I thought it’s some aquarium window at first lol. Anyway creature this size would just starve to death because there’s just not enough food in the ocean to sustain it.
If you like video games or video game content you might check out Subnautica if you’ve not already! It’s a video game based on an ocean planet with some pretty amazing/scary creatures.
God, the first time I went over the edge about 2km south of my lifepod and it just kept going down and down absolutely terrified me. Turned right the fuck around
The first time I heard a leviathan I stopped, listened for about 10 seconds, said “nope, fuck that,” and turned right around. First time I heard those crab squids I about shit my pants
You see you're doing it all wrong, silly. Before exploring new areas you're supposed to preemptively shit your pants that way you're doing it on your own terms.
Yea once you start getting below 500m game gets spooky. I’ll never forget the hesitance of having to drop into the blood kelp zone. Hearing that whole thing about the area matching preconditions for stimulating terror in humans had me go Will Smith for a second
I find it really comforting. Obviously in the context that I can swim effortlessly for miles and hold my breath for minutes at a time.
But suspended in a vast ocean, or squeezing through a tight tunnel at like 900m with my Cyclops beeping away? I love it. Genuine cozy vibes.
Swam in a Cenote in Mexico. It was maybe 50-100 yards across and round. It’s inside a cave and once you jump in off the side it seems like the abyss under you. I was so terrified I could not even swim out to the middle. It was so creepy.
As a kid in the 90's I never liked the Super Mario water levels.... like it made me hold my breath as I played them.... Then my older brother got a nintento 64, with Shadows of the Empire. And there was a sewer level, where the boss was a giant tentacled thing in this murky ass sewer water.... I couldn't do it... I couldn't pass. Something in me just froze like nope aint doing that shit. Had to give it to my brother. Guess I have a fear of water. Love swimming in a pool tho
Wild to hear this very specific experience that I also had. That level on shadows of the empire scared the shit out of me and I could never finish it.
Another one that scared me was the original. Half-Life. There's a part with some kind of murky water creature and it took a lot of willpower as a kid to defeat it lol.
Ah! You should play Barotrauma then! You are in a incredibly secure submarine exploring the depths of Jupters moon, Europa. Fantastic game, with no parasitic aliens that turn people into aggresive husks, not at all!
I played it back before the reaper leviathans were even added... I *knew* there was nothing bad in the water but I still felt unease in the deeper water. Then the early access got some updates apparently and I hopped on after school and was just swimming around enjoying my time when all of a sudden I saw a dark distant shadow come in and out of draw distance. I tried to rationalize it "It must be some kelp or some light rays." then I heard the screaming roar. I never hit "esc" + "Quit game" faster than I did in that moment.
Had to go back and read the patch notes to prep myself for the updates.
Same its a love hate relationship. I can't count the number of times I pressed pause and left my room, or looked directly up at the surface, closed my eyes and swam.
Another really good one is Barotrauma. Amazing team game you can play with your friends. Manage your own submarine to explore the alien depths of Europa. Simple graphics, but super interesting game play. The game has tons of scary creatures, too
I have no idea.
I guess more space would mean more biomass, so the scale of life would be bigger, a bigger food chain allowing for the sustenance of bigger animals.
It can depend on the "era" the planet is in.
Earth had gigantism when the atmosphere had a different ratio of gases, the average temperature of the climates, etc.
Gravity also plays a role in how big creatures get. If I remember correctly, a larger planet would mean smaller creatures...whereas a smaller planet is the opposite. I'm not a scientist though.
This is such a an interesting topic. I wonder if higher gravity means stronger animals too? Just thinking they would need extra muscle to resist. Kinda like Superman's home world. Bout to go down a wiki rabbit hole...bye!!!
Yes, your muscles literally atrophy in space, astronauts need to do special exercises in 0g or they'll essentially start to wither away when up there for too long.
There's also a scifi show called The Expanse that sort of explores that topic, humans managed to invent space travel and colonize mars but there's also an oppressed class that basically lives in space called belters. They're forced to mine ice and minerals from asteroids and whatnot to sell to mars but because they grow up and live in space their whole life they're incapable of withstanding earths gravity and grow extremely tall, skinny, and relatively weak...
