英语听力：完美捕食—10

These Olympic capabilities come down to one simple anatomical feature, its tail. Half the length of its body, it acts like a built-in counterbalance. By flicking it from side to side, it can make a sharp turn at full speed.

If you were to look at Deinonychus in slow motion chasing after a prey item, it would look a lot like a big cat today. If the prey item tries to dart away, it turns even faster, and it’s swinging its tail off to the side and can cut it off and intercept that prey item as it’s trying to get away.

Put all these together, speed, agility, a powerful sense of smell, and a young Sauroposeidon, even an animal nearly a ton in weight might just be staring death in the face, particularly if there’s more than one Deinonychus in pursuit.

Stalking the Cretaceous are predators like Tyrannosaurus Rex with jaws that can bite down with nearly four tons of force, and Deinonychus, sporting claws that could slice straight through flesh. But the prey these carnivores hunt are heavily armed.

Often in reconstructions of dinosaurs, we just see the meat eaters attacking the herbivores, and it’s easy to miss the fact that, in the real world, herbivores fight back.

The plant eater Sauroposeidon defends itself by growing to mammoth proportions. This one is a juvenile, but it’s almost 6 meters tall, an animal on the edge of adolescence, and an animal on the run.

It’s being chased by two raptors. These raptors are known as Deinonychus. These tiny killers work as a team.

Deinonychus wouldn’t weigh much more than a human being. And when they’re attacking things like Sauroposeidon, it would be a big advantage for them to be able to act as a group.