they're all very effective.
26:30Lions, for example, will stalk their prey and then have enough energy for a short chase that ends in a
26:37kill.
26:38Lions live in groups called prides, with anywhere between 5 to 20 females and 1 to 3 males.
26:44And they hunt cooperatively, where females usually take the lead.
26:50Along with lions, cheetahs dominate the African savannas where they live.
26:55The fastest terrestrial mammal, the cheetah, it's been clocked at over 60 miles an hour.
26:59When it's at top speed, it's even using its tail to help with its turns like a rudder on a
27:04boat.
27:06So, here's a tip if you're an antelope.
27:08If you're staring at a lion, run away as fast as you can.
27:12But if you're looking at a cheetah, stay still. Don't move.
27:17Why?
27:18Because lions don't like to chase things, and they don't like to lose the element of surprise.
27:23But cheetahs love to chase, and you'll never outrun a cheetah.
27:27Because of their skills as predators, their sleek and stealthy way of moving, and their sheer majesty,
27:33big cats are objects of mystery, fascination, and sometimes fear.
27:43Cougars, also known as pumas, panthers, or mountain lions, are the largest cat in North America.
27:49They are so adept at survival, they are found from Canada to South America, from California to Florida.
27:55They're generalists in their diets and their habitat.
27:58It helped them survive the big cat extinction in North America, and could help them in the future.
28:04They are solitary animals, and males can have ranges as large or larger than 100 square miles.
28:11They like to sneak up on their victims, which is easy when you can leap as high as 15 feet
28:16and as far as 40 feet.
28:18Cougars are incredible in their ability to survive and make the best of whatever they have.
28:24Plus, they can hunt and kill on par with humans.
28:29Tigers, the largest member of the Felid family, are also expert killers.
28:34Their spectacular colors and stripes are what most people remember.
28:38But in the wild, those traits serve as camouflage.
28:42They have great nocturnal vision and can hunt anytime, including the morning or early evening.
28:51Tigers are ambush predators and relish the element of surprise.
28:55They are incredible killers.
28:58Beautiful, powerful, and deadly.
29:01Like many of their big cat cousins, tigers are facing a hard road to survival.
29:06But their skill as lone hunters and ambush predators, and their remarkable ability to survive in diverse places, can help
29:14them adapt.
29:15Today, there are only 3,000 or so tigers left in the world, but they exist in a wide variety
29:21of habitats.
29:22From Siberia, all the way to the searing heat and hot, humid areas of Southeast Asia.
29:28The big cats have few equals.
29:32And they have proven to be resourceful and adaptive.
29:35But a changing Earth can be harsh and unforgiving.
29:39What happens when cats are faced with a world inundated by water?
29:44Or a planet that has been baked into an arid and relentless desert?
29:50How will they survive then?
30:00Millions of years from now, cats as we know them may no longer exist.
30:05In fact, it's impossible to say if any mammals will survive, given the harsh realities of evolution.
30:13But superior cat characteristics have carried them through past challenges.
30:18And it is this resiliency that could help big cats face the future.
30:22The Earth may have some nasty surprises in store.
30:27A third possible future could find big cats inundated by water.
30:37Even a shallow massive flood would pose an extreme challenge.
30:45You would have to look really far into the future to have the kind of flooding you would need to
30:50have a water dominated world.
30:52So if we lost the Arctic ice sheets and the Antarctic ice sheets, we would see a sea level rise
30:57of more than 60 meters between 150 to 200 feet.
31:01Florida would be gone and coastal California, particularly the river valleys, would be completely flooded.
31:07So if the Earth flooded more in the distant future, you would get shallow seas covering many of the continents
31:14where they don't exist today.
31:16And that's actually what marine life loves. It loves these shallow, epicontinental seas.
31:21It's amazing.
31:26It's amazing.
31:28Hunting an aquatic food supply would be primary.
31:33Cats in this water world, they're done.
31:37If food on land is scarce, there's only one place to go.
31:43Some cats could possibly handle marine predators.
31:53Jaguars like to swim a lot, and they actually have webbing on their feet that helps them.
31:58Tigers swim a lot, too.
32:00They can dive.
32:01They can chase prey underwater.