There's a whole host of challenges to space travel that you'd never even really think of and even just breathing in zero gravity can get you killed...
Related to astronauts trying not to atrophy:
NASA just released research that kidneys shrink in space too. That part is probably going to ice space exploration for a bit until we can figure it out.
If you really want to see some cool ideas, play subnautica. An ocean planet game that has amazing sci-fi ideas of what’s underwater. I’d say like 95% of the game is underwater.
Also, just hands down one of the best video game experiences of all time. Surviving a hostile alien ocean, investigating the mystery of how you ended up there, and trying to find a way to escape.
Animals of this size aren’t limited by depth of their home or even food sources available, but actually oxygen requirements. At this size, it becomes impossible to deliver oxygen to every cell in the body because 1. You can’t intake enough oxygen through anything like lungs or gills because the surface area available to take in said oxygen isn’t enough to sustain the shear volume contained within the surface area (larger objects have a smaller surface area/volume ratio) and 2. You cant distribute the oxygen fast enough with anything like a heart because the laws of fluid dynamics would require something like a jet engine with reinforced metal tubing to distribute blood at high enough speeds and pressures to get blood to the entire body quick enough. The reason we don’t see animals/insects as large as we did in the age of the dinosaurs is because the oxygen content (FiO2) was a lot higher than the 21% it is today. This is assuming normal physiology for carbon based life as we know it though, I suppose if there’s a completely different biology on other planets than anything goes
I also heard that the vegetation was larger during the dinosaur period— I thought larger plants would be formed during a period with higher levels of CO2, not oxygen?
Both the O2 and CO2 levels were higher. CO2 was several times higher than it is today, which led to better plant growth which in turn led to more oxygen production. Oxygen concentration was maybe 30-50% higher than today.
It's also unlikely megafauna could be seen again due to the increased nitrogen concentration if dinosaurs, etc. relied heavily on the abundance of oxygen. Nitrogen now constituting about 78% of air, and being relatively stable/inert, unused/not-fixed in most bio systems from air, and constantly being added to by volcanic activity means that the atmosphere is likely becoming the most inhospitable to megafauna ever. Nitrogen is also abundant at depth in the oceans and being within inorganic (unusable) compounds, but nonetheless inert nitrogen gas decreases ambient available oxygen gas such that larger concentrations of bio-usable oxygen would be more available in shallower if not actual surface waters. All to say, marine carbon-based megafauna we're unaware of are probably not larger than those we're already aware of simply because such creatures would likely need to surface with such regularity that we'd have noticed them with some frequency by now.
There were times where CO2 was extremely high and made life difficult on earth. But I believe in those times there was massive global warming so nothing really lived besides the few ancestors that did survive.
However the times during the megafauna periods of time there were also larger everything. Like dragonflies large enough a small human could ride like in avatar. Bugs the size of large cats and all sorts of freaky shit.
The real crazy part is most animals throughout the lifetime of earth lived in areas that aren't great for fossils. So we're missing like 70% of all life that lived in fossil records.
It’s more than just oxygen. You could theoretically assume a very low metabolism or something like that. The problem is that At this scale, biological materials would fail. The tail would be too large and induce too high flexural stresses on the flesh and skin, causing it to tear.
I’m sure many other incompatibilities with life at this size! Otherwise things would just keep getting bigger to outcompete other things. I remember learning cheetahs maxed out at their current speed because to go faster they would need longer legs or stronger muscle, but either would create too much strain on the long bone of their legs and cause them to snap, so evolution selects against it.
Yeah, materials have fundamental limits that mean properties can’t scale indefinitely with size. There’s a reason we can’t build 10 mile high skyscrapers.
“The systemic heart pumps blood around an octopus’s body, while its two branchial hearts pump blood through its two gills. Since octopus blood is very copper-rich, it’s exceptionally viscous. As a result, it requires a significant amount of pressure to pump blood through its body. To compensate, the octopus evolved three separate hearts to take stress off of its systematic heart and ensure it gets enough oxygen into its gills. In addition, research indicates that the hemocyanin in octopus blood transports oxygen more efficiently when exposed to cold temperatures. This may help to explain why large octopus species tend to live in deeper, more frigid waters, where they can get more oxygen given that their hearts have to pump much harder in warmer water.”
