Don't watch the mouth, watch the hands

About time I applied these wise words by Peter B. Parker to JP/W raptor behavior, because what do I not use as an excuse to wonder and ponder about that.

While not quite as much hand-talkers as humans can be, the raptors in these movies do sometimes use their sharp bunny-hands in a way that can be used to read something about their intentions. When I looked at another behavior of theirs, snapping one's jaws at someone, I concluded from its use that the Raptor Squad do see Owen as part of their pack and even part of their family, and even though things got tense between them several times, the raptors didn't actually want to hurt him. Another detail in the paddock confrontation also points at that the raptors' aggression towards Owen in that scene is posturing rather than a genuine attempt at hurting him, because they're angry at him for stealing their prey and need to express that, and may consider Owen's actions to be overstepping his place in the pack, but he's also their dad, and a squishy human who would get seriously injured more easily than a fellow raptor would and they know that.

I think how they hold their forelimbs during their unrestrained interactions with him also fits this.

When Owen first runs at them at the paddock, Delta snaps her jaws at him, but Blue doesn't yet. Delta has her hands folded under her, not making them part of the gesture. Blue, who is directly in front of Owen and whom he runs towards and reaches his hand towards, puts her hands up in a "grabby" position, warning Owen from getting any closer.

In the next shot of him and the raptors, the raptors are slowly walking towards him, and both Delta and Blue who are in the shot have their hands down. The confrontation is between Owen and Blue, Delta observes and follows Blue's lead on how to deal with the situation.

Owen seems to stop backing up for a moment, to tell Blue to stand down. She responds by snapping her jaws at him, during which she's stopped approaching, too, and she has her hands under her.

When Owen stands his ground, all three raptors begin to raise their hands, fingers spread and claws aimed forward again, though Delta puts her hands back under her while screeching at him when directly addressed.

Blue crouches down, looking ready to pounce, but doesn't take a step forward. All three have their claws spread forward at the ready.

The raptors have their hands up until Owen turns and runs, and they fold their hands back under them to run after him. They raise them again after they've run most of the way, but by then there's a gate between them and Owen.

Well, that didn't look very reassuring, did it? Kind of scary body language for the most part, though they didn't at least point their claws at him all the time, right?

But the raptors have their hands folded when approaching the paddock worker, too. It doesn't look like they were just about to pounce when Owen ran in, but that was probably the plan eventually. They recently finished a hunting exercise that they didn't actually get to finish as far as they're concerned, because their prey escaped, and maybe they want to toy with this one a bit before attacking. In any case Blue seems to be herding him the same way the JP1 raptors did with the humans at the end of that movie. Delta is going around him a bit, starting to surround him. They might also be waiting for Echo to take her place in the trap, but she's busy eating her pig and not where she's supposed to be.

The JP1 raptors, too, have their hands down when they surround the humans.

Delta also keeps her hands down when approacing and biting Hoskins. She doesn't need to actually pounce to do so, though, since her target is cornered and even helpfully holding out a limb for her to start with.

Fun fact that may or may not have been intentional, by the way: the hand that's the first part of Hoskins that Delta bites is the same hand he used to pet her against her will. He holds out the other hand first, but she doesn't bite until he switches.

So hands folded does not automatically mean no chance of attack. But, when the claws do come up, if the raptor actually intends on attacking, they don't delay much in doing so.

Raptor raising her claws just as she starts charging at Lex in the kitchen scene. The other raptor later raises her claws mid-jump, as she goes after Tim when he runs out of his hiding place and towards the freezer.

Near the ending of JP1, raptor raises her claws just before jumping onto the skeletons the humans are climbing on.

She has her hands down while herding the humans, but as the net tightens she raises her hands in anticipation of sealing the deal. Without Rexy's interference the pounce would have come five seconds after this.

And the raptor about to do that pounce raises her claws just before it, too. We know how soon she was going to jump because Rexy literally catches her out of the air.

And again the remaining raptor raises her claws just before charging at Rexy who just killed her packmate.

The raptors in TLW, too, keep their hands down until just before pouncing. The only times they don't pounce right after is when they get distracted or their prey manages to run away quickly enough. In the example of intra-pack aggression this movie provides, the raptors that exchange jaw snaps until it escalates into a bitey wrestling match keep their hands down as they snap at each other, and the female again raises her claws mid-pounce as she makes the fight physical. There's no stand-off between the last snap and that.

The same with the JP3 raptors, up until the final confrontation with the humans. More on that scene later.

Delta raises her claws just before jumping through the Dilophosaurus hologram.

And Blue also doesn't bring out the grabby hands until just before pouncing in Fallen Kingdom. She greets the Indoraptor by raising her claws as soon as he looks her way and biting his face before he's had the time to say anything back.

In the video logs seen in Fallen Kingdom, baby Delta raises her claws when Owen starts his "showing weakness" performance...

...but lowers them soon after. She tilts her head and watches him for a bit...

...then raises her claws again, crouches, and pounces.

So grabby hands just before or even when already mid-attack is the norm, delay is exceptional. Considering for how much of the paddock confrontation the raptors had their claws up, it should not have taken them that long to follow through on it if that was what they wanted to do.

The jaw snapping is a warning, but Blue uses raising her hands instead when Owen runs to her at the paddock, because her mouth can reach further than her arms can, and she's worried she'd accidentally bite him. When she's more sure of their distance being sufficient and stable, she does warn him by snapping.

The grabby hands are a warning, too. It's more of a threat than the jaw snapping, as the snapping is a reprimand at a packmate more along the lines of "I'm displeased with you", while the raised claws are an "or else" added to the request to stop doing the thing the raptor doesn't want their packmate to be doing. Blue keeps telling Owen to back down and let her have what she wants or she'll attack, but her bluff is called, and she should have attacked already if she was going to.

