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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff

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Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow

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Speaker 1: your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. Joe,

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Speaker 1: I have a question for you. Okay, what's your favorite

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Speaker 1: sea monster from the Bible? How many are there? I

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Speaker 1: mean you've got to go Leviathan, right, yeah? Is there

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Speaker 1: another good sea monster? I guess there's the the whales

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Speaker 1: slash great fish that ate Jonah, that's right. Yeah. So

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Speaker 1: depending on how you interpret Leviathan, you could you could

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Speaker 1: be talking about two whales. Leviathan for anyone who's not

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Speaker 1: familiar shows up in the Book of Job. There's a

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Speaker 1: lot of sort of poetic discussion of the Leviathans, such

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Speaker 1: as can'st Thou'll draw out Leviathan within it with a

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Speaker 1: hook or his tongue with a cord, which thou lettest down.

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Speaker 1: I think the Leviathan of the Book of Job is

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Speaker 1: pretty clearly a fire breathing dragon, right well, but I

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Speaker 1: could never I can never really get a way from

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Speaker 1: the idea that it is some sort of hideous, gigantic

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Speaker 1: sea monster at least a sea serpent, if not a

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Speaker 1: whale of some sort But that's just that's just that's

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Speaker 1: just how I always looked to it. Well, I know

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Speaker 1: a lot of times people try to explain some of

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Speaker 1: the like the Leviathan and the Behemoth as being some

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Speaker 1: kind of interpretation on existing animals, like, oh, maybe it

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Speaker 1: was a whale, or maybe it was a saltwater crocodile

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Speaker 1: or something. I don't know. Why not go with a

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Speaker 1: fire breathing dragon. You got a fire breathing dragon on

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Speaker 1: your plate, and you're trying to say no, no, no,

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Speaker 1: I don't want it. Well, I also have to say,

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Speaker 1: for Behemoth, the other massive creature that's referenced in Job,

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Speaker 1: I have pretty much always imagined some sort of Warhammer

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Speaker 1: battle creature from from the Warhammer table tap game, some

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Speaker 1: sort of big, like armored fiery demon monster. Yeah. But

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Speaker 1: of course, the question of why the Leviathan and the

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Speaker 1: Behemoth are invoked in the Book of Job goes sort

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Speaker 1: of to the theology of the book, right, because they're

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Speaker 1: in the scene where God shows up and God's like, Hey,

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Speaker 1: who's the boss? Is it? You know it's me because

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Speaker 1: I can best even these top apex predators on the earth. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: primordial sea monsters or land monsters or what have you.

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Speaker 1: I can take them out, you can't. So I'm kind

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Speaker 1: of running the whole show here. But it invokes the

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Speaker 1: idea that there are some beast on earth so powerful,

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Speaker 1: so so tip top of the pyramid, that it would

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Speaker 1: take a god to best them. That's right. We when

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Speaker 1: we think of some of our top apex predators. Uh,

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Speaker 1: this is what we often invoked, these ideas, right, because well,

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Speaker 1: what do you think of when you think of an

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Speaker 1: apex predator. Well, maybe your mind turns to a tiger,

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Speaker 1: you know, tiger, tiger burning bright. You know, you can't

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Speaker 1: help but romanticize the power of this creature. Or perhaps

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Speaker 1: you think of the great white shark. I always think

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Speaker 1: of the shark. Yeah, I mean, it's just so powerful

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Speaker 1: and intimidating. It just it haunts our our our dreams.

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Speaker 1: Or perhaps you know, it's some visions of the mighty

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Speaker 1: t rex, or perhaps the spina saurus if you want

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Speaker 1: some prehistoric flavor, or really any of the various prehistoric

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Speaker 1: land mammals that were particularly ferocious looking. So, what are

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Speaker 1: the qualities that you associate with an apex predator, the

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Speaker 1: predator at the tip top of the food chain? Well, generally,

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Speaker 1: you think it's gotta it's gotta be bigger than us, right,

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Speaker 1: I mean, it doesn't actually have to be bigger than us,

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Speaker 1: but it helps for us to pass that crown of

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Speaker 1: Apex Predator over to it um it. It needs to

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Speaker 1: be a ferocious predator obviously, and it needs to have

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Speaker 1: no enemies except for maybe us if we're particularly crafty,

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Speaker 1: and generally we are crafty enough to eradicate just about

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Speaker 1: anything on this planet. Come on, we're the enemy of everything.

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Speaker 1: It's always got us. Yeah, Really, the only things that

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Speaker 1: have a leg up in the battle against humans are

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Speaker 1: the smaller creatures such as say the mosquito or various

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Speaker 1: uh bacteria. Yeah, we're much more threatened to buy, say,

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Speaker 1: armies of unstoppable parasites, than we are by that single,

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Speaker 1: one powerful creature that that king or queen of the

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Speaker 1: animal world. Yeah. And part of that has to do

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Speaker 1: with the fragile nature of the the Apex throne, because

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Speaker 1: that's the thing about about the mighty Apex Predator. It's

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Speaker 1: rule is tentative. There's there's not only loneliness at the top,

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Speaker 1: but fragility and peril and ultimately who who knows how

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Speaker 1: many great apex predators have perished throughout the evolutionary timeline,

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Speaker 1: So many just massive toothy you know, flesh terrors have

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Speaker 1: just ultimately perished, and many of them lost to us

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Speaker 1: due to the rarity of their fossils. Yeah, that's exactly

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Speaker 1: the problem, right, How many t rex fossils do you

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Speaker 1: expect to find? Well, actually, not that many, because there

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Speaker 1: would you know, each time you go a step up

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Speaker 1: the food chain, they're going to be fewer individuals, and often,

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Speaker 1: especially with land dwelling animals, those fewer individuals are less

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Speaker 1: likely to end up in a place where they're likely

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Speaker 1: to get fossilized. So yeah, the top apex predators are

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Speaker 1: underrepresented in the fossil record. Those are just the ones

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Speaker 1: that leave good fossil traces. I mean. One of the

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Speaker 1: greatest s apex predators of all time, which we will

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Speaker 1: be talking about in today's episode partially, is the great shark,

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Speaker 1: the megalodon, which, because it's you know, this mostly cartilaginous fish,

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Speaker 1: it doesn't have a solid skeleton like so many other

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Speaker 1: animals do, so you you rarely even find all that

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Speaker 1: extensive of a trace of it. You have to find

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Speaker 1: its teeth and maybe little fragments of spinal pieces here

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Speaker 1: and there. You don't find whole intact megalodons, that's right. Meanwhile,

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Speaker 1: of course, as we've discussed, the trilobytes are everywhere. Now

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Speaker 1: when we think of giant, successful creatures that that prey

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Speaker 1: with impunity and uh and have few, if any enemies

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Speaker 1: in the natural world, we can't help but think of

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Speaker 1: of the giant whales, the great whales such as the

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Speaker 1: blue whale, the finback whale, the sperm whale, the right whale,

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Speaker 1: and the humpback whale. Man whales are such amazing creatures,

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Speaker 1: and we are going to be focusing on one particular

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Speaker 1: whale today, but also predatory whales in general. But especially

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Speaker 1: when you get into the larger whales, there's really nothing

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Speaker 1: on Earth like them. Oh yeah, I mean, for instance,

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Speaker 1: the blue whale is not only the largest creature on

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Speaker 1: Earth today, it is the largest creature known to have

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Speaker 1: ever existed ever. Yeah, like we're living the peak. You

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Speaker 1: can't go back into prehistoric timelines and find a bigger

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Speaker 1: blue whale, because the blue whale is the is the

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Speaker 1: upper limit that as least as far as we've experienced

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Speaker 1: it thus far as a planet. But that's not the

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Speaker 1: only whale superlative that's right. For instance, the sperm whale

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Speaker 1: has the largest brain ever to have existed on Earth. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and that big brain is even there in the scientific

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Speaker 1: name of the sperm whale, which is visitor macrocephalus macrocephalus,

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Speaker 1: meaning big head. Now, I think there are a couple

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Speaker 1: of reasons for that. One of them is that it's

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Speaker 1: got the biggest brain ever, but another one is that,

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Speaker 1: of course it's got this giant, bloated forehead full of sperm,

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Speaker 1: the spermacetic organ and the big melon that's used in echolocation,

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Speaker 1: which we'll get to in a minute, but well, focus

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Speaker 1: on that brain. An adult sperm whales brain is about

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Speaker 1: eight thousand cubic centimeters on average, and if you compare

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Speaker 1: that to the mean human brain, which is about cubic centimeters,

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Speaker 1: you'll see the difference. Like, this is a whale, and

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Speaker 1: we we think of ourselves as like, wow, we got

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Speaker 1: the best biggest brain on the you know, in the world.

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Speaker 1: And of course brain size is not directly correlated to

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Speaker 1: intelligence as we would imagine intelligence, but we think of

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Speaker 1: ourselves as like the brain beast. We are the brain

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Speaker 1: animal and sperm whales have a brain that is about

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Speaker 1: five times bigger than ours. Now, one thing you might

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Speaker 1: wonder is, okay, you've got a blue whale that's much

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Speaker 1: bigger than a sperm whale, but it's got a smaller

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Speaker 1: brain than a sperm whale. Why is that? What would

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Speaker 1: that be due to? Well, I would hypothesize that might

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Speaker 1: have to do with the different ways these animals make

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Speaker 1: a living. So whales belong to the biological order Cetacea,

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Speaker 1: along with dolphins and porpoises, and from there, whales are

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Speaker 1: divided into two categories. You've got the billeen whales like

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Speaker 1: the blue whale and the humpback, and then you've got

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Speaker 1: the toothed whales like the orca or the killer whale,

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Speaker 1: and the sperm whales. So you might chalk up this

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Speaker 1: brain difference to the difference in the general trend of

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Speaker 1: encephialization ratios for active or raptorial predators versus more passive feeders.

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Speaker 1: Blue whales are filter feeders, I guess you could still

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Speaker 1: say their predators in a way. They prey on microscopic

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Speaker 1: organisms small not microscopic, but small organisms like krill and

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Speaker 1: copa pods. Swimming through these clouds of tiny crustaceans in

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Speaker 1: the sea with their mouths open and their buffet feasters. Well,

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Speaker 1: another way to think of it is that they're grazers, right,

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Speaker 1: They're they're not I mean, they're not herbivores, they're not

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Speaker 1: eating plants. They're eating animals, but they're grazing on these

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Speaker 1: vast patches of tiny animals that have no defensive capabilities

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Speaker 1: or anything like that. They're just sort of drifting through

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Speaker 1: their food. Yeah. Their whole approach is essentially, I'm just

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Speaker 1: gonna float around eat as much as I possibly can,

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Speaker 1: and I'm too big for anything to mess with me. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and it's kind of beautiful. Actually. There are videos of

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Speaker 1: blue whales approaching these patches of of their food sources

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Speaker 1: like krill and stuff. So you'll see a large cloud

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Speaker 1: of just differently colored water essentially, and the blue whales

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Speaker 1: accelerate toward it, and right as they get toward there,

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Speaker 1: they just pry their mouths open. It looks like a

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Speaker 1: giant machine opening up to like accept a conveyor belt

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Speaker 1: or something, which in a way it kind of is.

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Speaker 1: And you've just got this massive flow in of these

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Speaker 1: tiny organisms to get caught in its baleen plates the

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Speaker 1: mouth parts that catch the food so they can process it. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and I don't want to imply that there's not an

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Speaker 1: intelligence and a beauty and a strategy to the feeding

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Speaker 1: practices of the baling whales, because you do find examples of, say,

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Speaker 1: humpback whales employing a sort of social strategy sometimes to

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Speaker 1: consume their prey. But sperm whales, on the other hand,

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Speaker 1: are more active hunters, so they often i've deep to

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Speaker 1: catch their prey, which is mostly giant squid, but they

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Speaker 1: also hunt fish and octopus and larger crustaceans and sometimes

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Speaker 1: even sharks. So all around the world I mentioned this

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Speaker 1: incephialization quotation. All around the world, it's a pretty common

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Speaker 1: rule that predatory hunters didn't have larger brains than the

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Speaker 1: prey they hunt, and this implies a great need for

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Speaker 1: processing power, not necessarily what we would think of as

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Speaker 1: intelligence and the kind of abstract human intelligence that we

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Speaker 1: associate with. I don't know math problems or spatial problem

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Speaker 1: solving or i Q tests or anything. I think biologists

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Speaker 1: tend to think that sperm whales likely need these big

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Speaker 1: brains for perception, which is a kind of intelligence on

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Speaker 1: its own right. Generally on land, a predator needs to

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Speaker 1: have sharp senses to help it at like track and

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Speaker 1: spy on prey, you know, to sense prey from far away,

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Speaker 1: to stay on top of it, to be very aware

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Speaker 1: of its surroundings. And on land this is very often

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Speaker 1: sight and smell. But spur whales, on the other hand,

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Speaker 1: hunt mostly in this dark world of sound, hunting and

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Speaker 1: mapping its surroundings by echolocation, where it uses these organs

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Speaker 1: in its head to slap tissues together and create these

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Speaker 1: clicks that they are then reflected out into the water,

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Speaker 1: and it listens for the echoes of these clicks reflecting

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Speaker 1: back to it off of anything that has a different

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Speaker 1: density than the water itself. So you have to if

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Speaker 1: you're trying to imagine the inner life of a sperm whale,

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Speaker 1: imagine yourself as a creature with a huge, powerful brain

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Speaker 1: so highly tuned for sound that their internal picture of

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Speaker 1: the world around them in a totally dark place is

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Speaker 1: as rich and fine grained based on sound as our

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Speaker 1: picture of the world is based on light. It's kind

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Speaker 1: of impossible to put yourself in that headspace. But yeah,

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Speaker 1: and and then I mean and also almost impossible for

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Speaker 1: us as humans to imagine that this creature. Uh, it's

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Speaker 1: it's ancient ancestor with some sort of like essentially like

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Speaker 1: a land wolf. Oh yeah, uh, I mean that. That's

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Speaker 1: one of the craziest things is that you've always got

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Speaker 1: to remember with whales, these creatures were not always in

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Speaker 1: the water. They evolved from land dwelling mammals. So you

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Speaker 1: might wonder, once you're one of the larger whales, do

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Speaker 1: you really have any enemies to worry about it all?