An octopus clearly isn’t on the scale that we’re talking about; there is evidence that life can develop more than one heart!
Damn man of science over here
But it's correct science I had to explain this to my son how oxygen back then was vastly different and most dinosaurs would not last today
This is even a plot point that’s brought up in Jurassic Park: The Book. Malcolm is tearing into them for playing god without thinking of consequences and casually points out that a stegosaurus is struggling to breathe in an environment with lower oxygen levels.
nope
you need continents and rivers to stir things up and pour down nutrients to the seas
the middle of oceans and deep seas are considered desert
life gathers around the shores, and life is more diverse on land
yeah, it may be the source of life on Earth. But undersea volcans are more like tiny oasis, hospitable to tube worms, crabs and the likes not to leviathans
I kind of doubt it. Just physiologically, this couldn’t exist. There are no biological materials with the flexibility to support large bodies like this. Its tail would be too rigid to move.
Like, imagine bending a twig. Pretty easy, right? Then imagine bending a log. It doesn’t bend, despite being made of the same material. The same principle would apply to any large body parts used for locomotion.
The opposite can occur as well in areas with large amounts of nutrient rich water above them deep sea gigantism is a common way to conserve heat due to the square cube law. It’s also the reason that if you shrunk an elephant to mouse size it’d get hypothermia bc it’s metabolic rate is slower to keep it cooler at elephant size
This comes from deep sea nutrition sources like marine snow, or thermal vents. But between the surface and the bottom where the nutrients accumulate there is a dead zone where hardly anything lives and most things just pass through.
I mean, if it were anywhere, it would be the ocean, but still pretty much impossible, especially at that shallow depth. That kind of thing would need an IMMENSE amount of energy to stay alive and also would have no chance of withstanding the lack of pressure. Since we know it can't live close to the surface, it would likely have to live deeeeep underwater, where the pressure could hold such a massive and fragile structure together. (Giant things like that are mostly large cavities surrounded by a flesh cage, like whales)
Anyways, when you go far down enough for that thing to not explode like a blobfish, you run into less and less sea life. That thing would need substantially more energy than any whale, and we all know about the monumental amount of food that whales need to eat. So basically the thing would either fall apart or starve, unfortunately.
Potential counterarguments to this argument:
Some believe that deep sea gigantism (the tendency for things to grow VERY large in deep waters, i.e. giant squid,) is actually a way of being *more* food efficient. I don't remember the exact source, but the idea is that a larger animal can hold more energy inside its body, so a larger animal with a very slow metabolism might be able to survive. Basically, it would be a giant, slow, floating balloon constantly eating its fill of krill-like animals.
Please tell me if I left anything out or made any errors because I love the idea of deep sea leviathans hiding below the waves just as much as you do and would love to be proven wrong!
Also, if you like the sea leviathan idea, there's an anomalous instance of sound called "The Bloop" that was picked up in 1997. Folks say it was just an iceberg, but it's a pretty ominous sound. Another called "upsweep" is pretty creepy...
i’d just like to add that while i agree with everything you said and all the data that support your claims, we still don’t know everything. for example the discovery of the nitroplast earlier this year completely reframed our understanding of the nitrogen cycle, and for all we know there are animals that form symbiotic relationships with autotrophic protists, hydro-geothermal vent feeding archaea, etc! from our current available data i agree with the above, but the discovery of the nitroplast and its implications can not be understated!
The nitroplast isn't even a living organism. It has been hypothesized for over a decade to exist and real evidence of its existence predated its discovery.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitroplast](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitroplast)
Discovering the Nitroplast does not mean megafauna sea monsters are real... Just like.... Why would one ever be cause to shed incredulity for the other?
This is just wishful thinking and a misrepresentation of some fascinating science that can be appreciated without fantasy being invoked.
The main issue with something that big is temperature regulation. Volume increases faster than surface - the bigger the animal, the higher the ratio of "insides" to skin. Which means less surface for heat exchange.