"Gonna bite you in five seconds! 5, 4, 3, 2... um, 1 and a half..."

Baby Delta's behavior is also in line with this, as I have no reason to believe she treated that situation as anything but play. She's testing Owen's reactions as much as he's testing hers there, and puts her hands down briefly while considering her course of action. Either she first tries to "threaten" him to see what he'll do, or she was already going to pounce then but reconsidered until she's gathered a little more information, and then did pounce for real, albeit without intention of doing harm.

I also think she puts her claws back down for a bit in the paddock confrontation while screeching at Owen (right after the "Delta, I see you. Back up!" line) because the combination of the sudden movement of leaning forward, open mouth, aggressive sound, and raised claws would be too threatening, and this is still just an argument. You don't want to scare the packmate you're arguing with into actually attacking you in what they perceive to be necessary self-defense, you want to intimidate them just enough that they let you win without a fight. Owen himself is completely helpless here and unlikely to attack, of course, but I doubt Delta has forgotten about the tasers aimed at her. Blue doesn't fake an attack, either, and only charges when Owen breaks the tension by running.

And, JP/W Velociraptors are highly social creatures, too complex for deadly violence or seemingly genuine threat of it being their go-to method of communication whenever there's a disagreement in the pack - there's probably an etiquette to this behavior that to a fellow raptor would be easier to read. Even if acting too threatening doesn't cause your packmate to attack you, making them think you're seriously about to kill them is just mean and going too far.

The JP3 raptors' last confrontation with the humans also includes raised claws without following through on the threat, because they aren't there to kill the humans, at least not until they have gotten their eggs safely back. But they do want to intimidate the humans enough to get them to stay where they are, now that they've finally caught them.

As soon as the female raptor arrives, the males lower their claws and look to her for cues on how to proceed, and she goes on to be the first raptor in the movie series to bother to communicate with humans. Not much is said between the two species, but she gets across to the humans to hand over her babies, and manages to resolve the situation by negotiating. After the eggs have been placed on the ground in front of the humans and Dr. Grant confuses the raptors with his terrible vocabulary in their own language, one of the male raptors raises his claws again and starts to lunge at the humans, but the female screeches at him, and he folds his hands back down.

When Blue, Delta, and Echo surround the humans in front of the Innovation Center, Blue and Delta who are in front of and behind them approach with their hands folded. Blue's may have been up when she jumped (ETA: they were), but only briefly. So far their intentions are not clear. The raptors are probably pretty out of their depth themselves. They're angry at Owen, but mostly for what to them looked like abandoning them - is he still one of them, or has he chosen to align himself with other humans and against them?

Echo, who approaches from one side, does so with her claws raised. She's looking at the humans with Owen, but not at him.

Then she lowers her claws a little, but not fully, and looks in Blue's direction.

She then lowers her claws further, and screeches, as far as I can tell at Owen or at the whole group. I think her instruction from Blue was to handle this more carefully than attacking the other humans outright would be. They may want to make up with Owen, and be reluctant to attack him even if he doesn't reassure them enough that he's still on their side, but Claire and the kids' fate definitely depends on whether Blue cares enough that Owen wouldn't want them hurt. Lucky for them, Owen puts his gun down right after - lowering his "claws" - and as I noted in the jaw snapping post, Blue's body language changes to less hostile already then - a lot of it is her posture changing to holding her head higher instead of the more hunched over "ready to attack" stalk, even if she does still snap at him. She sees there's hope for reconciliation and is eager to trust him again.

She also never raises her claws during her reunion with Owen in Fallen Kingdom, until when pouncing on the mercenary who raised his gun. She screeches, growls, and snaps her jaws at Owen, who left her all alone for years, but she doesn't want to hurt him, or even threaten him - the only thing she wants from him is something she's not going to get by scaring him.

She wants him to trust her, too. And to respect her enough that after everything they've been through he wouldn't think she only likes him because he has snacks.

Blue has her claws raised when the Indominus throws her at the wall, and didn't until then during the raptors' confrontation with her. It's hard to tell whether Blue was about to do more than that, but considering the other raptors aren't attacking, it could be another threat she wasn't going to follow through on, yet or at all if it proved unnecessary. Blue did seem to briefly consider the Indominus a packmate, so she may have been still trying to resolve their disagreement by talking. The Indominus is not exactly fluent in the art of diplomacy, though, and not only is huge enough that she can dismiss the raptors as not a big risk to her safety, she's also had a long day and night of everything in the world trying to kill her. That she would have found friends who aren't going to turn against her was too good to be true, wasn't it.

I may have built an entire comic AU around the idea of what if Blue and the Indoraptor didn't fight and managed to talk things out, but as social as Blue is, she, too, certainly has reason to have taken from this experience the lesson not to give the bigger creature the chance to strike first.

Speaking of that AU, though, I kind of had them show the same behavior as in the JW paddock scene in the first comic of that, too. I tend to think of the dialogue I write for them as a translation from raptor communication for the human readers, and though I drew that comic a couple of months short of a year ago, I'd say according to the above observations the dialogue in panels 4-6 is a pretty accurate translation of the body language I gave them.

Both hold their claws up as a threat in case the other tries to hurt them, but neither actually wants to hurt the other, they're just being cautious because they don't know each other and they just recently almost had a fight, so when they both see neither of them is following through on that threat, they lower their claws, and their guard. "If that other raptor was going to attack like they keep warning me they will if I do, they would have already, so looks like they won't if I don't."