TPO 18 - Question 4

A sample Answer to this speaking in text:
Relict behaviors are the behaviors that once were useful to the animal but left over from an earlier time, no longer serving its original purpose as condition changed. At presents, pronghorns are the fastest animals in the western hemisphere. Because tens of thousands of years ago, lions used to live on the grassy plaits of North America where pronghorns are living nowadays. Lions chased and preyed upon pronghorns and pronghorns’ speed was very critical to their survival at that time. Even through lions are extinct in North America, pronghorns still run that fast. The speed doesn’t serve its original purpose but becomes a relict behavior.

1. Ok, so a good example of this, found right here in North America, is something an animal called the American pronghorn does.
2. Pronghorns, as you may know, are a king of deer-like animal.
3. They live out on the open grassy plains, somewhat in the middle of North America.
4. And they are super-fast.
5. Pronghorns are in face noted for being the fastest animal in the western hemisphere.
6. Once a pronghorn starts running, zoon, none of its present-day predator, like the bobcat or coyote, can even hope to catch up with it.
7. It's off in a flash.
8. Ok, so why then do pronghorns run so fast?
9. That's the question.
10. Well, it turns out that quite a long time ag0- I am talking tens of thousands of years-things on the grassy plains used to be very different for the pronghorns, because back then, lions used to live on the plains, chasing and preying upon the pronghorns.
11. And lions, of course, are a very swift-moving mammal, much faster than the bobcat or coyote or other predators that you find on the plains today.
12. But now, however, lions are all extinct in North America.
13. They are no longer a predator of the pronghorn.
14. Tens of thousands of years ago, though, the lions were there, chasing the pronghorns, so back then, the pronghorn's speed was critical to its survival.