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Speaker 1: Like if you are a sperm whale, if you're one

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Speaker 1: of these powerful dark world predators that's you know, got

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Speaker 1: the biggest brain in the entire animal kingdom, one of

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Speaker 1: the biggest bodies in the entire animal kingdom. Is there

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Speaker 1: any enemy out there for you in the wild? Not really?

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Speaker 1: Probably only orcas really the worka or the killer whale.

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Speaker 1: But orcas are also fascinating whale predators. I was reading

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Speaker 1: article in The Guardian by a marine biologist named Lawrence

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Speaker 1: Smith about how orca's will sometimes attack great white sharks

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Speaker 1: to eat their livers. You ever heard about this? Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it's amazing. So apparently shark livers are just like Jack

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Speaker 1: Pott marine nutrition. They're packed with more than ninety three

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Speaker 1: per sent lipid's triascle glycerols. And Smith compares a great

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Speaker 1: white shark liver to quote a deep fried Mars bar

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Speaker 1: with added vitamins. So it's packed with fat, rich, richly nutritious,

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Speaker 1: but also lots of hard to come by nutrients in

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Speaker 1: the ocean. So how do you get a great white

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Speaker 1: sharks liver? Right? A great white shark that's a rough customer, right, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I mean that. Yeah, even as delightful as that liver

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Speaker 1: is gonna be, you're gonna have to get through the

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Speaker 1: great white and all those teeth to have a bite

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Speaker 1: of it. But apparently orca's don't have all that hard

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Speaker 1: a time at it, because orca's are highly evolved, incredibly

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Speaker 1: adept apex predators, and they can even prey on other

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Speaker 1: apex predators like sharks. They are pack hunters. Yeah, and

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Speaker 1: so the trick, Lauren Smith explains, and this fascinating article

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Speaker 1: is that you give the shark the old flip flop.

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Speaker 1: So she writes a quote. During a n encounter off

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Speaker 1: the Farallon Islands off the coast of San Francisco, a

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Speaker 1: group of whale watchers witnessed an orca ramming into the

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Speaker 1: side of a great white shark, momentarily stunning it and

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Speaker 1: allowing the orca to flip it over and holding it

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Speaker 1: in place ventral belly up for around fifteen minutes, after

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Speaker 1: which the orca began consuming its prey, much to the

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Speaker 1: surprise of the whale watchers on board. A similar incident

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Speaker 1: was captured on film off Costa Rica, and this time

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Speaker 1: the orcas prey was a tiger shark. And it's not

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Speaker 1: just sharks. Orcas have been observed doing the same to

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Speaker 1: sting rays too, So what's going on here, Like, how

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Speaker 1: come an orca can ram a shark, flip it upside

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Speaker 1: down and then just eat its liver with impunity. Well,

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Speaker 1: apparently sharks and rays have a nervous system security backdoor,

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Speaker 1: and it's known as tonic immobility. And this is a

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Speaker 1: state of paralysis that alasmo bronx, which are sharks raisin skates,

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Speaker 1: fall into when they get positioned upside down in the water.

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Speaker 1: So you flip a shark belly up ventral side up,

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Speaker 1: and it'll go catatonic and lose muscle control. Basically just

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Speaker 1: goes into a coma and till it can get flipped

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Speaker 1: around again. So what's the adaptive value in this? You've

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Speaker 1: gotta wonder why a shark would have an exploit like this.

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Speaker 1: Nobody knows for sure, but it has been suggested this

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Speaker 1: might somehow be used in mating practices. Okay, well that

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Speaker 1: would that would make sense. That would be like the

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Speaker 1: one time where it might be important for a shark,

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Speaker 1: a highly aggressive predator, to be at least mildly incapacitated

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Speaker 1: by it's uh, it's it's the mating shark. Yeah, But

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Speaker 1: all this to illustrate how orcas are these amazing whale

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Speaker 1: predators themselves. So do they pose any threat to sperm whales? Well,

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Speaker 1: pods of orca's will sometimes attempt to separate sperm whale

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Speaker 1: calves from their mothers and eat them. Uh. And I

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Speaker 1: actually did find one account from a paper published in

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Speaker 1: Marine Mammal Science in two thousand and six about a

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Speaker 1: large herd of orcas attacking a pod of nine sperm whales,

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Speaker 1: including sperm whale adults and and preying on them. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: It's actually kind of a a horrifying scene. They describe

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Speaker 1: where the sperm whales would circle up in this defensive

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Speaker 1: posture where they kind of make a ring to defend

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Speaker 1: themselves and try to fend off the killer whale attacks.

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Speaker 1: But the orcas were coming at them, and the in

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Speaker 1: the it says that the orca has employed a wound

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Speaker 1: and withdraw strategy, so they go in and try to

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Speaker 1: injure the sperm whales and then back away, because of

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Speaker 1: course the sperm whale is a very dangerous enemy, and

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Speaker 1: you know, you could be seriously injured trying to prey

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Speaker 1: on one. So yeah, there was at least this one

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Speaker 1: account I found of killer whales praying on adult sperm whales,

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Speaker 1: But generally it seems like sperm whales, once they're adults,

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Speaker 1: they're in good health, they're pretty much unassailable in the ocean.

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Speaker 1: They don't really have natural enemies except for the occasional

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Speaker 1: large herd attack of killer whales. And then of course

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Speaker 1: this one other enemy, this one, and that would of

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Speaker 1: course be a humans, because we are we are and

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Speaker 1: have been the main enemy of the great whales. Uh,

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Speaker 1: certainly within the confines of human history, certainly in the

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Speaker 1: last couple of hundred years, we are the apex hunters

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Speaker 1: who hunted them relentlessly and drove several species to the

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Speaker 1: brink of extinction. I mean you compare us to the orcas,

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Speaker 1: who again are mainly going to be a threat to

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Speaker 1: young whales, And there is certainly some there's some heartbreaking

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Speaker 1: documentary footage out there of orcas hunting a mother and

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Speaker 1: her young whale across the seas. But humans, but are

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Speaker 1: whaling practice to just prey on everything? Yeah? The counterpoint

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Speaker 1: to that orca hunting is if you get to witness

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Speaker 1: the protective practices of the adult, like the mother sperm whale,

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Speaker 1: that's pretty amazing too. Yes, But it depends on the

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Speaker 1: documented is some document if it's an Attenborough documentary, I

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Speaker 1: don't necessarily trust that he is not going to break

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Speaker 1: my heart with some terrifying predation. Well, there's a lot

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Speaker 1: of heartbreak in the ocean. Yeah, I mean, there's no

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Speaker 1: denying it. But basically I end up approaching it this

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Speaker 1: way because I'll watch a lot of documentaries with my

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Speaker 1: son and it's it's gotten to the point where it's

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Speaker 1: kind of a toss up, like how he's gonna respond

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Speaker 1: to the predation Because used to like any predation, especially

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Speaker 1: there's dramatic music. He would get a little upset about.

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Speaker 1: But but now, at almost six years old, he's surprisingly

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Speaker 1: chill with some grotesque levels of pre date predation, Like

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Speaker 1: it'll be three leopard cubs feasting on a corpse and

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Speaker 1: I'll come in and I'll I'll walk over and I'll

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Speaker 1: see this, and we're like, are you Are you okay

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Speaker 1: with this, buddy, And he says, he says, oh, yeah,

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Speaker 1: they're brothers. They're hungry. That's fine, Robert. I think you've

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Speaker 1: just come up with a great children's show, The Hungry Brothers.

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Speaker 1: It's it's all about how you frame it right now.

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Speaker 1: One of the questions that the flip flop of all

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Speaker 1: this is do sperm whales ever attack humans? This is

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Speaker 1: something that has been a point of controversy, though there

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Speaker 1: are definitely reports, especially reports from the nineteenth century, of

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Speaker 1: for example, sperm whales ramming ships. Now, it's hard to

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Speaker 1: tell if these accounts are accurate, but sailors from like

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Speaker 1: Simpkins ships in the nineteenth century did report it sometimes. Yes,

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Speaker 1: what happened is a sperm whale rammed our ship until

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Speaker 1: we sank it, like attacked us with the intent to

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Speaker 1: kill us. And you know, it's hard to imagine if

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Speaker 1: that's even true to begin with, It's hard to imagine

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Speaker 1: what's going on in the mind of the sperm whale,

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Speaker 1: though I have also read comments from sub marine biologists

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Speaker 1: too think, well, yeah, it's possible that, for example, a

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Speaker 1: sperm whale might ram a ship if it perceived that

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Speaker 1: ship as a threat, which a sperm whale could have

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Speaker 1: good reasons to do, especially in the nineteenth century with

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Speaker 1: horrible whaling practices. I mean, if you read about some

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Speaker 1: of the whaling practices that were in place, then it's

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Speaker 1: worse than any Attenborough documentary. It's it's just the most

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Speaker 1: sadistic kind of methods. One I read about was where

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Speaker 1: the whalers would kidnap a calf whale, injure it, and

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Speaker 1: then keep it they're injured, waiting for the parents to

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Speaker 1: come and try to rescue it, at which point they'd

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Speaker 1: harpoon the parents. Yeah, I mean, I mean, certainly the

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Speaker 1: individuals participating this at the time, you do have to

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Speaker 1: re eyes. Yeah, they were, they were participating in an

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Speaker 1: in an industry, and this probably not everyone's first choice.

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Speaker 1: It's true, I mean, I shouldn't judge too much. I mean,

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Speaker 1: and in some cases this is also a cultural practice

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Speaker 1: that I I shouldn't pass too much judgment on that,

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Speaker 1: but but certainly the whaling industry, Yeah, but certainly the

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Speaker 1: whaling industry did become such an industry that it is.

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Speaker 1: It is difficult, if not impossible, to look back on

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Speaker 1: it now and not feel a little sick about it. Like, uh,

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Speaker 1: when I was a kid in Newfoundland, Canada for a while,

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Speaker 1: I remember we would uh, at least on one occasion,

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Speaker 1: we we walked through an abandoned uh whaling port uh.

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Speaker 1: And it was it was even then when I only

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Speaker 1: like really kind of partially understood everything, it was kind

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Speaker 1: of haunting because you would find these like whale vertebrae,

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Speaker 1: and then there would be these big rusted harpoons, like

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Speaker 1: the blunt harpoons, and then the as well as some

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Speaker 1: of the pointed ones as well. And these were like

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Speaker 1: the later day ones, the ones that would have been uh,

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Speaker 1: you know, launched off of a canon I understand, not

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Speaker 1: the the romantic moby Dick era harpoons. I feel like

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Speaker 1: there's another way in which whaling sort of violates our

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Speaker 1: hunting intuitions, which is, I mean a lot of people

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Speaker 1: would feel terrible about any kind of killing of an animal,

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Speaker 1: But somehow there's an intuition that killing an animal to

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Speaker 1: harvest its meat for food is kind of different than

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Speaker 1: like killing an animal to melt it down and render

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Speaker 1: it's fat for industrial purposes, which is a lot of

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Speaker 1: what was going on with lamps, etcetera. Yeah, Now, as

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Speaker 1: you mentioned earlier, uh, a lot of these stories of

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Speaker 1: like whales ramming ships, We're not completely sure what happened.

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Speaker 1: There's a there are there's a lot of legend that

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Speaker 1: that rises up surrounding the activity of whales during the

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Speaker 1: height of the whaling industry. Uh. And then there of

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Speaker 1: course whole myths of sperm whales, in particular swallowing humans whole.