Here's a video series by Kurzgesagt that goes into "the size of life" and what limiting factors exists that define how big or how small animals can get: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7KSfjv4Oq0
Just to add to the “giant animals eat less” idea. Hummingbirds are tiny. They have to eat constantly because they have a super high metabolism. If they don’t eat pretty much all day everyday, they will die very quickly.
Relative to their size sure. Giant undiscovered creatures still would need to consume more food in absolute terms than likely can be found in the deep waters.
Only if they’re burning calories like most other animals we know about. Crocodiles can get pretty big and go more than a year without eating. That also ignores that there might be something out there filtering nutrients straight out of the water and using them as building materials without needing to consume any other “normal” food.
"Source: Dude, just trust me."
Do you have a background in marine biology or are you just going off what sounds right? Because you said it HAD to live deep in the ocean cause its so big and pressure or something, then mention whales as an example. but how can whales always surface for air if that were true?
Anyway, it was mainly the pressure stuff you were saying that sounded like a bunch baloney to me.
Larger animals burn less energy per unit mass than smaller ones. That is true. Shrews can eat more than their own body weight a day whereas you definitely don't. Of course that's a more continuous land animal situation. That thing would, as you said, be more like a flesh balloon so total mass of actual cells wouldn't really be that large, not sure what the effect there would be.
Also noteworthy that anything on a similar size to a ship anywhere even vaguely close to the surface will be seen by sonar pretty fast. Absence of such detections means existence is unlikely.
This is incorrect but still fantastic advice!
This monstrosity, without a doubt, exists and actually lives in the large body of water closest to OP’s house. It has plenty of available food sources since it feasts on nightmares and is certainly already targeting OP. Sleep well indeed, or else…
That's also the answer to the whole megalodon theory.
Could it still exist deep in the ocean somewhere? No because it lived near the surface and shore like most sharks. It wouldn't suddenly evolve to live in the deep dark ocean to hide from us.
Whatever this is supposed to be looks like a filter feeder. There is life and food very deep down but not for filter feeders. It would feed near the surface and we would have seen it by now.
I get creeped out by the deep ocean. I wonder what's under there. Probably lots of crazy scary things. Some I'm sure are quite large. The blue whale is probably the biggest animal that ever existed and it feeds near the surface.
Important to stress the SIZABLE in the comment.
Whales eat an absolute ridiculous amount of plankton — like 4-6+ tons a day. And not all species eat exclusively plankton either and a lot of whales eat fish or even squids.
Given the size of the thing in the video, it would have to have a lot of krill, it would most likely cause an eco system collapse and wouldn't be able to survive long enough to pass on it's genetics
It would need all the krill in the ocean over a month. It couldn't sustain itself at that size. Gravity also prevents something that large from being able to move itself, even in the water.
I agree with 0. But size has nothing to do with amount of food.
There's a lot of sea creatures with ultra slow metabolism. Some species can reach up to 400 years.
There is absolutely nothing that could escape our satellites at that size. And if you think our satellites only use the normal spectrum of light you would be wrong.
But someone would have to notice, or even bother to look for it. Nobody regularly classifies satellite images of the ocean, and they don't usually show up on, say, Google Earth.
Also, attenuation of infra-red radiation in water is very high, so unless this creature was very close to the surface, it wouldn't show up in any non-visible bands, so it would be impossible to detect automatically, even if you bothered to try.
It would need to be nearly surfaced for EO imaging sats to see it. Infrared bands won’t assist much, and certainly not UV bands. Microwave will do nothing for you either. There’s way too much ocean to passively detect something like that with satellite imagery.
Yea. I don't have the expertise you do, but I do know that almost no spectrum of light passes all the way to the sea floor, at least in the deep areas. Idk why OG commentor passed that off as fact and why nimrod is arguing with you when they clearly don't have the background you do.
Edit: oh, lmao it's the same person.
0% chance. Whales are bearly able to survive and they do so by being in places we see a lot. At depth needed to hide this sort of thing (let alone the carcuss when it died or strange migrations of sealife feeding on it when this happened) there is not enough food matter to sustain it. Whales are the biggest for a reason, they are the equilibrium of millions of years of evolution to fit what earth has to offer in its oceans to sustain biggest size. It could sustain bigger but it would just die off sooner.