32:02And so do jaguars.
32:04So how would the descendants of tigers or leopards look if they had to spend time hunting in the water?
32:14Cats would have to get a curly, oily coat like a water retriever, not straight like their hair is now.
32:20They would need bigger lungs so they could hold their breath.
32:23They would also have to develop shorter and more powerful limbs.
32:28But to really make it in a water world, cats would likely need to find a niche.
32:35There have been predators in marine environments throughout time.
32:39Those cats, who are suddenly no longer able to be on land, are going to be confronted with these highly
32:45evolved, well-adapted marine predators.
32:48If water is in the distant future, big cats would need big change.
32:54It's happened before.
32:56Almost 50 million years ago, a mammal with four legs, a long tail, and lots of sharp teeth started spending
33:03more time hunting around the water.
33:06Over millions of years, Pachycetus evolved into a hybrid animal that was part aquatic.
33:19By 40 million years ago, this former land mammal was now an ocean-dwelling hunter called Door Don.
33:27It's an ancestor of today's whale.
33:32Could a similar evolution await the tigers and lions of today?
33:38Aquatic life has evolved many times, so you could see this evolution begin.
33:42I would think that in this scenario, tigers, hands down, would do the best.
33:47Tigers, because they are solitary hunters and already good swimmers, could succeed where other cats might fail.
33:58Over millions of years, these traits that help the animal eat and reproduce could become the dominant traits.
34:04It's a long process, driven by the environment and the need to survive, but natural selection can make almost anything
34:12happen.
34:13I think tigers, in particular, would be the whales of the next 20 million years.
34:22Nothing could be more different for the descendants of today's big cats in a fourth future scenario, possibly the most
34:30challenging environment of all.
34:36To face life in an arid, relentless desert.
34:42It would be a very different world.
34:44The interior of that continent would be so far away from the oceans that it would be removed from water
34:49and you would have a really dry baking heat in the interior of that.
34:53For any of the cats of today, this would be rough.
34:57Jungles and grasslands would be long gone.
35:00The prey they hunt has morphed just to survive.
35:05So big cats will have to do the same, and they might not be so big anymore.
35:14In this world, cats would have to get a lot smaller, a lot smaller.
35:19They would be hunting smaller prey, so they would need camouflage to stalk and pounce.
35:25These cats might even live underground, and so they would have giant eyes so that they could see better.
35:31Well, a cat that's active at night in the desert is going to need better night vision, even better than
35:37the night vision they have now.
35:38So what we might see is the tapetum lucidum, this reflective layer in the retina, becoming even more efficient at
35:45magnifying ambient light, which allows those predators to see better in the dark.
35:53In a desert world, prey items are going to be underground a lot.
35:57Predators are going to have to be able to dig in order to do their jobs.
36:01So the cat's claws may actually need to be more spade-like.
36:05In this desert world, cats will likely get smaller, but they could still be dominant predators.
36:13In fact, there is one cat today that has already mastered life in the desert, the sand cat, which lives
36:21in the Sahara Desert, the Middle East, and Morocco.
36:25Compared to a lion, a sand cat is tiny. It only weighs about seven pounds. But these guys are built
36:31to withstand the desert. It's a big-time digger. It lives underground. It comes out at night to hunt, and
36:37its big eyes and ultra-sensitive ears help it find food.
36:44Sand cats move with stealth and speed to camouflage themselves and survive in some of the harshest places on the
36:51planet, like the Sahara.
37:00In a desert world, lions and cheetahs would probably do the best. These guys have shown that they can already
37:07live in drier places, like the Serengeti.
37:10I believe you could see lions adapting. Although they'd have to get smaller to survive, they have some advantages. One
37:17of the biggest would be that they are social.
37:20They're able to hunt together and share their kills, and that could enable them to survive.
37:25Fielids are such supremely evolved predators. Their unique characteristics, adaptive to nearly every situation, have now captured the imaginations of
37:35robotics engineers.
37:39A new generation of cats are taking shape in the laboratory. They might even shape our own future.
37:58For 30 million years, big cats have proven to be the ultimate survivors. If given the chance, these remarkable animals
38:07could likely cope with almost anything nature dishes out.
