Here is the blog that I have been meaning to write for months now. This blog post seeks to exonerate Red Claw from all of the hate he has been getting in TLBT fandom and is an attempt to instate his title of "the meanest Sharptooth of them all."
My main argument is that Red Claw only appears in a few episodes of a children's television show. In a children's show, violence is significantly toned down. Red Claw is thus unable to perform the same level of violence as Sharptooth or Plates, for example. We have no idea what he does off camera. When not in the spotlight, he could truly be a terrifying villain.
Now, let's go through all of his appearances and explain his actions and defeats. In his first appearance, "The Cave of Many Voices," Red Claw is defeated by the gang producing echos that scare him and Screech and Thud away. This actualy mirrors the behavior of real life predators very well. No predator is willing to risk its life or put in too much energy into a hunt where it thinks it can't get prey out of it. If it does so, it could lose energy and not be able to hunt as quickly later on or could be killed by the prey. The rule is only put in as much energy into a hunt as you can get back once completing it. Red Claw has no idea that the producers of the noise are small children. He believes that they are a large herd of fully grown herbivores who are willing to fight against him. Unwilling to take the risk, he and his subordinates quickly free, just like any other rational predator.
His next apperance is in "The Star Day Celebration," in which he only appears in a flashback where we barely see him at all. All he does is chase after Chomper and Ruby before the two lose him and his subordinates by hiding in a cave. The two are able to fake out the predator, a tactic that sensible prey would use in the wild. Red Claw is just unable to detect their presence and leads them away, still thinking they have continued to run through the canyon.
Red Claw's next appearance is in "The Meadow of Jumping Water," where he appears first in a flashback and appears again later on in the episode. In his flashback appearance, it is clear that he was able to find Chomper and Ruby after his earlier attack in the flashback mentioned earlier. He again attempts to chase Chomper and Ruby, before they again manage to escape from him. This time, however, he finds them again and continues the chase, only to be stopped by a surprise burst of water from a geyser. Geyser water is extremely hot, so it is not a strech to assume that being squirted with it would cause any animal to flee in pain. His sheer pain would explain why he doesn't notice Chomper and Ruby hiding in a bush in front of him. In his second appearance, he appears just after Spike has gotten covered in extremely smelly mud from the geysers. Just as he and his subordinates are about to kill the rest of the gang, Spike arrives and scares off the Sharpteeth with his smell. Both Tyrannosaurus rex and Utahraptor had exceedingly good senses of smell. Their olfactory nerves were larger than those of a bloodhound. If something smells bad enough to be a deterent to a bloodhound, it would likely smell around ten times worse to a Tyrannosaurus or Utahraptor, perventing them from being able to attack. Most predators don't like to eat something that's already dead. While T.rex is known to have been at least a part-time scavenger, the franchise seems to go with the notion that it was a complete predator. As we don't know what Spike smelt like, we could very eaisly assume that the geysers, who might have burnt small animals alive in the past, might have made the mud on Spike smell like dead animals and chasing off the otherwise hungry carnivores.
His next appearance is in the episode "Escape From the Mysterious Beyond." In the episode, Red Claw and his subordinates are chasing after the gang when he loses them again. Thud, however, finds them and attempts to signal to the others before an earthshake separates him from the rest of his pack. Strangely, Red Claw and Screech don't come to see what Thud was calling about. This is possibly due to them attempting to find safety during an earthshake or possibly just not hearing the call. Later on, after reuniting with Thud, Red Claw and his subordinates continue to chase after the gang before the gang hides in a cave. Thud is the only one of the three who knows where the gang are hiding. However, remembering how Chomper had saved his life by freeing him from a pile of rocks trapping his tail, Thud deliberetly leads Red Claw and Screech away and spares the gang's lives. This is not Red Claw's fault, as Thud deliberetly leads him and Screech away from food to thank them for saving his life.
Red Claw's final major appearance, and his most criticized one, is in "The Hidden Canyon." In this episode, Red Claw and his subordinates manage to enter the Hidden Canyon after the tree sweet deterents have mostly been eaten by the gang. The gang, along with Grandpa Longneck and Topps, soon arive to fight them, with the adults directly fighting off the Sharpteeth. Realizing that the Sharpteeth are starting to gain an advantage, the gang pelt the extremely smelly tree sweets at the carnivores, chasing off Screech and Thud. Red Claw stands his ground, only to swallow one of the fruits after it is shot into his mouth during a roar. He then proceeds to follow his subordinates in retreat. Now, as earlier stated, Sharpteeth have extremely powerful senses of smell. If the tree sweets are slightly off-putting to a young T.rex like Chomper, think of how much more pungent they would be to a fully grown T.rex with larger olfactory nerves. Also, swallowing a fruit like that might be the Sharptooth equivelent of swallowing poision. Red Claw is a carnivore, thus fruit has no place in his body. His body can't process the fruit, or at least not as well as it can meat. We also have no idea how the fruit tastes to Sharpteeth. To them, it could be like drinking acid, which any creature would run away from after consuming.
Red Claw's final two appearances are minor roles in the episodes "The Lonely Journey" and "Return to Hanging Rock." In the first episode, he is briefly seen chasing after a stampeding pack of Herrarasaurus. We don't get to see if he captures any of them, so it is possible that he succeeded in that hunt. In the second episode, he is only briefly seen stalking around Hanging Rock. However, he is the only non-Chomper Sharptooth to have ever interrupted a musical number, as he interrupted Ruby's version of "Feel So Happy" in this episode. He does not try to kill the kids, likely due to him not even knowing they were there.
In conclusion, Red Claw clearly doesn't deserve the hate that he gets from the fandom. As this extremely long blog post has shown, Red Claw acts rather sensibly for a predator in his situation. Due to the nature of his status of being a children's show villain, he is unable to use the violence that must have given him the moniker of "the most dangerous Sharptooth of them all." I believe that, instead of ridiculing Red Claw, we should understand that he acts in a way that is very consistent with a real T.rex. While that may not be as exiting, at least he didn't go full Sharptooth in front of an audience of children. Thank you for reading this blog. I hope it at least makes you think about the true meaning of Red Claw's moniker.