The Discovery Channels in the UK and the US recently have aired documentaries called “Dino Gangs” that follow dinosaur paleontologist Philip Currie around the globe (Alberta, Mongolia, Indonesia, South Africa, Great Britain), including little Athens, Ohio, the home of Ohio University. “Dino Gangs” addresses Currie’s theory that tyrannosaurs hunted as cooperative, social packs. Phil and the film crew from Atlantic Productions were here to talk with me about my work with Ryan Ridgely on tyrannosaur brains and sensory capabilities…basically whether tyrannosaurs had the mental wherewithal to pull off pack hunting. Phil Currie and his collaborators have published a few articles that have alluded to the possibility of coordinated, social, pack hunting, mostly notably his 1998 article in Gaia. My goal here is neither to evaluate the nuances of his arguments (e.g., the taphonomic issues) nor to address the media hoopla from the folks at Atlantic, the same folks who brought us Darwinius and Predator X (check out Brian Switek’s thoughtful response). My goal is simply to relate what went on here in Athens and to clarify how I think tyrannosaur neuroanatomy fits into the argument.
Filming at O'Bleness Memorial Hospital, Athens, OH, with Philip Currie and Heather Rockhold for the Discovery Channel documentary "Dino Gangs." Photo by Joy Miller Upton (OBMH).
Another documentary crew comes to town
We get asked to participate in a lot of documentaries in part, I think, because our work is so visual and interactive (and I like to think also of some significance). Typically, crews come in for a weekend (scheduled to minimize disruption of our normal work), and then they leave. Maybe we’ll later cook up some HD visualizations for the production, but basically our involvement is limited to our own stuff. As I blogged about earlier, TV documentaries have become a normal part of our broader outreach plan, allowing us to reach millions with our research. The “Dino Gangs” program fit right into the normal pattern. I was approached by producer Martin Pupp, who introduced the project and told me about Phil Currie’s involvement. We talked about what my team had done and whether there’d be anything to film here. I saw it as an opportunity to the take the message (and 3D visualizations) of our then new-ish 2009 article in the Anatomical Record on tyrannosaurid brain and sensory systems to a mass audience—NSF’s Broader Impacts writ large. It was also an opportunity to have one of my heroes, Phil Currie, actually visit my lab and meet with our people. Win! They came in April 2010, and the shoot was a total blast! We not only shot in my lab, but we also went to O’Bleness Memorial Hospital where we did some “faux scanning,” recreating the scan process for the cameras with the help of Heather Rockhold, Chief CT Technologist. I recently put up an album of “behind-the-scenes” photos from the shoot on our WitmerLab Facebook page.
Phil Currie being filmed with T. rex by Jay Dacey as Elliot McCaffrey directs. Photo by Amy Martiny.
The “Dino Gangs” documentary: two releases, two rather different shows
I enjoy making the documentaries as much as I dislike watching them. Some of the latter comes from the normal aversion to hearing and seeing one’s self (definitely the downside of big-screen HD TVs!), but also there’s the inevitable disappointment of the compromises that plague science documentaries on commercial networks. They need to capture and hold an audience. I thought “Dino Gangs,” on the whole, wasn’t too bad, given the constraints of the genre. The narrative of Phil Currie’s quest for evidence to support his pack-hunting idea is quite compelling. Some decent science was presented, and the live-action elements were visually striking, although the CGI animation wasn’t the best. The UK and US versions differed, however. The most obvious difference was in length: a two-hour UK version versus just one hour in the US. But far more significant was the difference in stance. What they cut out of the US version was basically the dissenting view. In the UK version, there is hearty skepticism from, for example, Dave Eberth on taphonomic grounds and Don Henderson on almost all possible grounds (clearly Don ain’t buying it at all). These skeptics, as well as other scientists in the UK version such as Roger Benson, Lou Jacobs, and John Hutchinson, are basically absent in the US version. So the Brits were left with a more balanced view than were we yanks.
Elliot McCaffrey provides direction for a scene in which Currie and Witmer discuss tyrannosaur brains and pass 3D printouts of the brain casts back and forth. Photo by Amy Martiny.
So, what DOES the brain tell us about pack hunting?
They cut a key element for the US version from the segment where Phil and I sit face to face and discuss tyrannosaur brains. Phil asks me whether brain endocasts can “actually say anything about the social behavior.” I responded, “I wish what we could do is actually point to a ‘cooperative hunting lobe’ of the brain…sadly, it doesn’t really work that way.” Externally, the brain of the cooperatively hunting lion is virtually identical to that of the solitary hunting leopard. The best we can do is to look at overall cerebral size, compare to modern animals, and make some rough estimates. In my opinion, tyrannosaur brains were large enough to have engaged in communal hunting, meaning hunting in groups…but not necessarily hunting truly cooperatively or socially. In communal hunting, each animal attacks as an individual, but the collective attack helps each individual. Communal hunting could be a step toward cooperative hunting. The producers chose not to present that subtle distinction in either version. My expectation is that, like most things in nature, it’s a continuum from solitary to cooperative hunting, with communal hunting being somewhere in between. For me, the key criterion for social pack hunting is that an individual forgoes immediate benefit (getting a meal now) knowing that its actions (say, driving prey towards others in the pack) will increase its chances of benefiting later once others in the pack have made the kill. Could tyrannosaurs or other dinosaurs been cooperative hunters? Sure, but we can’t say that based on brain endocast structure alone. That said, there’s nothing in the brain endocasts that disprove cooperative hunting. But as for communal hunting, I have a hard time believing that tyrannosaurs wouldn’t have exploited the opportunity to join others in making a kill…it would have decreased individual risk and increased chances of success.
