Just as we were preparing to go down and collect our spoils, another group of speculators beat us to it.
If it were just one or two saber-toothed tigers, the natives wouldn't have looked so grim.
Because the only scents they detected before were of saber-toothed tigers and wildebeests, and although saber-toothed tigers are fierce, they mostly hunt alone. The natives could easily drive them away with their numbers and spears.
But to our utter surprise, there was an even earlier Lao Liu lurking nearby.
Their goal was the same as ours: to wait until the two saber-toothed tigers had successfully hunted before they made their move to rob us.
Now that the herd of wildebeest has left, the biggest threat is gone, and these predators that have been hiding in the shadows have revealed their true forms.
Their numbers are similar to ours, around twenty or so.
Its brownish-yellow fur looks rough, somewhat like the fur of a hyena.
They have large heads with exceptionally powerful jaws and teeth, making their heads look more like those of a large feline, more like a lion, rather than a dog or wolf.
However, I do recognize this animal. Most of the ferocious beasts I've encountered since coming to this rainforest date back to the Miocene epoch.
After mammals successfully evolved and took over the field, fierce carnivores emerged one after another. The immense pressure to survive made these beasts hundreds of times more ferocious than any other species in any other period.
Although these social beasts are not as large as the sand monsters, they are no less ferocious.
The two saber-toothed tigers that had been killed by the wildebeest in front of them were mortal enemies of their own kind, just like the current hostile relationship between lions and hyenas.
These ferocious beasts are not felines, but true canines. They belong to the genus Canis of the subfamily Diasininae of the family Canidae, and were the "natives" of Miocene North America, as well as the largest known canines.
Among the Upper Dog species, there is a subspecies called the Upper Dog Heidenne, which can reach a length of 1.5 meters and is estimated to weigh 91-136 kilograms.
The guys in front of me probably weigh over 130 kilograms, so I'm pretty sure they're the largest subspecies of the Upper Dog family, the Hydney Upper Dog, which is twice the size of a North American gray wolf!
Because their territories overlapped, these two predators often fought fiercely for food. However, the battles were mostly won by the Hydney Upper Hound, who would kill the saber-toothed tiger. In some ways, the social Hydney Upper Hound was more dangerous than the saber-toothed tiger.
Scientists have discovered that the size of Canis spp. has been increasing as they have compared the teeth of Canis spp. from different periods.
From the earliest Bastogne fauna (14 million years ago) to the Middle Clerdonian stage (10 million years ago), the proportion of teeth in Upper Canis Major remained relatively unchanged.
However, in the following 1 to 2 million years, the teeth of the Upper Saiva canine increased by an average of about 5%, and the teeth of the last Upper Saiva canine increased by about 15% on p4 compared to the former.
Besides enlarged teeth, the Hydney Upper Dog, which differentiated from the Seva Upper Dog, underwent six significant changes in size.
Over the more than 2 million years of evolution of *Ulp. heidenis*, its size continued to increase, reaching the peak size of the *Ulp. heidenis* family in the late Miocene.
At this moment, the expressions on the faces of the indigenous men became very bad, and the indigenous leader also frowned as he looked at the large group of Hydene Hounds below.
These creatures were smaller than saber-toothed cats, but their bite force was greater. Their smaller, more agile bodies also gave them greater mobility than saber-toothed cats.
Our numerical advantage is now practically meaningless against the equally numerous Hydney Hounds. Their agility and powerful bite force could easily kill us after dodging the spears.
The natives did have bows and arrows, but most of them had wooden arrowheads, which were only good for hunting birds. The spears were also heated with fire and were of the same quality as the wooden spears I originally used.
Therefore, these weapons pose little threat to the pack of dogs below; on the contrary, they will only provoke them.
The only weapon the natives could boast of was the poisoned blowgun they used to attack Top. This weapon was more accurate than the bows and arrows they made, but very few people possessed it, probably due to the difficulty of its production.
They could indeed coat their bows with poison, but their bow-making technology was really limited and didn't even meet the standards of a recurve bow.
Given the relatively rough nature of the arrows, their effective range was estimated to be only about twenty meters, and their penetrating power was probably not even as high as that of sharper, longer blowguns.
I sat on a tree branch and pointed to the indigenous blowguns, indicating that we could use the blowguns we used to ambush the monkeys to shoot the upper dogs.
After the native understood what I meant, he shook his head repeatedly and used two dots beyond the arm's reach to indicate that his blowgun had a limited range, just as his arm could not reach two dots.
I thought for a moment and tried to find a better way to ask the native. I pointed to the upper dog in the distance, then took out a blowgun coated with poison and made a sleeping gesture to the native.
We discussed this question several times before the indigenous man finally understood what I meant. He knew I was asking if the poison in my blowgun could put the wounded hounds to sleep.
This time, the local frowned and thought about it seriously, then took out a jar made of bamboo. He removed the wooden sieve from the top, revealing a thick, black liquid inside that smelled a bit strange.
Then he took out a jar made of bamboo tube, and this time I could clearly see that it contained some dry, white wild cotton.
I hadn't seen these blowguns on the Top before, probably because the natives had removed them. Now I think I know that their fletchings are made by wrapping cotton around them.
Many tribes do indeed use cotton as the fletching for blow darts, a simple method. However, cotton's airtightness is limited, reducing the power of the blow dart by at least 40%.
In addition, their blowgun manufacturing process is quite mediocre; the inside might not even be smooth.
This is nothing compared to my blowgun; it will further increase the friction of the blowgun and reduce its power.
Then I noticed that the sharp tip of the blowgun had serrated indentations, which were thorns carved from stone.
It not only increases the contact area of the venom and the amount of venom stored, but also prevents animals from immediately pulling out the blowgun.
The longer a poisoned blowgun remains inside the body, the greater its effect will be.
The indigenous people then took out some white cotton from a bamboo tube and carefully wrapped it around the serrated arrowhead. They then immersed it in a black liquid, instantly turning the white cotton black.
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