Hi, we're here from Curiosity.com to help you get smarter in just a few minutes. I'm Cody Gough.

And I'm Ashley Hamer. Today you learn about why Cougars and coyotes outlived dire wolves and saber-toothed cats,

and how exactly you can acquire a taste. We'll also answer a

listener question about whether blowing on hot food really makes it cooler.

And stick around for an announcement about our show at the end of today's episode.

Let's satisfy some curiosity.

Cougars and coyotes have been around since the days of dire wolves and saber-toothed cats.

When you think about it though, there are some pretty big differences between those two pairs.

Namely, one is kind of medium-sized and still around and the other is massive and extinct.

And a new study published in current biology may reveal the reason why.

Turns out that when it comes to a predator's diet, it doesn't pay to be a picky eater.

To come up with this conclusion, paleontologist Larissa Desantis and her team turned to a

treasure trove of fossil remains known as the LaBraya Tar Pitts.

Today it's located in urban Los Angeles, but for 50,000 years this was a place where natural asphalt

bubbled up from underneath the Earth's surface and trapped unlucky animals for

eternity or at least until scientists had a chance to dig them up.

More than three and a half million fossils have been found there in the century or so we've spent excavating.

And the fossils at La Brea are especially important because a lot of them come from during the late Pleistocene extinction event, which was when lots of mammals died off for mostly unknown reasons.

Scientists do know the climate was warming at the time, which caused major disruptions to the ecosystem.

And studying what happened to carnivores during that time could tell us more about how to help carnivores survive climate change today.

For this study, Desantis and her team collected fossils of coyotes, cougers,

dire wolves, and saber-toothed cats that lived at different points over time.

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