interspecies adoption among dinosaurs?

[Gwangi]

i also wonder if there was mimickry among certain dinosaurs? say, a lesser species hanging out with the similar but more robust guys to get protection.
(i've read that half grown pacus which are basically vegetarians would school with red belly piranhas, although pacus can reach a meter in length as adult...)

There is a species of African cichlid that mimics other African cichlids so it can easily approach them and eat their scales. Cannot remember the name of the species but it was featured in the documentary "Jewels of the Rift" which is a great documentary about the cichlids of Lake Tanganyika. Also, the creature you propose was a species in one of the Dougal Dixon speculative zoology books. But again, it was mimicking a prey species so it could get closer. Cannot remember which book it was.

I must find this documentary.

And it wouldn't surprise me if there was some sort of mimicry of some kind, by something. Could be herbivores trying to look like a predator, carnivores trying to look like their prey, or something.

It's in YouTube in parts. It exists on VHS but I cannot find it on DVD unfortunately. That documentary was what introduced me to cichlids and sparked my interest in fishes and fish keeping. Worth checking out for sure. No talking heads or CGI or nonsense like that, a good old fashioned documentary.

[sauroid]

there are also scale eating cichlids in lake malawi (one of them is Genyochromis mento, iirc). they will make your biotope rift lake tank look like crap.

[Tyto_Theropod]

And, yeah, piranhas are far over-rated as far as aggressive fish go.

Correct me if I'm wrong here but aren't they directly descended from primarily herbivorous ancestors? Or are the primarily carnivorous and primarily herbivorous* piranhas not as scatter plotted genetically as I had thought and are rather distinct groups? Sorry for going a bit off topic.

*all of them are really omnivores when it comes down to it

I've seen some strange behavior amongst pets too. My comet has recently reached the size where its started to pick on my turtle, so the turtle tries to stir up the plecostamus to use the tiny ball of armor and spines to fight the comet. Plecostamus can hold its own against the turtle, but the poor comet should be getting its own tank soon if I can find the space for it.

Piranhas are a subfamily of characins, and are carnivore-adapted, however, the closely related pacus are mostly herbivorous. Piranhas tend to be scavenger/opportunists, although ones like Wimple piranhas are horrible (they are scale-eating adapted. Eww).

Really, most characins are mostly carnivorous/piscivorous/insectivorous, but opportunistic. My congo tetras, for their size, have really large, pointy teeth and happily eat pretty much anything.

I've had all sorts of combinations of fish. The captive environment does things to their behaviour, and I would not be inclined to draw any conclusions from that alone. Many aquarium fish are schooling or shoaling, and in a fish tank (where people have a terrible habit of buying two or 3 of each fish species, instead of appropriate numbers of one or 2 species) fish that are used to larger groups would rather combine than face the risk (in their minds) of being a small, easily hunted group.

I believe that as you say pacus are adapted for eating fruit (their teeth are eerily human like), but the ones I worked with when I was volunteering at an aquarium once were complete opportunists. You weren't allowed to put your fingers in their tank as you'd lose them! personally, thouhg, I think the pacus are probably just mistaking your fingers for a nice juicy fruit in that instance. But they literally tried to eat anything that fell in that tank. I used to call them Dustbin Fish!    One of my funniest anecdotes from my time there was probably the incident where a baby dropped its dummy into the pacu tank. A big pacu tried to eat it and ended up looking as if it was sucking the dummy lol! Forutnately, the fish was unharmed and we successfully retrieved the dummy, but not before we'd snapped a few pictures on our mobiles XD

[stargatedalek]

A population of Pacu introduced to environments with insufficient plants will become obligate carnivores over a matter of years, so its safe to say they aren't just mistaking fingers

[SBell]

A population of Pacu introduced to environments with insufficient plants will become obligate carnivores over a matter of years, so its safe to say they aren't just mistaking fingers

I saw that River Monsters episode. It was disturbing.

[goodlife18]

Just a thought, could interspecies take place among dinosaurs that belonged to the same Family but different genus?

For example, if you look at the horned dinosaurs, baby ceratopsians tend to closely resemble each other as hatchlings. If a young or baby ceratopsian, say a Arrhinoceratops were to get lost and end up in a herd with contemporary ceratopsians such as Anchiceratops or Pachyrhinosaurus, would adoption occur?

Adoption might seem very plausible in this scenario.  Or would the scent of a different species be enough to cause outright rejection?

[stargatedalek]

I saw that River Monsters episode. It was disturbing.

I think for me the part that really hit hard just how powerful the fish are is what they managed to do to the crocodile population.

I think interspecies adoption between very similar species is highly likely. In fact I think its plausible that such species even lived together as adults, looking at how fairly similar animals will tend to develop highly exaggerated displays to differentiate themselves seems to imply that at least on occasion they were interacting with one another.

[Tyto_Theropod]

I think interspecies adoption between very similar species is highly likely. In fact I think its plausible that such species even lived together as adults, looking at how fairly similar animals will tend to develop highly exaggerated displays to differentiate themselves seems to imply that at least on occasion they were interacting with one another.

I heard of one conservation programme here in the UK where orphaned goldeneye ducks were given to mallard foster mothers. It was a great success as most of them made it to adulthood, but a failure in that they were completely unable to breed as they didn't display like goldeneyes. They displayed like a mallard would, because they basically thought they were mallards. I just thought I'd throw that in as a point of interest.