Post #2698911

Counterintuitively, the bear and the dog are closer relatives than the hyena and the coyote. The wider mammal group Carnivora is divided into two subgroups, Caniformia and Feliformia. Basically: The former contains all the carnivorans more closely related to dogs than to cats, and vice versa. Bears and wolves (including domestic dogs) are both caniforms. Coyotes are so closely related to wolves and domestic dogs that they can have fertile offspring. There are a lot of caniform animals that sort of invalidate the name "caniform" (literally "dog-shaped") - ferrets are caniforms, and so are raccoons. Sea lions and walruses are caniforms, and I have a hard time thinking of a mammal shaped *less* like a dog than a walrus is. And even more surprisingly, the quite dog-shaped hyena is not a caniform at all - they're more closely related to cats! But it turns out that if you spend a few million years adapting to a lifestyle and niche that dog-shaped animals excel in, then you end up shaped like a dog even if you're nothing of the sort. So the domestic dog, coyote and brown bear are all more closely related to each other than either of them is to the hyena. (Footnote: Spotted hyenas in particular are *terrifying*. They're a lot more likely to hunt prey than scavenge carrion, their jaws can crush bone easily, and a mob of them absolutely can and will fuck up a pride of lions if there's some prize meat on the line. Also they have enormous hearts and can run for hours without tiring - they're one of very few animals that even stand a chance of taking on a trained human in an ultramarathon. This would be a high-stakes race for the human, since spotted hyenas will readily eat humans if the opportunity arises.)