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Speaker 1: Is that true? Did that really happen? Uh? So I've

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Speaker 1: looked into this in the into the in the past

401
00:21:54,600 --> 00:21:56,439
Speaker 1: stuff to put your mind. Actually did an episode on

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Speaker 1: this way back in the day. Uh, and it seems

403
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Speaker 1: like it probably did not happen. It's it's a it's

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Speaker 1: an inviting idea because sperm whales, as we already mentioned,

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Speaker 1: they do feed by suction, some chewing, but oftentimes they're

406
00:22:10,119 --> 00:22:13,760
Speaker 1: just sucking down something whole and in fact, in nive

407
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Speaker 1: a whole a whole, like un chewed four hundred and

408
00:22:18,359 --> 00:22:20,679
Speaker 1: five pound giant squid was recovered from the belly of

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Speaker 1: a sperm whale. Uh and uh in the sperm whale

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Speaker 1: doesn't even have a tongue, you know, to to prevent

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Speaker 1: just this absolute and inhalation of tissue. Now as now,

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Speaker 1: the question, of course is has a sperm whale ever

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Speaker 1: sucked down a human being which would which is also

414
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Speaker 1: probably an inviting idea because of the the myth of

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Speaker 1: Jonah and the Whale, or our stories like Pinocchio and

416
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Speaker 1: the Belly of a Whale, or even modern retellings like

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Speaker 1: the Whaler's Revenge Song by the Decembrants. Uh. There's actually

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Speaker 1: a wonderful article that came out in Salon back in

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Speaker 1: by author of Ben Shattuck, and he explored the question

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Speaker 1: at the new Bedford Whaling Museum Search Library. So he

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Speaker 1: was going through all these various accounts of of whale

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Speaker 1: related deaths frequently caused by a whale on boat action

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Speaker 1: and ramming a boat and yeah, or just also thrashing,

424
00:23:12,920 --> 00:23:15,000
Speaker 1: you know, like the flute could hit the boat. I mean,

425
00:23:15,000 --> 00:23:19,480
Speaker 1: these are massive creatures and in their struggle to survive, Yeah,

426
00:23:19,520 --> 00:23:21,440
Speaker 1: they could do some serious damage to a boat. Well,

427
00:23:21,480 --> 00:23:23,399
Speaker 1: that's the thing to remember. If they want to kill us,

428
00:23:23,480 --> 00:23:25,960
Speaker 1: of course they could. The question is like, would that

429
00:23:26,080 --> 00:23:28,960
Speaker 1: be uh, something that would occur to them to do? Right,

430
00:23:29,480 --> 00:23:32,920
Speaker 1: So Shattuck says, quote, I'd like to believe in swallowings,

431
00:23:32,920 --> 00:23:35,960
Speaker 1: but it's tough. There's there is no air in the stomach,

432
00:23:36,000 --> 00:23:38,399
Speaker 1: for one, there are acids, and if we are talking

433
00:23:38,400 --> 00:23:41,080
Speaker 1: about sperm whales, which are most of the which we

434
00:23:41,119 --> 00:23:43,560
Speaker 1: are most of the time, there is the deadly passage

435
00:23:43,560 --> 00:23:47,760
Speaker 1: through the thirty foot jaws and those teeth. So, uh,

436
00:23:48,160 --> 00:23:50,000
Speaker 1: this is a wonderful article and I'm not gonna attempt

437
00:23:50,000 --> 00:23:53,080
Speaker 1: to summarize it all here. He gets into a number

438
00:23:53,080 --> 00:23:54,960
Speaker 1: of different angles and it really gets into the heart

439
00:23:54,960 --> 00:23:57,880
Speaker 1: of this kind of like voar fetish, this idea that

440
00:23:58,280 --> 00:24:01,520
Speaker 1: we kind of like the idea of being consumed whole

441
00:24:01,520 --> 00:24:04,080
Speaker 1: by another organism because it is like a return to

442
00:24:04,119 --> 00:24:07,720
Speaker 1: the womb. How weird. Yeah. So he discusses a few

443
00:24:07,720 --> 00:24:11,640
Speaker 1: different stories, different accounts of people being dragged and released

444
00:24:11,640 --> 00:24:15,480
Speaker 1: by whales, h maulled by whales. There's one particular story,

445
00:24:16,119 --> 00:24:19,720
Speaker 1: the case of Edmund Gardner, where there's actually a photograph

446
00:24:19,800 --> 00:24:21,680
Speaker 1: of this individual years later and you can still see

447
00:24:21,680 --> 00:24:25,240
Speaker 1: his mangled hand because he lost some fingers uh, to

448
00:24:25,800 --> 00:24:28,840
Speaker 1: the mouth of a sperm whale. There are, ultimately in

449
00:24:28,880 --> 00:24:31,840
Speaker 1: the new Bedford Whale Museum thousands of accounts of people

450
00:24:31,880 --> 00:24:34,320
Speaker 1: being chewed on by whales, but there's not a single

451
00:24:34,359 --> 00:24:38,359
Speaker 1: one of someone being swallowed shadock. However, not to disappoint

452
00:24:38,359 --> 00:24:40,719
Speaker 1: he does discuss. He does discuss what it would be

453
00:24:40,800 --> 00:24:43,320
Speaker 1: like to be eaten by a sperm whale. That is

454
00:24:43,359 --> 00:24:46,639
Speaker 1: my kind of exploration. Yea. Now we we did the

455
00:24:46,760 --> 00:24:48,119
Speaker 1: what it would be like to get eaten by a

456
00:24:48,119 --> 00:24:50,119
Speaker 1: giant spider. We could do a whole episode on what

457
00:24:50,160 --> 00:24:52,919
Speaker 1: would be like to get eating by a giant whale? Yeah. Yeah.

458
00:24:52,920 --> 00:24:54,960
Speaker 1: He goes into it in depth in the article, but

459
00:24:55,040 --> 00:24:57,760
Speaker 1: basically it would go down like this. You'd be sort

460
00:24:57,800 --> 00:25:00,440
Speaker 1: of chewed on or at least gnashed on those eight

461
00:25:00,440 --> 00:25:03,720
Speaker 1: inch teeth. You get sucked down the throat into a dark,

462
00:25:03,800 --> 00:25:07,560
Speaker 1: airless place, just water and acid, and then you'd slide

463
00:25:07,600 --> 00:25:11,240
Speaker 1: into the first stomach or holding bag for twenty four hours,

464
00:25:11,280 --> 00:25:14,680
Speaker 1: perhaps surrounded. He has this beautiful description of the possible

465
00:25:14,720 --> 00:25:18,560
Speaker 1: bioluminescent squid that would be down there with you lighting

466
00:25:18,600 --> 00:25:21,520
Speaker 1: it up for a little bit, and but then the

467
00:25:21,560 --> 00:25:23,919
Speaker 1: acid would break you down and you pass through three

468
00:25:23,920 --> 00:25:27,679
Speaker 1: smaller s shaped stomachs, liquidized and then reduced a whale

469
00:25:27,720 --> 00:25:30,760
Speaker 1: excrement with some possible bits of bones stuck in there,

470
00:25:31,240 --> 00:25:33,159
Speaker 1: and that would be your journey, pooped out in a

471
00:25:33,200 --> 00:25:37,960
Speaker 1: cloud of beaks. Yes, yeah, because that being the The

472
00:25:38,080 --> 00:25:40,159
Speaker 1: side fact here is that, of course the beaks of

473
00:25:40,160 --> 00:25:42,479
Speaker 1: giant squid are not digested either, and they end up

474
00:25:42,480 --> 00:25:47,719
Speaker 1: just passing through rest and beaks. Okay, but today we

475
00:25:47,760 --> 00:25:51,119
Speaker 1: want to look at these magnificent giant predators, the sperm

476
00:25:51,119 --> 00:25:54,679
Speaker 1: whales and their predatory tooth oil relatives, and specifically to

477
00:25:54,920 --> 00:25:59,720
Speaker 1: follow their ancestors back through history millions of years, back

478
00:26:00,119 --> 00:26:02,680
Speaker 1: to the time of something that seems to me like

479
00:26:02,880 --> 00:26:06,840
Speaker 1: maybe the ultimate predator, the best apex predator I've ever

480
00:26:06,880 --> 00:26:10,360
Speaker 1: read about, the Leviathan, and I think we should tell

481
00:26:10,359 --> 00:26:12,600
Speaker 1: the story of this creature when we come back from

482
00:26:12,640 --> 00:26:18,480
Speaker 1: a break than alright, we're back. So to be clear,

483
00:26:18,720 --> 00:26:22,280
Speaker 1: we've known about prehistoric whales in general for quite a

484
00:26:22,280 --> 00:26:24,840
Speaker 1: while now, and if you've ever spent much time in

485
00:26:24,880 --> 00:26:27,879
Speaker 1: a in a in a paleontology museum or book, then

486
00:26:27,920 --> 00:26:31,359
Speaker 1: you've seen these creatures often depicted as sort of sort

487
00:26:31,359 --> 00:26:34,760
Speaker 1: of skexy faced whales. You know, now you're not pronouncing

488
00:26:34,880 --> 00:26:37,600
Speaker 1: sexy in a funny way. You're saying like skexies, like

489
00:26:37,680 --> 00:26:40,080
Speaker 1: in the Dark Crystal, the skexies of the Dark Crystal,

490
00:26:40,119 --> 00:26:43,600
Speaker 1: where they kind of like long, slender snouted and very

491
00:26:43,720 --> 00:26:47,960
Speaker 1: toothy looking vulture face. Yeah, kind of vulture faced whales.

492
00:26:48,720 --> 00:26:51,480
Speaker 1: That that's how paleo artists tended to pick them. And

493
00:26:51,560 --> 00:26:56,600
Speaker 1: the prime example here would be basil Osaurus. Like the name, yeah,

494
00:26:56,640 --> 00:26:59,880
Speaker 1: well it's name is misleading because it means king lizard. Well,

495
00:27:00,359 --> 00:27:03,320
Speaker 1: but it's not a lizard. But due to the rules

496
00:27:03,400 --> 00:27:06,320
Speaker 1: of naming, attempts to name it other things have not

497
00:27:06,400 --> 00:27:09,879
Speaker 1: to work. So we're stuck with Basilosaurus. Okay, tell me

498
00:27:09,880 --> 00:27:13,000
Speaker 1: about basil o Saurus. Okay. So this was a genus

499
00:27:13,040 --> 00:27:17,399
Speaker 1: of prehistoric cetaceans from the late EO scene that's forty

500
00:27:17,440 --> 00:27:20,679
Speaker 1: to thirty five million years ago, and according to the Smithsonian,

501
00:27:20,720 --> 00:27:23,800
Speaker 1: they probably reached links of forty to sixty five ft

502
00:27:23,800 --> 00:27:27,199
Speaker 1: that's twelve to twenty meters roughly. Uh. Though the nine

503
00:27:28,119 --> 00:27:31,280
Speaker 1: Encyclopedia of Dinosaurs and Prehistoric Animals that's a book that

504
00:27:31,320 --> 00:27:34,520
Speaker 1: I grew up with and continue to like check out

505
00:27:34,520 --> 00:27:36,720
Speaker 1: with my son because it has all these wonderful illustrations.

506
00:27:37,280 --> 00:27:39,480
Speaker 1: That book boasted a length of up to eighty two

507
00:27:39,520 --> 00:27:42,199
Speaker 1: ft or twenty five ms. I can tell they're stretching

508
00:27:42,240 --> 00:27:44,120
Speaker 1: it right now. But if you want to talk about

509
00:27:44,119 --> 00:27:47,160
Speaker 1: stretching it, you go back to eighteen forty five Albert Coke,

510
00:27:47,240 --> 00:27:50,480
Speaker 1: who was an avid fossil collector, showman and proprietor of

511
00:27:50,520 --> 00:27:53,640
Speaker 1: the St. Louis Museum. He claimed that the creature would

512
00:27:53,640 --> 00:27:56,359
Speaker 1: have measured a hundred and fourteen feet long or thirty

513
00:27:56,359 --> 00:27:59,159
Speaker 1: five meters, And yeah, he was a bit of a showman,

514
00:27:59,200 --> 00:28:02,200
Speaker 1: and but this drew skepticism from the scientific community. Even

515
00:28:02,240 --> 00:28:03,720
Speaker 1: at the time. They were like, I don't know, that

516
00:28:03,760 --> 00:28:07,880
Speaker 1: sounds a bit big. I mean there's always this inflationary tendency, right,

517
00:28:07,920 --> 00:28:10,240
Speaker 1: you want to make the thing as big as possible. Yeah,

518
00:28:10,240 --> 00:28:13,160
Speaker 1: you're trying to sell tickets. Yeah, So this creature would

519
00:28:13,160 --> 00:28:16,520
Speaker 1: have been an early precursor to the great toothed whales

520
00:28:16,560 --> 00:28:19,919
Speaker 1: to follow, sharing a similar diet, but without the larger

521
00:28:19,960 --> 00:28:24,119
Speaker 1: cranium size or the the evolved social behavior. And this

522
00:28:24,200 --> 00:28:28,280
Speaker 1: brings us to the Leviathan, Right, the Leviathan. I'm so

523
00:28:28,320 --> 00:28:31,080
Speaker 1: excited about the Leviathan. So I want to tell a

524
00:28:31,080 --> 00:28:34,760
Speaker 1: fossil discovery story and give you the setting. So it

525
00:28:34,840 --> 00:28:38,000
Speaker 1: was November two eight and there were a team of

526
00:28:38,120 --> 00:28:41,720
Speaker 1: fossil hunters. They were exploring the desert of the Pisco

527
00:28:41,840 --> 00:28:45,360
Speaker 1: Eca area of Peru. And this is a part of

528
00:28:45,400 --> 00:28:49,120
Speaker 1: a long strip of desert that runs north south along

529
00:28:49,160 --> 00:28:52,520
Speaker 1: the western coast of South America west of the Andes.

530
00:28:52,520 --> 00:28:54,920
Speaker 1: So if you picture South America, you've got the west coast,

531
00:28:55,280 --> 00:28:58,920
Speaker 1: and then there's usually desert regions stretching to the mountains

532
00:28:59,000 --> 00:29:00,800
Speaker 1: of the Andes, and then have got you know, more

533
00:29:00,920 --> 00:29:05,240
Speaker 1: lush rainforest or other types of ecoregions going east of

534
00:29:05,240 --> 00:29:08,400
Speaker 1: the Andes. And the Pisco ecoregion is south of the

535
00:29:08,440 --> 00:29:11,080
Speaker 1: capital city of Lima and Peru, but north of the

536
00:29:11,200 --> 00:29:14,600
Speaker 1: Nascar region, which is known for its amazing ancient geoglyphs

537
00:29:14,640 --> 00:29:17,280
Speaker 1: carved in the earth. If you've never seen the Nasca geoglyphs,

538
00:29:17,280 --> 00:29:18,840
Speaker 1: by the way, you should look them up. They're great.

