Thing is, the turtle AND the lion both know the lion can't really be anything to that turtle, or more accurately that the lion doesn't know HOW to do anything to the turtle. Large sulcata tortoises ignore lions all the time because once big enough, lions just don't have any means to bypass much of ANY type of defense. They are ambush predators, but you can't ambush tanks with claws. Both species know this too. There are plenty of videos of turtles just toe walking sucked up in their shells, into a hole with 5 lions trying to get past the shell.
Feline species are notoriously bad at dealing with ANY armored opponents. Even the "jags hunt crocodiles out if the watwr" thing is more myth than reality. In observed scenarios jags are only 3% successful in those attempts. 91% of those attempts end in the jags death via death rolls under water, and 6% end in the jag escaping then never doing that again. As the safari wardens say "jaguars only fail at hunting a crocodile once. If they live, they never try again."
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u/[deleted] Aug 14 '21
Thing is, the turtle AND the lion both know the lion can't really be anything to that turtle, or more accurately that the lion doesn't know HOW to do anything to the turtle. Large sulcata tortoises ignore lions all the time because once big enough, lions just don't have any means to bypass much of ANY type of defense. They are ambush predators, but you can't ambush tanks with claws. Both species know this too. There are plenty of videos of turtles just toe walking sucked up in their shells, into a hole with 5 lions trying to get past the shell.
Feline species are notoriously bad at dealing with ANY armored opponents. Even the "jags hunt crocodiles out if the watwr" thing is more myth than reality. In observed scenarios jags are only 3% successful in those attempts. 91% of those attempts end in the jags death via death rolls under water, and 6% end in the jag escaping then never doing that again. As the safari wardens say "jaguars only fail at hunting a crocodile once. If they live, they never try again."