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For the story that I am writing currently, it is set on a colonized planet thousands of years after machines wiped out most of the human colony that were established there, and would go on to form an ecosystem with other organisms since they depend on biomatter as fuel. The machines themselves have evolved to take on the forms of predators such as big cats or theropod dinosaurs and ultimately have driven most other apex predators to extinction.

My question is what would be the largest possible organism to exist in an ecosystem with these types of predators. The ecosystem mostly comprises of herbivorous machines but these predatory ones need prey themselves. What types of animals would be large enough to cleanse the hunger of let's say a tyrannosaurus sized machine without going into direct competition with possibly more efficient plant-eating machines?

The planet itself was terraformed through a combination of future tech and ancient magic to make it as earth-like as possible. The planet as a result has numerous dynamic biomes ranging from forests, swamps, tundras, deserts, etc. Each of these ecosystems would be occupied by different types of machines, speciallized to specific lifestyles and options for resources.

The robo-herbivores that the herbivorous animals would be competing with would be different based on each biome as a result of this. Certain machines would adapt to browsing or grazing specific foods, and would have to niche partition in order for the organic herbivores to survive.

To be specific, I'm talking about grassland. I wanted the humans in this world to have horses as mounts but not sure if that's unrealistic.

The animals would be competing with a number of robo-herbivores that have adapted to life on the grassland. Many of the machines resembled hadrosaurid/iguanodont dinosaurs in their physique and behavior as herding animals, each species only being separated by food preference (different grasses and bushes) and appearance. These robot-herbivores are around 20-30 feet in length and about 1 ton each. There are also large bulky animals similar to elephants and ceratopsians with each individual possessing a long tentacle like appendage designed for grass collection and browsing. These measure around 50 feet long and 3 tons. Although all these species feed off of mostly the same kinds of plants, they tend to feed at different times and different regions of the grassland.

Our largest organic species (probably an herbivore) would need to partition in similar ways to these robo-machines to avoid direct competition.

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    $\begingroup$ Can you describe the specific environment you're asking about. A desert, temperate forest, and ocean have different max herbivore sizes even before you take robot predation and competition into account. While you're at it you should probably describe the robo-herbivores that animals will be in competition with. We can't say how large a critter can get without coming into conflict without knowing what the would be competing with. $\endgroup$
    – sphennings
    Commented Dec 7, 2021 at 20:18
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    $\begingroup$ are the machines self-repairing and self-replicating? $\endgroup$
    – user3652621
    Commented Dec 7, 2021 at 20:32
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    $\begingroup$ The answer is going to be different for each environment. We place a limit on how broad we allow questions on this site to be. Unless you're asking about a singular environment this question is likely to be closed as too broad. $\endgroup$
    – sphennings
    Commented Dec 7, 2021 at 20:34
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    $\begingroup$ Changed it to be more specific. Sorry I'm new to this $\endgroup$
    – Dynasty of Dragons
    Commented Dec 7, 2021 at 20:46
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    $\begingroup$ Learning to ask good questions is a skill. You can learn more about site policy by reading through our help center. $\endgroup$
    – sphennings
    Commented Dec 7, 2021 at 20:47

2 Answers 2

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I basically think if there is no considerable human civilization anymore and the whole eco system consists of grassland there would be enough plants for herbivorous roboters and natural animals of any size to coexist, as long as they take slightly different leaves- maybe the elephants have evolved to draw nutritiens particularily well from a plant the robots don't quite fancy, or maybe sheep have developped the ability to eat some mice when times are getting all to rough because of robo-sheeps eating all the grass in the west. However I think the T-Rex predators pose a far bigger problem than the food in the grasslands- I assume with overpowered electronic predators herbivors would have to evolve to escape those predators else they'd go extinct for that reason. So I feel fast and small animals that are good at escaping and hiding would be dominating and pretty robust animals that are maybe even able to counter attack a robo-T-rex.

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Considering that humans are involved with this, domesticated animals (such as the horses you mentioned) would be involved as well so it is possible that the robo-predators would be feeding on the descendants of cows and sheep. The cows would probably resemble aurochs since time would have allowed them to become more wild then before.

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