539
00:29:19,720 --> 00:29:22,040
Speaker 1: So there's a two thousand ten New York Times article

540
00:29:22,080 --> 00:29:25,240
Speaker 1: about this area in general, and though the Times focuses

541
00:29:25,320 --> 00:29:28,120
Speaker 1: on one region, in this desert known as the oku

542
00:29:28,240 --> 00:29:33,120
Speaker 1: Kahe Desert. So you have to picture this apocalyptically dry,

543
00:29:33,280 --> 00:29:37,640
Speaker 1: dusty expanse often totally desolate, very windy, stretching to the

544
00:29:37,640 --> 00:29:40,520
Speaker 1: west facing side of the Andes, and the winds here

545
00:29:40,600 --> 00:29:44,200
Speaker 1: kick up dust devils and they steadily erode these old,

546
00:29:44,280 --> 00:29:47,360
Speaker 1: jagged rocks. To get a sense of it from a local,

547
00:29:47,440 --> 00:29:51,760
Speaker 1: the Times article quotes uh someone named Yolanda Gutierrez, who's

548
00:29:51,760 --> 00:29:55,120
Speaker 1: a worker who travels into this region to harvest seaweed

549
00:29:55,280 --> 00:29:58,600
Speaker 1: from along the coast in the desert, and Gautierrez says, quote,

550
00:29:58,920 --> 00:30:02,400
Speaker 1: this desert is horrible. The only things a person sees

551
00:30:02,440 --> 00:30:06,120
Speaker 1: are dirt and rocks and bones. But what if you're

552
00:30:06,120 --> 00:30:09,160
Speaker 1: looking for bones, well then then I'm guessing you're in

553
00:30:09,160 --> 00:30:12,400
Speaker 1: for a treat. Yeah. So the French paleontologists Christian de

554
00:30:12,480 --> 00:30:15,360
Speaker 1: Muizon says that the desert along the coast of Peru

555
00:30:15,520 --> 00:30:18,400
Speaker 1: contains what is probably quote the richest spot in the

556
00:30:18,560 --> 00:30:22,360
Speaker 1: world for fossil marine mammals. And this New York Times

557
00:30:22,440 --> 00:30:24,640
Speaker 1: article is interesting. It points out that this area is

558
00:30:24,800 --> 00:30:28,760
Speaker 1: so rich in fossils, especially marine fossils, that local merchants

559
00:30:28,800 --> 00:30:32,440
Speaker 1: in Eca and other New yorby nearby towns self fossilized

560
00:30:32,480 --> 00:30:36,000
Speaker 1: shark teeth the size of a man's hand for sixty

561
00:30:36,080 --> 00:30:38,840
Speaker 1: two hundred dollars. Now, the size of a of a

562
00:30:39,120 --> 00:30:42,840
Speaker 1: man's hand. That's not a great white tooth, that's something else. Yeah,

563
00:30:42,920 --> 00:30:46,200
Speaker 1: that's that's getting into like Megalodon territory. We're talking to

564
00:30:46,200 --> 00:30:50,440
Speaker 1: the beasts of old right. So, according to Peru's Ministry

565
00:30:50,520 --> 00:30:53,320
Speaker 1: of Culture's Office of Recovery, in two thousand ten alone,

566
00:30:53,600 --> 00:30:56,480
Speaker 1: there were more than two thousand, two hundred seizures of

567
00:30:56,600 --> 00:30:59,520
Speaker 1: illegally obtained fossils that people were trying to smuggle out

568
00:30:59,600 --> 00:31:01,480
Speaker 1: of the country free or sell on the black market.

569
00:31:01,720 --> 00:31:06,600
Speaker 1: So this is fossil city, but especially for marine fossils.

570
00:31:06,680 --> 00:31:10,160
Speaker 1: So there are many officially recognized fossil discoveries from the area,

571
00:31:10,200 --> 00:31:12,880
Speaker 1: including the teeth of the megalodon, which is this giant

572
00:31:13,000 --> 00:31:16,280
Speaker 1: prehistoric shark we've been mentioning that could grow eighteen meters

573
00:31:16,440 --> 00:31:20,040
Speaker 1: or sixty feet long. A two thousand eight study in

574
00:31:20,040 --> 00:31:23,240
Speaker 1: the Journal of Zoology by lead author Stephen Rowe created

575
00:31:23,280 --> 00:31:25,920
Speaker 1: a model that predicted this animal could have had a

576
00:31:26,040 --> 00:31:28,800
Speaker 1: bite force of more than a hundred and eighty thousand

577
00:31:28,920 --> 00:31:33,320
Speaker 1: Newton's which is about forty thousand pounds or about eighteen

578
00:31:33,400 --> 00:31:36,640
Speaker 1: thousand kilograms of bite pressure. And this has been described

579
00:31:36,680 --> 00:31:39,640
Speaker 1: as strong enough to crush a car. Yes, Now, to

580
00:31:39,720 --> 00:31:43,800
Speaker 1: put that in perspective with others species, the black piranha

581
00:31:43,960 --> 00:31:48,240
Speaker 1: three twenty newtonts of force, the largest saltwater crocs alive

582
00:31:48,320 --> 00:31:54,080
Speaker 1: today sixteen thousand, four hundred fourteen newtons, the largest great

583
00:31:54,120 --> 00:31:58,240
Speaker 1: white sharks alive today eighteen thousand, two hundred and sixteen

584
00:31:58,280 --> 00:32:03,560
Speaker 1: newtonts humans and seventeen But so this is ten times

585
00:32:03,600 --> 00:32:06,080
Speaker 1: stronger bite force than a great white shark, and a

586
00:32:06,160 --> 00:32:09,640
Speaker 1: great white shark has amazingly strong bite force. So the

587
00:32:09,720 --> 00:32:13,040
Speaker 1: megalodon was was a beast. It could buy I mean,

588
00:32:13,160 --> 00:32:16,800
Speaker 1: it could bite your dreams in half. They could bite

589
00:32:16,840 --> 00:32:19,160
Speaker 1: a chunk out of a mountain. This this thing was

590
00:32:19,720 --> 00:32:22,440
Speaker 1: the beast of beasts and a kind of creepy factor.

591
00:32:22,480 --> 00:32:26,120
Speaker 1: Remember is that the megalodon existed until it seems like

592
00:32:26,240 --> 00:32:29,160
Speaker 1: about two and a half million years ago. That feels

593
00:32:29,480 --> 00:32:32,920
Speaker 1: too close, right it does. What if you found out

594
00:32:33,160 --> 00:32:36,680
Speaker 1: Toranosaurus rex had existed until around the same time as

595
00:32:36,680 --> 00:32:40,440
Speaker 1: our australiapithecen ancestors. Yeah, you would be more inclined to think, well,

596
00:32:40,440 --> 00:32:42,800
Speaker 1: I might run into one. And even though to be clear,

597
00:32:42,920 --> 00:32:46,440
Speaker 1: there are no megalodon left in the sea, uh, it

598
00:32:46,560 --> 00:32:48,120
Speaker 1: does feel a little too close. It makes you a

599
00:32:48,160 --> 00:32:50,680
Speaker 1: little more inclined to think, well, there, maybe there could

600
00:32:50,720 --> 00:32:53,400
Speaker 1: be especially of the right sort of sci fi novel

601
00:32:53,640 --> 00:32:57,280
Speaker 1: scenario where met yea. So, this western desert in Peru

602
00:32:57,440 --> 00:32:59,880
Speaker 1: is a rich spot for ancient marine fossils because this

603
00:33:00,080 --> 00:33:03,000
Speaker 1: desert was once a sea floor which has been pushed

604
00:33:03,080 --> 00:33:06,280
Speaker 1: up to become dry land by the tectonic activity that

605
00:33:06,440 --> 00:33:09,440
Speaker 1: created the andes the mountains there. So when you walk

606
00:33:09,480 --> 00:33:12,680
Speaker 1: through this desert there are these little hills and rocky

607
00:33:12,800 --> 00:33:17,560
Speaker 1: formations that very often contain fossilized creatures that swam the

608
00:33:17,640 --> 00:33:20,960
Speaker 1: sea millions of years ago. And so, according to Nature

609
00:33:21,000 --> 00:33:23,440
Speaker 1: News in two thousand eight, a member of this team

610
00:33:23,480 --> 00:33:27,000
Speaker 1: of researchers I mentioned named class Post, a Dutch researcher

611
00:33:27,040 --> 00:33:30,120
Speaker 1: who worked at the Natural History Museum in Rotterdam, came

612
00:33:30,200 --> 00:33:34,720
Speaker 1: across a rocky outcropping with a monstrous toothy figure embedded

613
00:33:34,800 --> 00:33:38,120
Speaker 1: within it. It was a jaw fragment about as long

614
00:33:38,200 --> 00:33:42,280
Speaker 1: as an adult human, with these unbelievable teeth teeth like

615
00:33:42,760 --> 00:33:46,080
Speaker 1: artillery shells, and it was what appeared to be the

616
00:33:46,200 --> 00:33:50,680
Speaker 1: fossilized skull of a giant whale that it was positioned inside.

617
00:33:50,840 --> 00:33:53,240
Speaker 1: As it was inside the rock, the skull was broken

618
00:33:53,360 --> 00:33:56,560
Speaker 1: and upside down, and once the fossil was excavated and

619
00:33:56,640 --> 00:34:00,160
Speaker 1: prepared in Lima, the researchers, including Christian de muizon Own

620
00:34:00,240 --> 00:34:04,120
Speaker 1: who had quoted a minute ago and Olivia Lambert and others,

621
00:34:04,200 --> 00:34:06,680
Speaker 1: published their findings in Nature in two thousand and ten.

622
00:34:07,400 --> 00:34:10,320
Speaker 1: This was no ordinary sperm whale. They figured out that

623
00:34:10,400 --> 00:34:14,240
Speaker 1: they had discovered a new genus and species of extinct

624
00:34:14,360 --> 00:34:17,840
Speaker 1: predatory whale related to sperm whales, and they named it

625
00:34:18,320 --> 00:34:22,439
Speaker 1: Leviathan Melville. Uh. So that's wonderful because they're they're drawing

626
00:34:22,480 --> 00:34:26,680
Speaker 1: on the biblical tale of of Leviathan, and then they're

627
00:34:26,719 --> 00:34:30,640
Speaker 1: also paying homage to uh to Moby Dick, right, And

628
00:34:30,760 --> 00:34:33,000
Speaker 1: so they they cited Moby Dick is the reason for

629
00:34:33,080 --> 00:34:35,759
Speaker 1: calling it that more, even more so than pointing to

630
00:34:35,800 --> 00:34:39,320
Speaker 1: the Bible, because in Moby Dick Melville very often refers

631
00:34:39,440 --> 00:34:42,759
Speaker 1: to the great sperm whale as the Leviathan, right. And

632
00:34:42,880 --> 00:34:46,120
Speaker 1: so here we have like the ultimate sperm whale like

633
00:34:46,239 --> 00:34:50,080
Speaker 1: the the prehistoric sperm whale, a sperm whale so gigantic

634
00:34:50,200 --> 00:34:53,080
Speaker 1: that it may have eaten whales. Yeah, and we'll get

635
00:34:53,120 --> 00:34:54,799
Speaker 1: to that in a minute. And it's not I want

636
00:34:54,840 --> 00:34:58,520
Speaker 1: to emphasize that it's not necessarily its size, because the

637
00:34:58,600 --> 00:35:02,080
Speaker 1: sperm whales of today are are very large. It is

638
00:35:02,400 --> 00:35:06,400
Speaker 1: something more about the mouth and the teeth and the

639
00:35:06,719 --> 00:35:09,800
Speaker 1: face that we'll get into that explains what exactly this

640
00:35:09,920 --> 00:35:12,759
Speaker 1: creature was. So their Nature paper was published under the

641
00:35:12,800 --> 00:35:16,520
Speaker 1: title quote the Giant Bite of a new raptorial sperm

642
00:35:16,560 --> 00:35:20,000
Speaker 1: Whale from the Miocene epoch of Peru, and the authors

643
00:35:20,000 --> 00:35:22,760
Speaker 1: identified the specimen as having lived about twelve to thirteen

644
00:35:22,840 --> 00:35:24,640
Speaker 1: million years ago, which would have put it in the

645
00:35:24,719 --> 00:35:28,200
Speaker 1: Middle Miocene. Its head was three meters long or about

646
00:35:28,280 --> 00:35:31,800
Speaker 1: ten feet, and extrapolating from this, the team concluded that

647
00:35:31,920 --> 00:35:34,919
Speaker 1: the animal's body length was at least thirteen point five

648
00:35:35,000 --> 00:35:38,879
Speaker 1: meters or forty five ft and up to seventeen point

649
00:35:38,960 --> 00:35:41,840
Speaker 1: five meters are almost sixty feet, putting it in the

650
00:35:41,920 --> 00:35:46,960
Speaker 1: sperm whale or megalodon size category. And these teeth, unlike

651
00:35:47,080 --> 00:35:50,480
Speaker 1: modern sperm whales, which just have the fully developed teeth

652
00:35:50,520 --> 00:35:54,600
Speaker 1: on their lower jaws. Leviathan Melville had interlocking teeth on

653
00:35:54,719 --> 00:35:57,520
Speaker 1: its upper and lower jaws. And if you take one

654
00:35:57,560 --> 00:35:59,800
Speaker 1: of these teeth and measure it, it is like a

655
00:36:00,000 --> 00:36:03,080
Speaker 1: too leader soda bottle almost. I mean, it is huge.

656
00:36:03,480 --> 00:36:06,680
Speaker 1: You'll find it's thirty six centimeters long or over fourteen

657
00:36:06,800 --> 00:36:11,320
Speaker 1: inches long, and twelve centimeters are almost five inches in diameter.

