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6 Formerly Kickass Creatures Ruined by Evolution

By Walter Lawrence April 11, 2008 479,639 views
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#3.
Megatherium

Used to be ...
Megatherium was the size of an African Elephant and, while a herbivore, still was able to fend off attacks from almost anything in the ancient world, including an entire pack of those sabre-toothed tigers. It had eight-inch claws on its foot for the dual purposes of defense and, we can only assume, bloody murder.

It often stood on its hind legs, rendering it twice as tall as the African Bull elephant. The folks at Wikipedia describe its skeleton as "Robust." We here at Cracked prefer the phrase "holy shit gigantic." Recent research suggests that Megatherium may have used its powerful claws to actually fight Smilodon for their kills when simple trees were not enough to sustain its monstrous appetite and apparent occasional craving for mammalian flesh.

The Crappy Evolutionary Spin-off:
The common tree sloth. These adorable guys are about as threatening as Switzerland. They are entirely herbivorous, and spend most of the day relaxing, reclining and generally not scavenging for flesh. They are mostly famous for being slow, and you know you've reached an evolutionary low when your species is famous for sucking at motion.


In certain conditions, even the plants they hunt can outrun the sloth

They suck so much at movement that the Catholic Church has actually named a deadly sin after their species. Isn't that wonderful? Modern sloths suck so much that even God thinks they suck. Seriously, watch this one try to cross the road.

How the hell did that happen?
This one is our bad, again. Megatherium vanished from the continent the minute Homo sapiens crashed the party and slaughtered them. Though ... you can't help but wonder if the sloth got the last laugh. Sure, they have no redeeming qualities. But their life consists of eating more then their size requires, sleeping 15 to 18 hours a day and pooping.

That's basically the American dream. You have to applaud them for that.

#2.
Entelodon

Used to be ...
Entelodon was a seven-foot-tall monster who achieved the dubious honor of 'Best Scavenger of the Oligocene' by being an enormous, festering, smelly mess. It feasted on rotten carrion killed by more effective murderers and frankly was unwelcome at parties due to hygiene that could offend filth itself.

What's so impressive about this thing? After all, it's just a scavenger, right? Well, it did have a full set of sharp teeth designed for ripping flesh from bone and a jaw which could, actually, crush the bone, too. It had most of its dental bases covered in that regard, really. They also traveled in packs, so a rotting corpse had to defend itself from a dozen or so Entelodonts at a time.

OK, we saved the real reason for last. If another, larger animal wanted to fight over the festering carrion, it was common etiquette for the Entelodont to take a crap on the food just to make sure nobody could enjoy it. Why aren't there more high school football teams named after these things?

The Crappy Evolutionary Spin-off:
The modern pig is all that is left of the proud Entelodont line. Instead of feasting on the decaying flesh of a day old kill, modern pigs eat a vitamin enriched feed consisting of fiber and other wheat products. Sort of a step up, but still, there is that whole "You will be processed and eventually sold by Oscar Meyer" thing for modern pigs, so the prestige is really just gone.

How the hell did that happen?
Larger predators ate all of their food. They could no longer overcome other predators and steal their food, so they eventually died off due to the fact that they had no real ability to acquire food for themselves. Their punishment? This:

#1.
Andrewsarchus

Used to be ...
Andrewsarchus mongolianis is the stuff of nightmares. Remember in Lord of the Rings when the horsemen from Rohan get ambushed by gigantic wolves called Wargs? Picture those things, only with a jaw twice as powerful, a body quite a bit larger, and a soul twice as evil.

Larger then a grizzly bear one and a half times over, Andrewsarchus was the most sophisticated killing machine since the Velociraptor. It was the largest mammalian terrestrial carnivore in the history of life on Earth. It was almost 15-feet long, and the first three feet of that was teeth. It was quick, agile and even had a pretty sophisticated brain for its era.

The Crappy Evolutionary Spin-off:
That finely-tuned killing machine's closest modern relative is anything from a sheep to a goat. The Andrewsarchus' Order, Mesonychia, has close ties to the modern Order Artiodactyla, to which Ovis aries and Capa aegagrus are a modern example of. Yes, that pitiful thing that smelled like its own feces when you awkwardly encountered it at that petting zoo is all that's left of the most powerful mammalian predator in history.


Goat-built fortresses are considered among the worst

How the hell did that happen?
The Ice Age essentially wiped Andrewsarchus out of the mammalian gene pool. All that's left are these warm, fuzzy remnants. This includes what has to be the utter bottom rung of evolutionary failure, the fainting goat:

Yeah, real nice animal there, evolution.

Walter Lawrence, when not writing about evolutionary failures, devotes most of his time to working on his nascent website, Internet-Explorers.net.

If you enjoyed that, check out our rundown of The 10 Lamest Dinosaur Names. Then, enjoy a video about a now extinct species that enjoyed dinosaurs more than most in our video explanation of the strange premises behind classic video games. Then check out what the crazy drug addled minds who came up with that video are up to these days over on the blog.