—Larry Witmer
Pick & Scalpel 
Nice post Larry. I’m greatly encouraged by your suggestion about tyrannosaurs simply hunting together, almost as a convenience, as opposed to coordinated mammal-like pack hunting which appeared to be the continual focus throughout the documentary. I have reached a similar conclusion which will feature in a blog post next week.
Although the UK version was a bit longer, it actually included nearly 25 minutes (at least) of ad breaks…
Great post!
“In my opinion, tyrannosaur brains were large enough to have engaged in communal hunting, meaning hunting in groups…but not necessarily hunting truly cooperatively or socially. In communal hunting, each animal attacks as an individual, but the collective attack helps each individual. Communal hunting could be a step toward cooperative hunting. The producers chose not to present that subtle distinction in either version.”
That is very graciously put, Larry.
Happily, I am not as nice as you so I can say this like it is.
It is absolutely pathetic, I mean beyond abject, that they would go to the trouble of filming you and then cut out this very simple and absolutely foundational distinction without which nothing else you say can possibly be properly understood. In a two-hour show, it would have taken up maybe seven or eight seconds. And this for the core point that the entire program is about.
Really, I do try not to to jump on media-FAIL bandwagons, but this is a painful example of cutting a truly crucial distinction. It’s like doing a two-hour documentary on whether three and three make nine. They interview a mathematician who says that, well, yes, if you add them together they do, but not if you multiply them together; but then the producers decide that this kind of hair-splitting is too complicated for their audience, and after all they have a lot of important CGI to fit into their two hours.
No argument from me on that, Mike! I tend to be pretty disappointed in these shows but I’m no longer as devastated as I used to get when I first started participating in these things. I now recognize the compromises that these folks need to make—I don’t like them, but I recognize them. Almost without exception the on-the-ground producers and directors that I deal with for the shoots are truly interested in getting the science right. Ultimately they have to contend with the heavy-handed network suits that haven’t been in my lab, heard my interview, looked me in the eye.
I’ve never been super-involved with the documentary process beyond what they do with me. Like I said in the post, they show up, they film, they leave, and then maybe they tell me when it’s on. I kind of like it that way. I’m a busy scientist who reaches out to the public in various ways, with TV docs being one of those ways. But I’m not a documentarian…or been integrally involved in pre-/postproduction, such as some of colleagues have been (Scott Sampson, Phil Currie, Phil Manning, etc….and no criticism intended there…I could see myself doing that…maybe…someday).
Basically, I tend to look at how the stuff coming out of our lab fares on these shows because that’s the only part over which I exert any control. I don’t ever expect to be 100% satisfied. But, for example, the YouTube clip I linked above, is about 11 minutes of content drawing on our published research, using some of the same visualizations that we’ve published. It ain’t perfect, and yeah, they kinda blew past a key point, but we got some decent science out there along the way. Would I like to raise the bar on TV documentaries? You bet, but that’s a hard thing for working scientists like me to do…and still keep my day job! Just as production companies and networks have to make compromises, so do I.
PS: I love your mathematician example! It’s a keeper!
I’ve been meaning to reply to 1 of your blog posts for a while. I’ve been a big fan of yours since watching “My Pet Dinosaur”, partly b/c of your work, but also b/c you’re 1 of the few paleontologists whose also a good interpreter (Bakker is 1 of the best examples IMO). As someone who studied “Natural History and Interpretation” ( http://www.esf.edu/efb/saunders/nhi.htm ), that’s important to me.
“What they cut out of the US version was basically the dissenting view.”
I can’t decide whether that’s more funny or more sad. Either way, it’s not surprising.
“In my opinion, tyrannosaur brains were large enough to have engaged in communal hunting, meaning hunting in groups…but not necessarily hunting truly cooperatively or socially.”
Thank you SO much for clearing that up. I figured that’s what you meant when I watched DG, given that you said “communal hunters” in reference to tyrannosaurids (as opposed to “hunt in packs” the way you did in reference to eudromaeosaurs on JFC). However, until now, I wasn’t completely sure, given that some paleontologists (E.g. Currie w/all due respect) synonymize group hunting & pack hunting. My problem w/that part of DG is that it basically presented what you said (that group-hunting in tyrannosaurids isn’t impossible) as proof of Currie’s hypothesis: IMO, it’s the equivalent of saying “This dish is not disgusting. Therefore, it must be delicious.” BTW, have you read “Social Foraging Classes in Raptorial Birds” ( http://www.jstor.org/pss/1312102 )? I ask b/c it explains how “true cooperative hunting” (I.e. Pack-hunting) is different from other kinds of group-hunting, including “pseudocooperative hunting” (I.e. Communal-hunting), which you seem to be familiar w/.