658
00:36:11,680 --> 00:36:15,800
Speaker 1: Insanely big teeth. These are, in the words of Chris jondmuizone,

659
00:36:16,280 --> 00:36:19,920
Speaker 1: the biggest tetrapod bite ever discovered. Now you have to

660
00:36:19,920 --> 00:36:22,840
Speaker 1: add that nobody yet has has crunched the numbers on

661
00:36:23,000 --> 00:36:27,480
Speaker 1: exactly how many newtonts this particular bite would pack. But

662
00:36:27,920 --> 00:36:31,239
Speaker 1: Lambert in particular estimates that it that it would was

663
00:36:31,320 --> 00:36:35,959
Speaker 1: probably either on par with Megalodon or perhaps exceeded Megalodon's bite,

664
00:36:36,120 --> 00:36:38,640
Speaker 1: But it remains an open question. But bigger teeth than

665
00:36:38,680 --> 00:36:42,879
Speaker 1: the megalodon, right, Yeah, I mean these teeth are hilarious

666
00:36:43,040 --> 00:36:45,360
Speaker 1: if you look at them, and if you try to

667
00:36:45,440 --> 00:36:47,800
Speaker 1: imagine them in situation as they would have been in

668
00:36:47,880 --> 00:36:50,120
Speaker 1: the mouth and this mouth is coming at you open,

669
00:36:50,760 --> 00:36:53,399
Speaker 1: it's the most terrifying thing you can think of. They're

670
00:36:53,400 --> 00:36:57,760
Speaker 1: almost too big for us to even uh process as teeth,

671
00:36:57,960 --> 00:37:01,520
Speaker 1: they're they're they're like giants to lagtites and still lagmites.

672
00:37:01,600 --> 00:37:04,680
Speaker 1: You know. Yeah, they look like sharp ended dinosaur eggs.

673
00:37:04,800 --> 00:37:08,240
Speaker 1: They're just gigantic. So what was the life and setting

674
00:37:08,440 --> 00:37:12,880
Speaker 1: of this massive ancient hunter, the Leviathan, the killer whale

675
00:37:12,920 --> 00:37:16,440
Speaker 1: of killer whales? How did it live? Well? First of all,

676
00:37:16,520 --> 00:37:19,799
Speaker 1: twelve million years ago, predatory toothed whales were much more

677
00:37:19,960 --> 00:37:22,640
Speaker 1: numerous than they are today today. When you think of

678
00:37:22,680 --> 00:37:25,320
Speaker 1: predatory toothed whales, you've got things like the orcas, the

679
00:37:25,400 --> 00:37:28,160
Speaker 1: killer whales, and you've got the sperm whales that dive

680
00:37:28,280 --> 00:37:30,960
Speaker 1: deep into the darkness and mostly prey on squid by

681
00:37:31,000 --> 00:37:33,800
Speaker 1: this suction action. But something to keep in mind is

682
00:37:33,840 --> 00:37:36,279
Speaker 1: that not all of the toothed whales today are as

683
00:37:36,360 --> 00:37:41,120
Speaker 1: we've been pointing out, biters. Modern sperm whales they do

684
00:37:41,280 --> 00:37:44,560
Speaker 1: this suction thing, they suck the squid in and swallow it.

685
00:37:44,920 --> 00:37:47,360
Speaker 1: But the Leviathan, based on its jaw and its teeth,

686
00:37:47,840 --> 00:37:50,719
Speaker 1: has the paleontol just looking at it have said, oh, yeah,

687
00:37:50,800 --> 00:37:53,919
Speaker 1: this thing was definitely a biter. It was a raptorial

688
00:37:54,080 --> 00:37:57,080
Speaker 1: predator that would swim up and it would bite something.

689
00:37:57,239 --> 00:37:59,799
Speaker 1: And by looking at an animal's mouth parts, you can

690
00:37:59,840 --> 00:38:02,560
Speaker 1: be you often tell what kind of stuff it would

691
00:38:02,560 --> 00:38:04,959
Speaker 1: have been biting, right, Yeah, because, as we've said before,

692
00:38:05,080 --> 00:38:07,920
Speaker 1: nature is a cheap skate. It's not going to keep

693
00:38:08,000 --> 00:38:10,560
Speaker 1: teeth around for no reason. If the teeth are there,

694
00:38:10,640 --> 00:38:14,239
Speaker 1: they're serving a purpose. Yeah, if you're eating cucumber sandwiches,

695
00:38:14,360 --> 00:38:17,279
Speaker 1: you don't need thirty six centimeter long teeth and and

696
00:38:17,360 --> 00:38:19,960
Speaker 1: a bite force on the scale of the megalodon. So

697
00:38:20,120 --> 00:38:23,200
Speaker 1: because of the shape, size and wear pattern on the

698
00:38:23,280 --> 00:38:25,880
Speaker 1: teeth and the skull, the authors of the study believe

699
00:38:25,960 --> 00:38:29,640
Speaker 1: that Leviathan did not prey on smaller, softer prey like squid,

700
00:38:29,760 --> 00:38:33,879
Speaker 1: but was hunting large prey with tough skeletons and hard

701
00:38:33,960 --> 00:38:39,839
Speaker 1: body parts. That prey was very likely other whales, specifically

702
00:38:40,200 --> 00:38:43,880
Speaker 1: mid sized billen whales like likely between about seven and

703
00:38:44,000 --> 00:38:47,760
Speaker 1: ten meters long, meaning the prey animals of this whale

704
00:38:48,000 --> 00:38:51,120
Speaker 1: were about twenty three to thirty three feet. This is

705
00:38:51,280 --> 00:38:55,320
Speaker 1: the whale Killer Whale, the Wolf of Whale Street. I

706
00:38:55,400 --> 00:38:56,920
Speaker 1: love that. We're gonna have to go that with that

707
00:38:57,040 --> 00:39:00,480
Speaker 1: for the title. Now in the episode, alright, know, um,

708
00:39:01,040 --> 00:39:02,759
Speaker 1: at this point, I should I should, I should really

709
00:39:02,840 --> 00:39:05,520
Speaker 1: drive home the reign of the basil Saurus that we

710
00:39:05,600 --> 00:39:09,520
Speaker 1: discussed earlier was ancient history by the time Leviathan came

711
00:39:09,560 --> 00:39:11,680
Speaker 1: to rule the seas, and as as far as we

712
00:39:11,760 --> 00:39:14,279
Speaker 1: know it, it pretty much ruled the seas. It was

713
00:39:14,400 --> 00:39:16,640
Speaker 1: it was pretty much the top predator of the ocean.

714
00:39:16,800 --> 00:39:19,080
Speaker 1: We don't know of anything else out there to compete

715
00:39:19,080 --> 00:39:21,919
Speaker 1: with it, except maybe the megalodon. That's right. The only

716
00:39:22,000 --> 00:39:24,160
Speaker 1: known creature from this time frame that would have rivaled

717
00:39:24,200 --> 00:39:27,120
Speaker 1: it would have been Megalodon. But it's unknown of these

718
00:39:27,160 --> 00:39:30,920
Speaker 1: two species ever actually competed against each other or you know,

719
00:39:31,040 --> 00:39:33,600
Speaker 1: or certainly had any kind of like a throw down

720
00:39:33,960 --> 00:39:36,879
Speaker 1: epic sea monster battle. You know, I have to say

721
00:39:36,880 --> 00:39:40,200
Speaker 1: it's it's it's interesting that some theorize that competition and

722
00:39:40,320 --> 00:39:44,120
Speaker 1: threats from the likes of Megalada Megalodon may have led

723
00:39:44,160 --> 00:39:47,120
Speaker 1: to the development of pack hunting behavior and toothed whales

724
00:39:47,440 --> 00:39:51,640
Speaker 1: such as the orca, and to the gigantic size of Leviathan.

725
00:39:52,200 --> 00:39:55,080
Speaker 1: And of course it's also argued that Leviathan's hunger may

726
00:39:55,160 --> 00:39:58,320
Speaker 1: have led to an increase in size among the baleen whales.

727
00:39:58,600 --> 00:40:00,960
Speaker 1: You know, get big enough to where you're no longer

728
00:40:01,400 --> 00:40:04,040
Speaker 1: uh gonna be as as easy of of a prey

729
00:40:04,120 --> 00:40:07,200
Speaker 1: species for the apex predator, and this may have led

730
00:40:07,239 --> 00:40:09,919
Speaker 1: to the humpbacks and fin backs and the great blue

731
00:40:09,960 --> 00:40:12,040
Speaker 1: whales that we know today. I do have to add, though,

732
00:40:12,040 --> 00:40:14,920
Speaker 1: that more fossil evidence is needed to fully support uh

733
00:40:15,080 --> 00:40:18,080
Speaker 1: this notion. Though that's an interesting concept. I hadn't heard that,

734
00:40:18,239 --> 00:40:20,359
Speaker 1: but uh, that kind of makes sense that they would

735
00:40:20,400 --> 00:40:23,720
Speaker 1: evolve to become larger in order to better defend themselves

736
00:40:23,760 --> 00:40:26,960
Speaker 1: against these horrible ancient predators or yeah, or it just

737
00:40:27,040 --> 00:40:30,520
Speaker 1: becomes a you think about what what sort of animals

738
00:40:30,640 --> 00:40:33,400
Speaker 1: is the apex predator preying on? You know, what size

739
00:40:33,520 --> 00:40:38,040
Speaker 1: is what? What you know particular strains of the genome

740
00:40:38,200 --> 00:40:41,359
Speaker 1: are falling to it, and then how is that affecting uh,

741
00:40:41,480 --> 00:40:45,320
Speaker 1: the the the the the surviving sizes among the species.

742
00:40:45,440 --> 00:40:48,360
Speaker 1: I mean, as an animal keeps getting bigger and stronger

743
00:40:48,440 --> 00:40:50,880
Speaker 1: than you, it's harder and harder to prey on it rightly.

744
00:40:51,040 --> 00:40:53,040
Speaker 1: And even an apex predator is not going to say, yeah,

745
00:40:53,040 --> 00:40:54,759
Speaker 1: I feel like a challenge. I'm gonna go after this

746
00:40:54,840 --> 00:40:56,880
Speaker 1: big boy here, and no, you're gonna go after what

747
00:40:57,239 --> 00:41:00,480
Speaker 1: what is easiest? You know, of course they don't want challenges.

748
00:41:00,560 --> 00:41:03,160
Speaker 1: I mean again, the animal nature is a cheap skate,

749
00:41:03,200 --> 00:41:05,320
Speaker 1: and animals are cheap skates that they don't want to

750
00:41:05,360 --> 00:41:07,840
Speaker 1: take unnecessary risks. I mean this goes back to this

751
00:41:07,960 --> 00:41:10,080
Speaker 1: question you brought up. Everybody always wants to know once

752
00:41:10,120 --> 00:41:12,960
Speaker 1: they find out about Leviathan Melville did the did the

753
00:41:13,040 --> 00:41:16,000
Speaker 1: Leviathan and the Megalodon fight? Who would have won in

754
00:41:16,080 --> 00:41:19,160
Speaker 1: a fight? And I am, of course not above a

755
00:41:19,239 --> 00:41:22,239
Speaker 1: little bit of fantasy monster showdown thinking myself, but from

756
00:41:22,280 --> 00:41:24,640
Speaker 1: what I've read, there's probably not a good reason to

757
00:41:24,800 --> 00:41:27,640
Speaker 1: think that the adults of these species would have fought

758
00:41:27,719 --> 00:41:29,680
Speaker 1: one another. They might have, like tried to prey on

759
00:41:29,800 --> 00:41:32,680
Speaker 1: the young of the other species, but once they're adults

760
00:41:32,719 --> 00:41:35,120
Speaker 1: in good health, these are both very large and very

761
00:41:35,200 --> 00:41:38,280
Speaker 1: powerful predators, and for either one to start some trouble

762
00:41:38,360 --> 00:41:41,600
Speaker 1: would have been a risky move, right. Remember, actual fighting

763
00:41:41,760 --> 00:41:45,080
Speaker 1: is rarer than you probably imagine. In the wild. Animals

764
00:41:45,440 --> 00:41:48,200
Speaker 1: don't like getting hurt, and when they pick on something

765
00:41:48,320 --> 00:41:51,520
Speaker 1: their own size and strength or bigger, they're likely to

766
00:41:51,640 --> 00:41:54,200
Speaker 1: get hurt. And animals are much more likely to go

767
00:41:54,280 --> 00:41:56,879
Speaker 1: after smaller, weaker prey that you know when you see

768
00:41:56,960 --> 00:42:00,120
Speaker 1: predators attacking a herd of antelope or something like that.

769
00:42:00,200 --> 00:42:02,439
Speaker 1: They're very often trying to get the young, or trying

770
00:42:02,480 --> 00:42:04,880
Speaker 1: to get a sick, weakened animal, not to get a

771
00:42:04,960 --> 00:42:07,120
Speaker 1: strong animal in its prime that might kick him in

772
00:42:07,160 --> 00:42:10,040
Speaker 1: the face. Though I do hear that megalodon liver is

773
00:42:10,640 --> 00:42:12,800
Speaker 1: just just delicious. Well, I want to come back to

774
00:42:12,880 --> 00:42:16,400
Speaker 1: that in a minute. So, though Olivia Lambert has suggested

775
00:42:16,480 --> 00:42:19,839
Speaker 1: that these species uh may have tried to pick off

776
00:42:19,920 --> 00:42:22,920
Speaker 1: one another's young, I haven't come across any evidence that

777
00:42:23,040 --> 00:42:26,640
Speaker 1: there's there. There are fossil records of them fighting one

778
00:42:26,680 --> 00:42:28,839
Speaker 1: another as adults, and it doesn't seem like it would

779
00:42:28,840 --> 00:42:30,440
Speaker 1: have made a lot of sense for them to do that.