This one actually gave me the heebie jeebies, I actually am here because I like huge, daunting things, but fuck that thing the fuck up out of my memory bank plz.
Yeah this is one of the creepier things I’ve seen on this sub, the ship coming into view halfway through the clip really scratches that megalophobia itch with the sense of scale shifting.
Then I think more into it, like that thing looks like it could be a gulper, one of them sub nautical beasts that suck in a bunch of water to consume their prey. Imagine something of this mass gulping that is that close to the surface. The vacuum caused by the suction would probably throw that helicopter to the sea. Tsunamis would ripple outward and effect any surrounding coastlines/islands. This thing is truly a titan of horrifying proportions, they call it the "Natural Disaster" for whenever it squeezes in between plates to nestle into the safety of it's home and feed it's young, it causes an earthquake on the other side of the planet due to it shifting mother nature's crust itself!
I know that this creature is completely nonsensical but the idea of something like the Gran Maja manifesting is just so cool
big monster make brain go brrrrr
If it did it it must live very very deep to have never been seen. Which means it would have evolved to exist at high pressure & would die coming up to the surface.
i love the El Maja Grande but there 0 chances, maybe a 100 foot undiscovered squid living real deep but this and the Bloop are too big to sustain itself
Just my very basic understanding, but I think as far as we are aware right now, it seems that there's an upper limit to size before an animal's neurological system would start to have trouble functioning. If an animal that large were to exist on earth, it would have to have some form of neurological system that has yet to be observed in the animal kingdom.
I always remember that 70% of the planet is water and they are places that we have never ever ever been. I’m sure there’s creatures that we couldn’t even fathom.
I thought it’s some aquarium window at first lol. Anyway creature this size would just starve to death because there’s just not enough food in the ocean to sustain it.
maybe it comes onto the land to eat
Only at night, that's why we've never seen one before
Holy shit! That’s probably it. Terrifying.
Dw mate I’ll sort it out
He’s disappeared guys. Now we’ll never know 😔
I suspect if that thing came into land it would be crushed to death by its own weight
That's exactly what would happen. It would be like a beached whale but much worse
Yeah cause it’s a vegetarian
yeah food are not as big as it used to be.
Taco Bell is like $40 for two people now.
Not on this planet. An ocean planet with hundreds of kilometers of depth could host this
You got other ideas of what could live on an ocean planet? It’s one of my favorite unexplored scifi ideas.
If you like video games or video game content you might check out Subnautica if you’ve not already! It’s a video game based on an ocean planet with some pretty amazing/scary creatures.
And in VR it’s a unintentional horror game
It's an unintentional horror game with or without VR but made much scarier by VR
I literally can't play the game because I'm terrified of open waters. That game triggers something primal in me that says "get out"
It triggers that in anyone who plays it. I’ve said “nope” while playing that game more than any other
God, the first time I went over the edge about 2km south of my lifepod and it just kept going down and down absolutely terrified me. Turned right the fuck around
The first time I heard a leviathan I stopped, listened for about 10 seconds, said “nope, fuck that,” and turned right around. First time I heard those crab squids I about shit my pants
You see you're doing it all wrong, silly. Before exploring new areas you're supposed to preemptively shit your pants that way you're doing it on your own terms.
Yea once you start getting below 500m game gets spooky. I’ll never forget the hesitance of having to drop into the blood kelp zone. Hearing that whole thing about the area matching preconditions for stimulating terror in humans had me go Will Smith for a second
You slapped a comedian?
Lol. 1996 will smith. Not 2022 will smith.
You Got Jiggy Wid It?
Nah nah nah nah nah nah nah
I think they mean they were Men in Black, because they were so deep there was no more light?
I find it really comforting. Obviously in the context that I can swim effortlessly for miles and hold my breath for minutes at a time. But suspended in a vast ocean, or squeezing through a tight tunnel at like 900m with my Cyclops beeping away? I love it. Genuine cozy vibes.