38:11Snow and ice, water, desert, and even each other.
38:17They're just an iconic symbol of power and grace. They have a combination of stealth, speed, and agility that really
38:25sets them apart.
38:27Big cats are so amazing that top engineering minds around the world are trying to mimic their movements to create
38:34machines that can ultimately help people.
38:38At MIT, a team led by Sangbae Kim has built a robotic cat that weighs 70 pounds, about the size
38:46of a small cheetah.
38:47Powered by an electric motor, the robot can now run at 14 miles per hour.
38:52But copying what nature seems to do easily is a huge engineering challenge that took years to tackle.
38:59Why did this engineer choose a cheetah to copy?
39:04If you look at the gracious movement of the cheetah and then that excite us, wow, we should build a
39:10mechanical version of that.
39:11Can we build a robotic system that mimics such a beautiful dynamic movement of animals?
39:18So cheetah is probably one of the best animals we would like to copy.
39:24When cheetah is running, they keep the head still while the body is like drastically moving up and down in
39:31the front and back.
39:32And just because of the flexibility of the body, that makes cheetah quite special.
39:39Copying cats was also the inspiration for engineers in Lausanne, Switzerland, who built a 2.2 pound machine they call
39:47Cheetah Cub.
39:49In Osaka, Japan, another team led by Ko Hosoda and Andre Rosendo is testing a robot cat they call Mupard.
40:00Other institutions are developing cat-inspired robots that can run up to 29 miles per hour, quicker than the fastest
40:08human alive.
40:10If you look at animals and humans, we actually line all these three, like the vision, eyes, and the vestibule
40:15system, and then our perception, muscle, force sensing.
40:20Our robot right now is only using force sensing and the vestibule system. It's a completely blind robot.
40:27As amazing as these machines are, they pale in comparison to the natural wonders of tigers, lions, or cheetahs.
40:35But the challenge of copying them is just more inspiration for engineers like Kim.
40:40If you look at the wheelchair's user, they are still struggling transitioning from bed to stairs and any simple steps.
40:49This current MIT Cheetah program is all about developing a legged robot as a transportation system so we can go
40:58almost anywhere human can go.
41:00Mechanical Felid creators also believe the ability of their machines to move like cats over difficult terrain will make them
41:08ideal search and rescue vehicles.
41:10When it comes to like very rugged terrain where there's a lot of obstacles, I think we need to integrate
41:15the vision and then that's the part we can be very excited.
41:19I think we can send the robot wherever we want, like we can send to Fukushima and mitigate the disaster
41:24situation.
41:27Speed, stealth, elegance, beauty, power. Those who know big cats best, whether they study fossils or build robots, know that
41:37understanding and celebrating what makes these animals so amazing will pave the way for their future and ours.
41:45We build robots by cutting metals and then winding coils and printing some plastics and put together with the ball
41:53bearings.
41:54But animals, the biology doesn't do that. Biology has this magical information in the gene that creates such a complex
42:02machine without anybody actually putting together piece by piece.
42:06So that actually prevents us from really copying what exists in nature. So we're still learning. We'll get there at
42:14some point, I think.
42:16It's not hard to understand why people would want to mimic cats. They are apex predators and can move in
42:22a way that can kill you before you even see them. They are fascinating.
42:26It took nature millions of years in small, imperceptible steps to make the big cats that we know today. They
42:35are incredibly cool. There is nothing like them.
42:38No matter what they do with robotics, they'll never be able to replicate what a lion, a tiger, a cheetah
42:44can do. If we lose the big cats, we can't replace them.
42:52From the appearance of the first cat-like creature 30 million years ago, through the days of the false cats
43:00and the sabertooths, to the emergence of modern big cats 4 million years ago, the journey of the felids has
43:07been a remarkable one.
43:08With the earth constantly changing around them, the big cats staked their place at the pinnacle of the food chain
43:15and never left it. The journey is not over yet. And it is hard to imagine any kind of future
43:22world without them.
43:30Evolution is an amazing thing. It can be complex, harsh and sometimes fickle. It can also astound, finding ways for
43:40things to survive no matter what the obstacles.
43:43Scientists believe that life can find a way. And for now, we can only imagine what future cats will really
43:52be like.
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