780
00:42:31,000 --> 00:42:34,239
Speaker 1: Only humans really are stupid enough to to to go

781
00:42:34,360 --> 00:42:38,000
Speaker 1: after the impossible dream, you know, And we we and

782
00:42:38,080 --> 00:42:39,960
Speaker 1: we idolize it too. We we look at someone like

783
00:42:40,040 --> 00:42:43,080
Speaker 1: say Werner Herzog and we say, you know, in his decision,

784
00:42:43,200 --> 00:42:45,320
Speaker 1: I'm going to I want to film the movie about

785
00:42:45,560 --> 00:42:49,040
Speaker 1: about about dragging a boat over a mountain, and we're

786
00:42:49,040 --> 00:42:50,920
Speaker 1: going to actually drag a boat over a mountain to

787
00:42:51,000 --> 00:42:54,000
Speaker 1: do it. Megalodon is not going to do that neither.

788
00:42:54,640 --> 00:42:59,359
Speaker 1: That's human folly. So here's another curious observation. We talked

789
00:42:59,400 --> 00:43:04,200
Speaker 1: earlier about the gigantic foreheads of sperm whales. These big

790
00:43:04,320 --> 00:43:07,719
Speaker 1: heads contain what's known as the spermaceti organ, right, which

791
00:43:07,760 --> 00:43:12,640
Speaker 1: is a collection of these chambers holding oily waxy material.

792
00:43:13,200 --> 00:43:16,279
Speaker 1: And it's not known for sure exactly what this is for,

793
00:43:16,520 --> 00:43:18,920
Speaker 1: but there are a couple of main hypotheses that have

794
00:43:19,000 --> 00:43:21,279
Speaker 1: been put put forward over the years to explain it.

795
00:43:21,920 --> 00:43:24,480
Speaker 1: The first that it has been used in echolocation, and

796
00:43:24,600 --> 00:43:26,640
Speaker 1: from what I understand, I think this is the favorite

797
00:43:26,719 --> 00:43:29,840
Speaker 1: hypothesis now. But a second that has been put forward

798
00:43:30,520 --> 00:43:34,440
Speaker 1: is that the spermaceti organ was an aid in regulating

799
00:43:34,560 --> 00:43:38,960
Speaker 1: buoyancy to help the whale in in managing its deep dives.

800
00:43:39,440 --> 00:43:42,600
Speaker 1: So Leviathan also appears to have had a spermaceti organ

801
00:43:42,760 --> 00:43:44,840
Speaker 1: in its head. But if there's any truth to the

802
00:43:44,880 --> 00:43:49,600
Speaker 1: second hypothesis, you might wonder why a whale like Leviathan

803
00:43:49,640 --> 00:43:52,480
Speaker 1: would need something like that, right, Because the hypothesis of

804
00:43:52,640 --> 00:43:55,839
Speaker 1: Leviathan's life is that it didn't need to go down

805
00:43:55,880 --> 00:43:58,560
Speaker 1: and deep dive for squid, that it was a shallow feeder,

806
00:43:58,680 --> 00:44:02,440
Speaker 1: was a shallow hunter. These other predatory whales, now, one

807
00:44:02,560 --> 00:44:05,520
Speaker 1: kind of crazy hypothesis to explain what's going on here

808
00:44:05,960 --> 00:44:08,960
Speaker 1: has been leveled at this from the University of Utah

809
00:44:09,000 --> 00:44:12,879
Speaker 1: evolutionary morphologist David Carrier, who we've mentioned on the show before.

810
00:44:12,920 --> 00:44:15,480
Speaker 1: I think was he the fist punch theory guy. Oh

811
00:44:15,560 --> 00:44:17,560
Speaker 1: my goodness, I think he was. Yeah. So he said,

812
00:44:17,680 --> 00:44:22,600
Speaker 1: quote spermaceti organs could be used as battering rams to

813
00:44:22,800 --> 00:44:26,640
Speaker 1: injure opponents during contests over females or I think he

814
00:44:26,719 --> 00:44:29,000
Speaker 1: also mentions it could have been used to incapacity to

815
00:44:29,080 --> 00:44:32,080
Speaker 1: mobilize prey. So Carrier sites the fact that, as we

816
00:44:32,200 --> 00:44:35,120
Speaker 1: mentioned earlier, people have told these stories from the nineteenth

817
00:44:35,200 --> 00:44:37,920
Speaker 1: century that their boats were sunk after being rammed by

818
00:44:38,000 --> 00:44:41,759
Speaker 1: sperm whales. So it's being imagined for this ancient predator here,

819
00:44:41,840 --> 00:44:46,239
Speaker 1: the giant toothy whale, the biter Leviathan, is that you've

820
00:44:46,239 --> 00:44:49,360
Speaker 1: got a one to punch. The world's largest marine predator

821
00:44:49,560 --> 00:44:52,920
Speaker 1: speeds out of the darkness, smashes into you at full speed,

822
00:44:53,360 --> 00:44:56,399
Speaker 1: knocks you senseless, and then just bites you in half

823
00:44:56,560 --> 00:44:59,440
Speaker 1: with teeth the size of two leader soda bottles to

824
00:44:59,560 --> 00:45:02,440
Speaker 1: surge up from the depths. I like it. Now. Who

825
00:45:02,520 --> 00:45:04,960
Speaker 1: knows if this is correct, but there's another way actually

826
00:45:05,080 --> 00:45:07,880
Speaker 1: in which this ramming theory does seem kind of plausible

827
00:45:07,920 --> 00:45:11,279
Speaker 1: to me, because the leviathan is more often cited as

828
00:45:11,320 --> 00:45:13,439
Speaker 1: a relative of the sperm whale due to its mouth

829
00:45:13,560 --> 00:45:16,640
Speaker 1: structure and possible hunting patterns. But it might be helpful

830
00:45:16,680 --> 00:45:19,040
Speaker 1: to imagine what would happen if you basically had a

831
00:45:19,160 --> 00:45:22,480
Speaker 1: gigantic orca a killer whale the size of a sperm whale.

832
00:45:22,840 --> 00:45:26,360
Speaker 1: Remember the story from earlier about how Orca's got the

833
00:45:26,440 --> 00:45:29,080
Speaker 1: shark liver. That's right, They needed to hit him in

834
00:45:29,120 --> 00:45:32,600
Speaker 1: the belly, right, So the orca would ram the shark

835
00:45:32,800 --> 00:45:36,160
Speaker 1: to stun it and immobilize it, then flip the shark

836
00:45:36,280 --> 00:45:38,960
Speaker 1: on its back, which would send it into this this

837
00:45:39,120 --> 00:45:42,399
Speaker 1: catatonic state, the tonic immobility, where it would go into

838
00:45:42,480 --> 00:45:45,680
Speaker 1: a go into a frozen paralysis, and then the orca

839
00:45:45,800 --> 00:45:48,680
Speaker 1: could dine on its liver at its leisure. And so

840
00:45:48,840 --> 00:45:51,440
Speaker 1: now I'm imagining this exact thing, but instead of an

841
00:45:51,560 --> 00:45:54,120
Speaker 1: orca in a great white, it's a leviathan and a

842
00:45:54,200 --> 00:45:58,000
Speaker 1: megalodon twelve million years ago. Because one there's certainly as

843
00:45:58,000 --> 00:46:02,200
Speaker 1: sort of a prey hacking tactic involved with with using

844
00:46:02,200 --> 00:46:05,000
Speaker 1: it against sharks Uh, it would probably work pretty well.

845
00:46:05,080 --> 00:46:08,400
Speaker 1: It's a whale too, a monster like this just ramming

846
00:46:08,440 --> 00:46:10,600
Speaker 1: into its prey. Now, of course that this is just

847
00:46:10,680 --> 00:46:13,480
Speaker 1: a hypothetical scenario I'm imagining. Once again, there is no

848
00:46:13,600 --> 00:46:16,280
Speaker 1: direct evidence I'm aware of that the Leviathan ever preyed

849
00:46:16,320 --> 00:46:19,960
Speaker 1: on adult Megalodon. But it's is fun to imagine, isn't it. Yeah,

850
00:46:20,040 --> 00:46:22,719
Speaker 1: we can't help but imagine these uh, these these these

851
00:46:22,800 --> 00:46:26,200
Speaker 1: ancient battles that I just read an entire book to

852
00:46:26,280 --> 00:46:30,080
Speaker 1: my son where each each page, each spread, was one

853
00:46:30,360 --> 00:46:34,000
Speaker 1: dinosaur against one prehistoric beast and you had to compare

854
00:46:34,080 --> 00:46:36,799
Speaker 1: stats to see which one would win. And we did

855
00:46:36,840 --> 00:46:39,200
Speaker 1: spend a lot of a lot of time explaining, well,

856
00:46:39,280 --> 00:46:42,760
Speaker 1: these two would never actually battle, you know, these they

857
00:46:42,800 --> 00:46:45,399
Speaker 1: would have never met, and if they had, why would

858
00:46:45,400 --> 00:46:47,680
Speaker 1: they have messed with each other? But we still love

859
00:46:47,760 --> 00:46:50,680
Speaker 1: a good, good tear down fight. Well, if it came

860
00:46:50,760 --> 00:46:52,920
Speaker 1: down to it, the Megalodon is no sloush. But one

861
00:46:52,960 --> 00:46:55,720
Speaker 1: thing you got to remember, the Leviathan's got bigger teeth

862
00:46:55,840 --> 00:46:58,160
Speaker 1: and a bigger brain. Yeah, I mean, I'm gonna have

863
00:46:58,200 --> 00:47:01,520
Speaker 1: to show my mammalian bias and and root for the

864
00:47:01,600 --> 00:47:04,560
Speaker 1: Leviathan no matter what like, I just feel more more

865
00:47:04,600 --> 00:47:07,800
Speaker 1: of a kinship to the Leviathan. Yeah, you've got to

866
00:47:08,480 --> 00:47:14,960
Speaker 1: That shark's got black eyes like a doll's eyes. All right, Well,

867
00:47:15,280 --> 00:47:16,800
Speaker 1: on that note, we're gonna take a quick break and

868
00:47:16,840 --> 00:47:19,040
Speaker 1: when we come back, we're gonna we're gonna get to

869
00:47:19,120 --> 00:47:24,960
Speaker 1: another press in question. Where did all these monsters go? Thank? Alright,

870
00:47:25,000 --> 00:47:26,880
Speaker 1: we're back, So Robert, I want to come back to

871
00:47:26,960 --> 00:47:30,800
Speaker 1: this thing we discussed at the beginning about the apex

872
00:47:30,880 --> 00:47:34,480
Speaker 1: predator and how it seems in our mind versus how

873
00:47:34,560 --> 00:47:38,959
Speaker 1: it is in reality. Because apex predators seem so individually

874
00:47:39,120 --> 00:47:42,000
Speaker 1: powerful the tiger, the great white shark, or even the

875
00:47:42,080 --> 00:47:45,400
Speaker 1: ancient megalodon or the Leviathan, it's difficult for us to

876
00:47:45,480 --> 00:47:49,680
Speaker 1: imagine how a beast this powerful would disappear, whatever, have

877
00:47:49,800 --> 00:47:52,719
Speaker 1: any kind of vulnerability, or go extinct, Like what could

878
00:47:52,800 --> 00:47:55,000
Speaker 1: wipe them out, what could pose a challenge to them?

879
00:47:55,400 --> 00:47:59,520
Speaker 1: They were top of the pops, right, But while individually strong,

880
00:47:59,719 --> 00:48:03,120
Speaker 1: ape ex predators are just as vulnerable to extinction as

881
00:48:03,160 --> 00:48:06,400
Speaker 1: any other species, and in many cases actually much more so.

882
00:48:07,440 --> 00:48:10,640
Speaker 1: That's right, because your species may become king whale, but

883
00:48:10,760 --> 00:48:12,840
Speaker 1: it doesn't mean that it's going you're going to remain

884
00:48:13,080 --> 00:48:16,640
Speaker 1: king whale, because what will happen to thy prey or

885
00:48:16,719 --> 00:48:19,920
Speaker 1: great great eater? Will you eat them all and in

886
00:48:20,040 --> 00:48:23,160
Speaker 1: doing so steal your own extinction with theirs? Or will

887
00:48:23,200 --> 00:48:26,600
Speaker 1: you eat the ones that you can easily catch, and

888
00:48:26,680 --> 00:48:29,440
Speaker 1: in doing so encouraged traits in your prey that will

889
00:48:29,520 --> 00:48:34,120
Speaker 1: one day outwit you, or encourage specificity and laziness in yourself.

890
00:48:34,480 --> 00:48:37,719
Speaker 1: That's right, Yeah, you you become dependent on this one thing.

891
00:48:37,880 --> 00:48:41,640
Speaker 1: You become great at this one type of predation. So

892
00:48:41,760 --> 00:48:44,200
Speaker 1: you eat only the small uh, and so the species

893
00:48:44,239 --> 00:48:47,200
Speaker 1: grows larger with time because larger specimens are more likely

894
00:48:47,320 --> 00:48:50,560
Speaker 1: to evade your bite. Meanwhile, those who compete with you

895
00:48:50,840 --> 00:48:53,759
Speaker 1: for your prey adapt with time as well, perhaps growing

896
00:48:53,880 --> 00:48:58,480
Speaker 1: larger or craftier. The smaller predators become pack hunters, perhaps

897
00:48:58,600 --> 00:49:02,640
Speaker 1: using their tactics against you in your own precious young again,

898
00:49:02,680 --> 00:49:05,200
Speaker 1: a strategy employed by varieties of Orca to this day.