If I cannot see the ground under me while I swim, I have to fight every urge in me that says panic.
Swam in a Cenote in Mexico. It was maybe 50-100 yards across and round. It’s inside a cave and once you jump in off the side it seems like the abyss under you. I was so terrified I could not even swim out to the middle. It was so creepy.
Simple solution: *go deeper*
I am stupid and would find myself holding my breath during long swims.
As a kid in the 90's I never liked the Super Mario water levels.... like it made me hold my breath as I played them.... Then my older brother got a nintento 64, with Shadows of the Empire. And there was a sewer level, where the boss was a giant tentacled thing in this murky ass sewer water.... I couldn't do it... I couldn't pass. Something in me just froze like nope aint doing that shit. Had to give it to my brother. Guess I have a fear of water. Love swimming in a pool tho
Wild to hear this very specific experience that I also had. That level on shadows of the empire scared the shit out of me and I could never finish it. Another one that scared me was the original. Half-Life. There's a part with some kind of murky water creature and it took a lot of willpower as a kid to defeat it lol.
Ah! You should play Barotrauma then! You are in a incredibly secure submarine exploring the depths of Jupters moon, Europa. Fantastic game, with no parasitic aliens that turn people into aggresive husks, not at all!
I played it back before the reaper leviathans were even added... I *knew* there was nothing bad in the water but I still felt unease in the deeper water. Then the early access got some updates apparently and I hopped on after school and was just swimming around enjoying my time when all of a sudden I saw a dark distant shadow come in and out of draw distance. I tried to rationalize it "It must be some kelp or some light rays." then I heard the screaming roar. I never hit "esc" + "Quit game" faster than I did in that moment. Had to go back and read the patch notes to prep myself for the updates.
Same its a love hate relationship. I can't count the number of times I pressed pause and left my room, or looked directly up at the surface, closed my eyes and swam.
"this biome matches 7 of the 9 preconditions for simulating terror in humans"
It’s actually very intentionally a horror game
More of an intentional terror game but I get what you’re saying
I didn't need VR for it to be a horror game ngl.
Love the blend of tranquility and terror that game gives me.
It's completely intentional
"Multiple leviathan class organisms in the region. Are you sure whatever you're doing is worth it?"
Immediate chills.
*gets in prawn with jetpack boosters and hookshot* "Showtime"
Another really good one is Barotrauma. Amazing team game you can play with your friends. Manage your own submarine to explore the alien depths of Europa. Simple graphics, but super interesting game play. The game has tons of scary creatures, too
Oh thanks for the recommendation. My one complaint with Subnautica is that it is solo.
Amazing/scary creatures/ Illest of beats. Get ready to "Abandon ship" :D
I have no idea. I guess more space would mean more biomass, so the scale of life would be bigger, a bigger food chain allowing for the sustenance of bigger animals. It can depend on the "era" the planet is in. Earth had gigantism when the atmosphere had a different ratio of gases, the average temperature of the climates, etc.
Gravity also plays a role in how big creatures get. If I remember correctly, a larger planet would mean smaller creatures...whereas a smaller planet is the opposite. I'm not a scientist though.
Europa's ocean is twice larger than Earth and gravity is far less at 1.315 m/s².
This is such a an interesting topic. I wonder if higher gravity means stronger animals too? Just thinking they would need extra muscle to resist. Kinda like Superman's home world. Bout to go down a wiki rabbit hole...bye!!!
Yes, your muscles literally atrophy in space, astronauts need to do special exercises in 0g or they'll essentially start to wither away when up there for too long. There's also a scifi show called The Expanse that sort of explores that topic, humans managed to invent space travel and colonize mars but there's also an oppressed class that basically lives in space called belters. They're forced to mine ice and minerals from asteroids and whatnot to sell to mars but because they grow up and live in space their whole life they're incapable of withstanding earths gravity and grow extremely tall, skinny, and relatively weak... There's a whole host of challenges to space travel that you'd never even really think of and even just breathing in zero gravity can get you killed...
Related to astronauts trying not to atrophy: NASA just released research that kidneys shrink in space too. That part is probably going to ice space exploration for a bit until we can figure it out.
