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Foxy Jenna.. any topic can have a flame.. don't be so persistent towards things and what Legacy5 said aren't really misconceptions they were more like wrong answers and not very understandable and we probably knew and whatnot you can't have everything your way.... just saying..

I agree with you Black Wolf.

Sharks do not purposly attack humans. They mistake us for their main prey, seals, or feel threatened. You are more likely to be struk by lightning than to be bitten by a shark.

I got the thing about lions from this sight:

http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/myhrvol ... index.html

Anybody who has seen a documentary "knows" that lions hunt cooperatively to bring down prey. Unfortunately, nobody seems to have told the lions this. Indeed, for many years field biologists who study lions have realized that cooperative hunting is an illusion. The naturalist George Shaller figured this out in the late 1960s with the first quantitative field study. He found that a single lion has a success rate of 15% on a given hunt—or about one successful hunt for every seven. Two lions have a success of 29%, which is 3% LESS successful than if the two lions with 15% individual success hunted by themselves (32.2%). Three lions get 27%, or 2% less than two lions. Four, five and six lions get 32% - meaning that they are (finally) as successful as sending two lions out by themselves. There is clearly no statistical value to hunting in groups.

More recent studies by Craig Packer and others have looked at higher order statistics—the variance, or the size of the animal. It all comes out the same way. If indeed lions hunt in some cooperative and strategic way, then they get no benefit from it statistically. So, how come the Discovery Channel says they are cooperative? Partly it is because these figures are buried in Appendix B of Shaller's book, or in dense academic papers. Mostly it is because the story of cooperative strategy in hunting is so endearing to people. Especially to film editors, which means we are destined to seeing cooperation in every nature documentary. The cases where the hunting fails due to lack of cooperation end up on the cutting room floor.

Watching lions hunt, the trends are quite obvious. The primary reason that groups of lions are no more effective than two by themselves is that typically only two lions do the actual hunting. They all make a show of hunting, but in the cases I watched, in several different prides, there were always a couple females that were the most aggressive and took the lead. The others hang back for the hard part then rush up at the end after the worst danger is over. Their primary goal is to be at the kill early so they can eat, not to actually help. Field studies have confirmed that lions do not seem to keep track of this and punish slackers.

Lions can seem quite inept at hunting, because they have no way to communicate complicated information. The Discovery Channel case happens when one lion flushes prey in past another for a perfect catch. More often, what happens is than one lion blows it and scares the game too early, or flushes it in the opposite direction. After watching hunt after hunt fail, you soon decide that Lions are not very coordinated. Indeed their only saving grace is that the buffalo can't communicate very well either.

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And if you actually read the thuing about saber-toothed tigers you would know what I was talking about.

erm Legacy5.. the site just concluded that Lions ARE VERY SOCIAL CATS.. and live in groups called prides .. i don't know what you're saying.. i just read most of it and says nothing much.. and i've watched many shows on discovery that lions live and hunt in prides.. maybe you should watch some and we never asked for details ..

The misconception is that hunting in a pride increases their chance of a kill.
And the truth is that two hunting separately has the same chance of a kill as five hunting at once.

I never said they weren't social cats.

ok, no offense legacy, but where do you get your information? a biology book from 1965? -.-

Hunting in a pack has benefits to a lion's relativity to catching a meal - especially with big animals. For example, a sick rhino they may try and go for, could kill a solitary hunting lion, but when they're in a pack there's a higher success rate.

exactly. it just makes sense.

agree with White Wolf's Moon's first post!! and Cobalt

Okay, sorry. I think I misunderstood what the site was saying where I got it from.

eh, it hapens. still this topic is about misconceptions, not misreadings.

ostriches don't bury their head in the sand because they can actually make their heads the color of the sand or dirt there fore making it seem that they are burring their heads.

Dragons weren't firebreathing montsers. They wouldn't want anything to do with humans but humans hunted them down and that why now we think they are exxtinct and mythical.

hehe nice.. i got one

Sea dragons, seahorses and pipefish are the only species where the male carries the eggs ( species : Fish )

Zebra's skin is black. Proving the point that they are black with white stripes.

I got this information from a zoo keeper. So its pretty much true.