899
00:49:05,680 --> 00:49:08,560
Speaker 1: And there is a lot of evidence that social behaviors

900
00:49:08,640 --> 00:49:11,680
Speaker 1: tend to win out over time. Yeah. So I have

901
00:49:11,800 --> 00:49:13,640
Speaker 1: a I have a fun example I'm going to throw

902
00:49:13,680 --> 00:49:16,960
Speaker 1: out here. Uh So I just ask everyone to roll

903
00:49:17,000 --> 00:49:20,560
Speaker 1: with me on this. But let's consider Jason vorhees as

904
00:49:20,600 --> 00:49:23,440
Speaker 1: as a sort of apex predator. Okay, is he more

905
00:49:23,480 --> 00:49:26,279
Speaker 1: the Megalodon or the Leviathan. He's maybe more Megalodon. I

906
00:49:26,320 --> 00:49:28,360
Speaker 1: think more Megalodon. He has more of that like shark

907
00:49:28,400 --> 00:49:31,560
Speaker 1: brain going on. I think so. For whatever silly reason,

908
00:49:31,760 --> 00:49:35,320
Speaker 1: he's he's very adapt at praying on promiscuous or otherwise

909
00:49:35,440 --> 00:49:38,960
Speaker 1: morally suspect teenagers. Right. He hears that beer can cracking

910
00:49:39,080 --> 00:49:42,640
Speaker 1: from far away, and he's on the march. But it's

911
00:49:42,680 --> 00:49:46,560
Speaker 1: the solid moral characters who prove difficult prey as well

912
00:49:46,600 --> 00:49:50,879
Speaker 1: as the of course psychically potent teenagers as well. Okay,

913
00:49:50,960 --> 00:49:53,560
Speaker 1: so you're invoking the rules of horror and slasher movies,

914
00:49:53,600 --> 00:49:55,440
Speaker 1: which are that the good kids tend to be the

915
00:49:55,520 --> 00:49:57,520
Speaker 1: only ones who can out with the killer. Right, But

916
00:49:57,600 --> 00:49:59,759
Speaker 1: then the added rule for Jason, if there's a kid

917
00:49:59,800 --> 00:50:02,279
Speaker 1: with psychic powers, that one's going to be difficult prey

918
00:50:02,280 --> 00:50:04,320
Speaker 1: as well. Well, the kids with psychic powers tends to

919
00:50:04,360 --> 00:50:07,600
Speaker 1: be the good kid. True. So, over time, perhaps vorhes

920
00:50:08,120 --> 00:50:12,880
Speaker 1: predatory habits advanced the genetic tendency of moral and psychic

921
00:50:13,000 --> 00:50:16,440
Speaker 1: prey until his natural habitat of Crystal Lake is just

922
00:50:16,640 --> 00:50:20,399
Speaker 1: overflowing with psychic virgin honor students that best in every turn,

923
00:50:21,200 --> 00:50:23,320
Speaker 1: or maybe he's just so good at his job that

924
00:50:23,440 --> 00:50:27,839
Speaker 1: slashers with less robust franchises, like say leather Face, they

925
00:50:27,920 --> 00:50:30,600
Speaker 1: have to become more social or intelligent in order to

926
00:50:30,680 --> 00:50:33,960
Speaker 1: earn their kills. So Leatherface has a whole family helping him.

927
00:50:34,080 --> 00:50:37,800
Speaker 1: Exactly it kind of it kind of writes itself, doesn't it. Robert,

928
00:50:37,840 --> 00:50:42,080
Speaker 1: You've taken this into profound territory. Now, speaking of species

929
00:50:42,120 --> 00:50:45,720
Speaker 1: becoming smarter uh and and uh and having better brains

930
00:50:45,800 --> 00:50:49,200
Speaker 1: that that are social abilities to compete. We touched on

931
00:50:49,239 --> 00:50:52,759
Speaker 1: the encephalization quotation earlier. That's the e Q and this

932
00:50:52,960 --> 00:50:55,760
Speaker 1: is UH to be clear, the the actual brain size

933
00:50:55,840 --> 00:51:00,120
Speaker 1: of a creature versus what would be expected on mass alone. Now,

934
00:51:00,239 --> 00:51:04,279
Speaker 1: often this is taken as a measure of the intelligence

935
00:51:04,320 --> 00:51:06,279
Speaker 1: of an animal, and there is there does appear to

936
00:51:06,360 --> 00:51:09,360
Speaker 1: be some correlation, but it's not a totally direct correlation.

937
00:51:09,440 --> 00:51:13,160
Speaker 1: There outliers with bigger or smaller brains relative to their

938
00:51:13,160 --> 00:51:15,279
Speaker 1: bodies that don't seem to be totally in line with

939
00:51:15,360 --> 00:51:19,000
Speaker 1: how intelligent we think they are. So the pack hunting

940
00:51:19,080 --> 00:51:22,120
Speaker 1: orcas they boast a two point five Now that's small

941
00:51:22,280 --> 00:51:25,960
Speaker 1: compared to the human seven or the bottlenose dolphins four,

942
00:51:26,680 --> 00:51:30,040
Speaker 1: but it rises above the baileeen whales one. They boast

943
00:51:30,120 --> 00:51:33,960
Speaker 1: the processing powers and necessary to hunt as a social unit. Well, yeah,

944
00:51:33,960 --> 00:51:39,160
Speaker 1: I mean the billeen whales. They probably don't need much

945
00:51:39,320 --> 00:51:42,799
Speaker 1: more of a brain than like a grazing herbivore would need. Now,

946
00:51:42,840 --> 00:51:46,120
Speaker 1: it's also possible that environmental factors contributed to the downfall

947
00:51:46,200 --> 00:51:49,319
Speaker 1: of the leviathan. A cooling climate during the late Neo

948
00:51:49,400 --> 00:51:52,920
Speaker 1: scene around ten millions to eleven million years ago, giant

949
00:51:53,040 --> 00:51:56,520
Speaker 1: active predators simply wouldn't be able to function anymore. Meanwhile,

950
00:51:56,640 --> 00:52:00,800
Speaker 1: smaller predators could have fared better, including sperm whales that

951
00:52:01,200 --> 00:52:04,360
Speaker 1: depended on deep sea prey like the giant squid. Now

952
00:52:04,400 --> 00:52:07,200
Speaker 1: why would they do better, Well, because you have the deep, dark,

953
00:52:07,280 --> 00:52:10,960
Speaker 1: cold ocean. This is more of a stable environment, less

954
00:52:11,040 --> 00:52:14,040
Speaker 1: vulnerable to climate change. So so there's climate change on

955
00:52:14,080 --> 00:52:17,080
Speaker 1: the surface that's affecting what prayer available. But you know,

956
00:52:17,280 --> 00:52:19,759
Speaker 1: you can always go down into the dark world to

957
00:52:19,840 --> 00:52:22,680
Speaker 1: get you some squid, right the squid. The squid remain

958
00:52:22,760 --> 00:52:25,840
Speaker 1: constant down there. So those that can dive down and

959
00:52:26,239 --> 00:52:29,680
Speaker 1: and and eat that meal, they have stability that the

960
00:52:29,760 --> 00:52:32,000
Speaker 1: way leaders are just not going to have. Yeah, it's

961
00:52:32,040 --> 00:52:36,920
Speaker 1: fascinating to contemplate what happens to these powerful creatures like

962
00:52:37,000 --> 00:52:39,840
Speaker 1: the Mega Ladon and the Leviathan. Uh. You know, we

963
00:52:39,960 --> 00:52:42,239
Speaker 1: we've got these different theories about what happened to them,

964
00:52:42,280 --> 00:52:45,160
Speaker 1: but ultimately a lot of things could have happened to them.

965
00:52:45,440 --> 00:52:49,160
Speaker 1: Because even though the individual aprex apex predator is strong,

966
00:52:49,600 --> 00:52:53,320
Speaker 1: the apex predator as a species depends on an awful

967
00:52:53,400 --> 00:52:56,920
Speaker 1: lot going right. In order for it to survive, it

968
00:52:57,040 --> 00:52:59,279
Speaker 1: has to have access to its prey. If the prey

969
00:52:59,400 --> 00:53:02,120
Speaker 1: thins out, dies off, or migrates somewhere else, the apex

970
00:53:02,160 --> 00:53:05,279
Speaker 1: predator can starve. Apex predators also tend to have low

971
00:53:05,480 --> 00:53:10,280
Speaker 1: reproduction rates and large bodies with powerful brains and muscles,

972
00:53:10,600 --> 00:53:13,360
Speaker 1: which need lots and lots of food to grow and sustain.

973
00:53:13,840 --> 00:53:16,319
Speaker 1: The apex predator business, you might say, in some ways,

974
00:53:16,400 --> 00:53:19,480
Speaker 1: is a very successful one, but it's also a high

975
00:53:19,560 --> 00:53:23,960
Speaker 1: initial investment organism that requires a lot of incoming cash

976
00:53:24,080 --> 00:53:26,800
Speaker 1: flow in the sense of a business. Right. If you

977
00:53:26,880 --> 00:53:29,800
Speaker 1: can't keep the flow of resources streaming to it, it

978
00:53:29,960 --> 00:53:33,400
Speaker 1: quite quickly gets into desperate circumstances. It can't feed itself,

979
00:53:33,520 --> 00:53:36,440
Speaker 1: can't reproduce and raise healthy young, or in some cases

980
00:53:36,520 --> 00:53:39,200
Speaker 1: might even turn to cannibalism, which is not good for

981
00:53:39,280 --> 00:53:42,040
Speaker 1: a species in the long run. The genetic economics of

982
00:53:42,160 --> 00:53:45,840
Speaker 1: cannibalism do not pay off. Now, some sort of apex

983
00:53:45,880 --> 00:53:50,240
Speaker 1: predators have managed to survive many ecological crisises or crises

984
00:53:50,320 --> 00:53:53,320
Speaker 1: and just keep going right, like sharks are a good example.

985
00:53:53,719 --> 00:53:57,279
Speaker 1: The megalodon isn't still around, but sharks in general have

986
00:53:57,480 --> 00:53:59,920
Speaker 1: been pretty top of the food chain predators for more

987
00:54:00,080 --> 00:54:03,120
Speaker 1: than four hundred million years. But of course, the megalodon

988
00:54:03,200 --> 00:54:06,560
Speaker 1: is still extinct and the deep diving squid sucking sperm

989
00:54:06,600 --> 00:54:09,440
Speaker 1: whale still exists, but the leviathan is now extinct. So

990
00:54:09,600 --> 00:54:12,759
Speaker 1: where do these giant apex predators come from in the

991
00:54:12,840 --> 00:54:15,319
Speaker 1: first place? That might kind of help us explain where

992
00:54:15,400 --> 00:54:18,799
Speaker 1: they go. Well, one thing is that there's this informal

993
00:54:18,920 --> 00:54:22,680
Speaker 1: principle in evolutionary biology known as Copes rule, named after

994
00:54:22,719 --> 00:54:27,239
Speaker 1: an American paleontologist named Edward Drinker Cope. Where where are

995
00:54:27,239 --> 00:54:29,680
Speaker 1: all the drinkers today? I don't know. I don't run

996
00:54:29,719 --> 00:54:33,879
Speaker 1: across that name. Very cops real states that over geological time,

997
00:54:34,040 --> 00:54:37,680
Speaker 1: a lineage of related animals will tend to increase in

998
00:54:37,800 --> 00:54:40,719
Speaker 1: body size. And this is an informal rule because it

999
00:54:40,760 --> 00:54:44,120
Speaker 1: doesn't always hold at every taxonomic level or every type

1000
00:54:44,120 --> 00:54:46,959
Speaker 1: of organism, but it is very often true. It's true

1001
00:54:47,000 --> 00:54:50,920
Speaker 1: on average. Just as one example, in February, a study

1002
00:54:51,000 --> 00:54:53,840
Speaker 1: published in Science found that if you track the size

1003
00:54:53,880 --> 00:54:57,160
Speaker 1: of marine animals on average over the past five hundred

1004
00:54:57,160 --> 00:55:00,560
Speaker 1: and forty two million years, they have increased a hundred

1005
00:55:00,600 --> 00:55:04,799
Speaker 1: and fiftyfold in size. So why does this appear to happen? Well,

1006
00:55:04,840 --> 00:55:07,480
Speaker 1: I did find an interesting study on that. So there

1007
00:55:07,560 --> 00:55:11,560
Speaker 1: was a study in the American Naturalist in called ecological

1008
00:55:11,640 --> 00:55:15,440
Speaker 1: specialization in Fossil Mammals explains copes rule. And what this

1009
00:55:15,520 --> 00:55:18,120
Speaker 1: study think that what they think they find is that

1010
00:55:18,680 --> 00:55:21,200
Speaker 1: one possible way of explaining copes rule is that evolution

1011
00:55:21,400 --> 00:55:24,640
Speaker 1: favors animals with bigger bodies, like if you're bigger, you're

1012
00:55:24,680 --> 00:55:27,600
Speaker 1: stronger and harder to kill. Right, But the authors of

1013
00:55:27,680 --> 00:55:30,280
Speaker 1: the study looked at evidence from five hundred and fifty

1014
00:55:30,320 --> 00:55:33,960
Speaker 1: four extinct mammals over the past sixty million years, and

1015
00:55:34,040 --> 00:55:36,120
Speaker 1: they found a couple of interesting trends that got more

1016
00:55:36,200 --> 00:55:39,279
Speaker 1: specific than that. It's not just that bigger bodies are

1017
00:55:39,360 --> 00:55:43,600
Speaker 1: adaptive or that they're always better. These authors found that

1018
00:55:43,920 --> 00:55:47,600
Speaker 1: the increase in body size was correlated with quote increasing

1019
00:55:47,800 --> 00:55:53,560
Speaker 1: ecological specialization, meaning you're zeroing in on one more and

1020
00:55:53,760 --> 00:55:57,480
Speaker 1: more unique way of surviving in the ecology around you,

1021
00:55:57,960 --> 00:56:01,520
Speaker 1: with maybe a particular prey to type, or a particular

1022
00:56:01,600 --> 00:56:05,240
Speaker 1: hunting strategy or particular type of habitat that you're finally

1023
00:56:05,280 --> 00:56:09,080
Speaker 1: adapted to. As you get really good at one thing,

1024
00:56:09,440 --> 00:56:13,440
Speaker 1: on average, animals tend to get bigger, so the increase

1025
00:56:13,520 --> 00:56:15,160
Speaker 1: in body size was linked to that, But it was

1026
00:56:15,200 --> 00:56:19,040
Speaker 1: also linked to another interesting thing, periods of global cooling.