First off F**k ostriches, or ostri, (don't know don't care) useless creature guy should karate chop them in the throat just to show them we could wipe them from the face of the planet like we did their cousins. Though if some of these animals had lived besides the defecating pig, a$$hole move, I don't think we'd be clippity clapping away at our keyboards right now. Though the Tasmanian Devil could be genetically modified to be huge... defiantly a good animal to have a legion of. We have a glowing cat this could happen too.

6/28/2009 2:34:30 AM
Phattiger

Derby, while you are correct about the Velociraptor's size, you'll find that many 'real raptors' actually WERE 6 ft and larger. For example, the badass Utahraptor was roughly twice the size of the Deinonychus. You've also got the recently discovered Austroraptor, another massive raptor (16.5 to 21 feet long, as opposed to the 11 ft long Deinonychus).

Additionally, the Deinonychus is nothing like the Velociraptors in Jurassic Park; his height weighs in at just below 3 ft. If you want something more suitable, I'd probably go with the Utahraptor (he might be a little too large, but he's a lot more similar to the fictional J. Park raptor than the Deinonychus).

Yes, I'm a massive dinosaur nerd, but someone needs to (factually!) protect raptor reputations now people are starting to clue onto the Velociraptor inaccuracy.

6/26/2009 10:06:54 PM
dromaeo

ignoring other inaccuracies, i will address the velociraptor thing first...
the velociraptor was NOT the six-foot killing machine you saw in the films! what you saw there was more like a deinonychus. real 'raptors were about half that size.
and pigs, aside from the 'cute' pet pigs, and those god-awful pot-bellied things, are still pretty vicious. work ona pig farm for a week, you'll see...

6/26/2009 9:44:08 AM
derby80

The fainting goat is the best animal ever.

6/2/2009 11:01:04 PM
Net_Queen

Also, the Tassy Devil is barely holding it's ground now which sucks. A majority of the population, as far as I know, is being decimated by a form of facial tumour... if you look up photos the animals look horrible :(

2/7/2009 6:58:28 AM
j3ngaman

I learned about the fainting goats at uni, although I confess I can't remember much. As far as I know the the goats 'faint' is caused by a neurological disorder, where the muscles are forced to suddenly contract, and stay contracted when the animal is excited. So they don't actually faint, they just can't move.

Also, the video of the sloth crossing the road is extremely cute :D

2/7/2009 6:55:36 AM
j3ngaman

mattshark, there are some horrible inaccuracies in your post.

12/14/2008 8:08:41 PM
davo

fucked goats i wonder andrewsarchus were still here he would dominate and now these s**t-like sheeps are breakin our ballz!!!
Andrewsarchus ROX
Sheep and goats SUX

11/30/2008 11:22:49 AM
GRCOOL

Most badass animals around are now either extinct or in disguise as cute li'l fluffballs. Even tried to keep a toy away from a deranged chihuahua? Yeah...

11/18/2008 8:31:16 PM
Pheonee

Does the writer of this article honestly think smilodon was a marsupial? That's it - get off! Get off my internet right now!

11/16/2008 4:24:11 PM
Vermis

Wow there are some horrible inaccuracies in this artcile.

11/13/2008 7:24:27 PM
mattshark

"Modern sloths suck so much that even God thinks they suck."

11/3/2008 1:20:27 PM
jldtsu2400

This article more than supports my belief that within a few thousand years cockroaches will be running the planet. The trend is clearly that being on top of the food chain means your ass is about to get beat badly and leave some stupid little cousin representing your family in the food chain.

10/28/2008 3:03:05 AM
cyberwolf77

scrovak: you are horribly wrong. you might want to double-check your facts next time before you post any more comments. kiwi birds are definitely not extinct. in fact, there are several different species of them. they are all endangered, but that is not the same as being extinct.

9/30/2008 1:00:44 AM
lowtolerance

You are horribly wrong. Kiwi are not extinct (I live in New Zealand), but they are endangered...

9/30/2008 12:59:31 AM
chris_drake

Ummm, last I checked, hell, last ANYONE checked, Kiwi were extinct. Unless I am horribly wrong...

9/29/2008 10:09:29 PM
scrovak

The fainting goat is a human bred thing.

There's a bunch wrong with this article, but it's funny.

9/29/2008 8:31:34 PM
neahga

to be fair, I'd imagine the fainting goat must have lived somewhere with no predators, OR lived in massive herds, so a predator couldnt eat them all.
Sheep farmers now keep them with thier flocks, so that if a predator attacks, the goats faint, and while the predator tucks in, the sheep make their escape

9/29/2008 1:22:58 PM
hybridtheorist

but i like raccoons and kiwis but this is some what funny

9/29/2008 1:10:16 PM
xolta

Actually Smilodons were true cats. The author of this article is thinking of Thylacosmilus.

9/29/2008 1:00:54 PM
Gorzakk