I would guess that if you asked someone on the street which dinosaur scared them the most, they’d say either T. rex or the dreaded velociraptor (or more technically, the genus Velociraptor). Thanks to pop culture, the animal has become a go-to example of a formidably fast, cunning, Jell-O-shaking predator. But you’re never going to find Velociraptor on the street, or anywhere (alive). So how can we ever really know if the creatures lived up to the hype? Science.
If we want to put ourselves up against Velociraptor, we’re going to have to go where they are. We can’t go back to the late cretaceous period…but we can in my latest episode of Because Science.
We are going to evaluate the traits of real Velociraptor as scientists understand them, as compared to the pop culture raptors that we all have in our heads. Those beasts are portrayed as human-sized, scaly, and unsettlingly intelligent. They also have giant claws, great eyesight, and can run as fast as a dang motorcycle. How does real Velociraptor stack up? Would you fare better against them than humans do in the movies?
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