[conductr]

If you watch predator behavior, they will always go for an easy kill. The tar pit provides those opportunities. Also, if these opportunities are routine enough and occur in a hyper local area, it’s hardly even hunting they become more like scavengers patrolling the area and perhaps defending it from competition.

That said, it seems more likely to me cats near the tar pits just held the territory and became inbred from that. You can see similar patterns today around a junk yard. There will be feral dogs or cats that are living off the trash. They protect it from outsiders and inbreed.

That’s if inbred is even the explanation. I think it’s also possible that weak or deformed cats may just prefer this site more than healthy cats as they are hungry enough to take the risk. So the population bias is inherently there through attendance. If cats are getting stuck in tar so frequently, it’s likely they knew going near it was risky. Healthy cats would hunt elsewhere and avoid the risk.

[cineticdaffodil]

Also handicapped (by age or birth) individuals in nature are always squeezed into subpar territories where they then wither and sucumb

[asdff]

Tar pits are full of remains of many types of predators, not just saber tooth cats, after all.