1027
00:56:19,680 --> 00:56:22,240
Speaker 1: And this tends to go in accordance with another informal

1028
00:56:22,320 --> 00:56:25,640
Speaker 1: biological principle known as Bergman's rule, which says that the

1029
00:56:25,760 --> 00:56:28,560
Speaker 1: colder a climate you live in, the more your body

1030
00:56:28,640 --> 00:56:32,279
Speaker 1: mass increases. So that's interesting. These bigger bodies tend to

1031
00:56:32,360 --> 00:56:36,200
Speaker 1: correlate with the world getting colder and with animals that

1032
00:56:36,360 --> 00:56:39,000
Speaker 1: tend to get more and more specialized to become less

1033
00:56:39,040 --> 00:56:42,440
Speaker 1: and less of a generalist survivor. But there's a downside

1034
00:56:42,480 --> 00:56:46,560
Speaker 1: that comes with this, right, increased extinction risk when averaged

1035
00:56:46,600 --> 00:56:51,759
Speaker 1: over time. In other words, heavy lies the crown so

1036
00:56:51,920 --> 00:56:54,439
Speaker 1: you want to be the king, the queen, the mob boss,

1037
00:56:54,680 --> 00:56:57,759
Speaker 1: the CEO. If you focus really hard on a very

1038
00:56:57,840 --> 00:57:01,560
Speaker 1: particular strategy for success, you might be able to make it.

1039
00:57:01,880 --> 00:57:04,080
Speaker 1: But you will be wearing a target on your back

1040
00:57:04,160 --> 00:57:06,960
Speaker 1: the whole time. Everybody wants to take you down. And

1041
00:57:07,000 --> 00:57:09,480
Speaker 1: in a metaphorical way, the same is true for a species.

1042
00:57:09,520 --> 00:57:11,680
Speaker 1: If you want to be the master of the sea,

1043
00:57:11,760 --> 00:57:14,440
Speaker 1: the megalodon, the leviathan, the king or the queen of

1044
00:57:14,480 --> 00:57:17,760
Speaker 1: the water, you will get crushed when your main food

1045
00:57:17,800 --> 00:57:21,720
Speaker 1: source disappears. It is hard to be a generalist when

1046
00:57:21,800 --> 00:57:24,320
Speaker 1: you're that big and that powerful and on the top

1047
00:57:24,440 --> 00:57:27,360
Speaker 1: of the pyramid. Wow. You know, I'm tempted to make

1048
00:57:27,440 --> 00:57:32,280
Speaker 1: some comparison here between between the diets of apex predators

1049
00:57:32,320 --> 00:57:36,760
Speaker 1: such as this and uh humanities dependency on fossil fuels,

1050
00:57:36,800 --> 00:57:39,800
Speaker 1: which of course ties in rather nicely with the history

1051
00:57:39,840 --> 00:57:42,320
Speaker 1: of whaling as well the harvesting of these creatures for

1052
00:57:42,680 --> 00:57:45,440
Speaker 1: industrial purposes. You know, when you but when you become

1053
00:57:45,560 --> 00:57:49,160
Speaker 1: dependent upon this one thing, what happens when that that

1054
00:57:49,320 --> 00:57:51,880
Speaker 1: source shrivels up? Yeah, And of course this isn't gonna

1055
00:57:51,880 --> 00:57:53,880
Speaker 1: be this true in the same way about all apex

1056
00:57:53,920 --> 00:57:56,680
Speaker 1: predators are all larger animals, right. This is something that

1057
00:57:56,800 --> 00:58:00,320
Speaker 1: appears to based on this study, be true on a ridge.

1058
00:58:00,720 --> 00:58:02,880
Speaker 1: So there are definitely going to be some predators that

1059
00:58:03,040 --> 00:58:05,520
Speaker 1: are more resilient and I think in most cases going

1060
00:58:05,560 --> 00:58:09,400
Speaker 1: to be more of a generalist survivalist than others. But

1061
00:58:09,560 --> 00:58:13,919
Speaker 1: the ones where their increase in in size and food

1062
00:58:14,000 --> 00:58:18,240
Speaker 1: chain dominance correlates to this very direct specialization in a

1063
00:58:18,320 --> 00:58:21,400
Speaker 1: certain way of making a living, very often that does

1064
00:58:21,600 --> 00:58:26,200
Speaker 1: make you vulnerable. You lose your individualism as a survivor. Yeah.

1065
00:58:26,400 --> 00:58:28,800
Speaker 1: Like one of the exceptions that comes to mind is

1066
00:58:28,840 --> 00:58:34,080
Speaker 1: of course the bear, particularly the larger bear species that

1067
00:58:34,160 --> 00:58:38,160
Speaker 1: are certainly large and ferocious and have no natural enemies

1068
00:58:38,240 --> 00:58:41,560
Speaker 1: be beyond man. Oh, think of the polar bear. Polar bear,

1069
00:58:42,000 --> 00:58:45,280
Speaker 1: very powerful apex predator actually though it has a it

1070
00:58:45,360 --> 00:58:49,840
Speaker 1: has a pretty particular ecological niche though um and when

1071
00:58:50,000 --> 00:58:52,920
Speaker 1: say climate change happens, that does not work out well

1072
00:58:53,000 --> 00:58:55,040
Speaker 1: at all for the polar bear. Right. But meanwhile, you

1073
00:58:55,080 --> 00:58:58,240
Speaker 1: also look at something like a black bear which will

1074
00:58:58,280 --> 00:59:01,440
Speaker 1: eat just about anything, or grizzly grizzly bears that that

1075
00:59:01,560 --> 00:59:06,200
Speaker 1: go through through sort of varying stages of of dietary consumption.

1076
00:59:06,280 --> 00:59:09,400
Speaker 1: But but it's largely based on what is available. Yeah, exactly,

1077
00:59:09,520 --> 00:59:12,600
Speaker 1: more generalist and thus a little bit more resilient, a

1078
00:59:12,680 --> 00:59:15,280
Speaker 1: little bit harder to go extinct. Yeah. Of course, then

1079
00:59:15,320 --> 00:59:18,440
Speaker 1: you have the panda bear, which is which is certainly

1080
00:59:18,520 --> 00:59:20,800
Speaker 1: a specialist in its own right, and is therefore in

1081
00:59:20,880 --> 00:59:23,120
Speaker 1: a kind of fragile place as well. It's true if

1082
00:59:23,160 --> 00:59:25,640
Speaker 1: you're bamboo, you know, the panda bear is the most

1083
00:59:25,760 --> 00:59:29,240
Speaker 1: terrifying predator of all, you know, I'm always I'm always

1084
00:59:29,520 --> 00:59:33,200
Speaker 1: astounded when I remember that the cave bear was probably

1085
00:59:33,280 --> 00:59:38,760
Speaker 1: a herbivore, you know, the ferocious bear that is depicted battling, Yeah,

1086
00:59:38,880 --> 00:59:41,280
Speaker 1: that early man. Yeah, this would have been This would

1087
00:59:41,320 --> 00:59:43,280
Speaker 1: have been a nerbivore. This would would not have been

1088
00:59:43,320 --> 00:59:47,280
Speaker 1: out there actively trying to eat humans. That's fascinating. I

1089
00:59:47,360 --> 00:59:49,600
Speaker 1: didn't know that. Yeah, we could do a whole another

1090
00:59:49,680 --> 00:59:52,760
Speaker 1: episode on bears basically, and there's plenty of content to

1091
00:59:52,800 --> 00:59:55,240
Speaker 1: discuss there. Well, I don't know. I mean, I I've

1092
00:59:55,240 --> 00:59:58,760
Speaker 1: really enjoyed this look at apex predators because it's so

1093
00:59:58,960 --> 01:00:03,400
Speaker 1: counterintuitive to think of them as so evolutionarily fragile. Yeah.

1094
01:00:03,800 --> 01:00:06,160
Speaker 1: Yet again, not in every case, but so many of

1095
01:00:06,280 --> 01:00:08,840
Speaker 1: them yeah, we tend to think of that if if

1096
01:00:08,880 --> 01:00:11,400
Speaker 1: you're the top predator, then you were there the king

1097
01:00:11,440 --> 01:00:14,040
Speaker 1: of the hill. You were in a privileged position and

1098
01:00:14,120 --> 01:00:17,360
Speaker 1: you're not susceptible to these various extinction threat threats, but

1099
01:00:18,040 --> 01:00:20,840
Speaker 1: you were still vulnerable. Last thing I want to encourage today,

1100
01:00:21,080 --> 01:00:24,920
Speaker 1: look up the picture of the Leviathan's teeth. Yes, oh

1101
01:00:25,040 --> 01:00:27,360
Speaker 1: and sorry, I should say one more thing about its name.

1102
01:00:27,400 --> 01:00:30,120
Speaker 1: They had to you know, again, earlier today we mentioned

1103
01:00:30,200 --> 01:00:33,040
Speaker 1: something about the weirdness of taxonomy. Yeah, this was with

1104
01:00:33,160 --> 01:00:37,200
Speaker 1: the basil Osaurus. That means that that means king lizard,

1105
01:00:37,400 --> 01:00:39,320
Speaker 1: even though it is a whale. But we can't change

1106
01:00:39,360 --> 01:00:41,840
Speaker 1: it because that was the first name, the Leviathan whale.

1107
01:00:41,960 --> 01:00:44,360
Speaker 1: They had to change the spelling because there I think

1108
01:00:44,400 --> 01:00:47,440
Speaker 1: there was already some other organism that had the Leviathan

1109
01:00:47,560 --> 01:00:51,600
Speaker 1: genus as spelled in English Leviathan, so they changed it,

1110
01:00:51,680 --> 01:00:54,760
Speaker 1: I think to the Hebrew spelling of Leviathan. So now

1111
01:00:54,840 --> 01:00:59,080
Speaker 1: would be like Leviaton has y in it, right. Yeah. Yeah,

1112
01:00:59,120 --> 01:01:00,479
Speaker 1: It's like if you were going to name your band

1113
01:01:00,640 --> 01:01:02,920
Speaker 1: Leviathan and then you realize there was already a Leviathan,

1114
01:01:02,960 --> 01:01:05,680
Speaker 1: so you just you just add some funny characters in there,

1115
01:01:05,680 --> 01:01:07,280
Speaker 1: and you're good to go to to do a weird

1116
01:01:07,400 --> 01:01:10,520
Speaker 1: spelling on it, all right, So, so there you have it.

1117
01:01:10,760 --> 01:01:13,200
Speaker 1: If you would like to reach out to us about

1118
01:01:13,240 --> 01:01:17,880
Speaker 1: this episode discuss some ancient apex predators, then we encourage

1119
01:01:17,920 --> 01:01:19,680
Speaker 1: you to do so. You can find us on social media.

1120
01:01:19,760 --> 01:01:22,640
Speaker 1: We're on Facebook, we're on Twitter, we're on Instagram. But

1121
01:01:23,120 --> 01:01:25,400
Speaker 1: we highly recommend you check out stuff to Blow your

1122
01:01:25,440 --> 01:01:27,440
Speaker 1: Mind dot com because that is the mothership. That's our

1123
01:01:27,480 --> 01:01:30,720
Speaker 1: web page. That's where you'll find all the podcast episodes

1124
01:01:30,800 --> 01:01:33,440
Speaker 1: links out of those social media accounts, details on how

1125
01:01:33,520 --> 01:01:36,560
Speaker 1: you can contact us directly, and you even send us

1126
01:01:36,640 --> 01:01:39,520
Speaker 1: physical mail if you so desire. Uh. And then of

1127
01:01:39,600 --> 01:01:41,320
Speaker 1: course there's the old fashioned way to get in touch

1128
01:01:41,320 --> 01:01:43,360
Speaker 1: with us, right, that would be by email. Now I

1129
01:01:43,440 --> 01:01:45,480
Speaker 1: want to mention, of course, a big shout out to

1130
01:01:45,600 --> 01:01:49,000
Speaker 1: our excellent audio producers Alex Williams and Tarry Harrison. Thanks

1131
01:01:49,040 --> 01:01:51,480
Speaker 1: so much. And if you would like to email us,

1132
01:01:51,600 --> 01:01:55,000
Speaker 1: that email address is blow the Mind at how stuff

1133
01:01:55,040 --> 01:02:06,720
Speaker 1: works dot com for more on this and thousands of

1134
01:02:06,760 --> 01:02:20,400
Speaker 1: other topics. Does it how stuff works dot calm the

1135
01:02:20,440 --> 01:02:20,760
Speaker 1: biggest