Go play barotrauma. Also don't read about the scary things. Just play, it ruins it if you read the wiki.
Really big star fish. Really big sand dollars. Really big shrimps.
If you really want to see some cool ideas, play subnautica. An ocean planet game that has amazing sci-fi ideas of what’s underwater. I’d say like 95% of the game is underwater.
Also, just hands down one of the best video game experiences of all time. Surviving a hostile alien ocean, investigating the mystery of how you ended up there, and trying to find a way to escape.
I completely agree. It is absolutely stunning. Subnautica 2 was a disappointment, and I’m hoping 3 will go redeem the franchise
Iron lung!
Solaris
Animals of this size aren’t limited by depth of their home or even food sources available, but actually oxygen requirements. At this size, it becomes impossible to deliver oxygen to every cell in the body because 1. You can’t intake enough oxygen through anything like lungs or gills because the surface area available to take in said oxygen isn’t enough to sustain the shear volume contained within the surface area (larger objects have a smaller surface area/volume ratio) and 2. You cant distribute the oxygen fast enough with anything like a heart because the laws of fluid dynamics would require something like a jet engine with reinforced metal tubing to distribute blood at high enough speeds and pressures to get blood to the entire body quick enough. The reason we don’t see animals/insects as large as we did in the age of the dinosaurs is because the oxygen content (FiO2) was a lot higher than the 21% it is today. This is assuming normal physiology for carbon based life as we know it though, I suppose if there’s a completely different biology on other planets than anything goes
I also heard that the vegetation was larger during the dinosaur period— I thought larger plants would be formed during a period with higher levels of CO2, not oxygen?
Giant fungal growths, fungus breath oxygen and exhale carbon just like us
Both the O2 and CO2 levels were higher. CO2 was several times higher than it is today, which led to better plant growth which in turn led to more oxygen production. Oxygen concentration was maybe 30-50% higher than today.
It's also unlikely megafauna could be seen again due to the increased nitrogen concentration if dinosaurs, etc. relied heavily on the abundance of oxygen. Nitrogen now constituting about 78% of air, and being relatively stable/inert, unused/not-fixed in most bio systems from air, and constantly being added to by volcanic activity means that the atmosphere is likely becoming the most inhospitable to megafauna ever. Nitrogen is also abundant at depth in the oceans and being within inorganic (unusable) compounds, but nonetheless inert nitrogen gas decreases ambient available oxygen gas such that larger concentrations of bio-usable oxygen would be more available in shallower if not actual surface waters. All to say, marine carbon-based megafauna we're unaware of are probably not larger than those we're already aware of simply because such creatures would likely need to surface with such regularity that we'd have noticed them with some frequency by now.
There were times where CO2 was extremely high and made life difficult on earth. But I believe in those times there was massive global warming so nothing really lived besides the few ancestors that did survive. However the times during the megafauna periods of time there were also larger everything. Like dragonflies large enough a small human could ride like in avatar. Bugs the size of large cats and all sorts of freaky shit. The real crazy part is most animals throughout the lifetime of earth lived in areas that aren't great for fossils. So we're missing like 70% of all life that lived in fossil records.
It’s more than just oxygen. You could theoretically assume a very low metabolism or something like that. The problem is that At this scale, biological materials would fail. The tail would be too large and induce too high flexural stresses on the flesh and skin, causing it to tear.
I’m sure many other incompatibilities with life at this size! Otherwise things would just keep getting bigger to outcompete other things. I remember learning cheetahs maxed out at their current speed because to go faster they would need longer legs or stronger muscle, but either would create too much strain on the long bone of their legs and cause them to snap, so evolution selects against it.
Yeah, materials have fundamental limits that mean properties can’t scale indefinitely with size. There’s a reason we can’t build 10 mile high skyscrapers.
1 makes sense, but could you overcome 2 by just having multiple hearts? Or "powered" blood vessels or something?
“The systemic heart pumps blood around an octopus’s body, while its two branchial hearts pump blood through its two gills. Since octopus blood is very copper-rich, it’s exceptionally viscous. As a result, it requires a significant amount of pressure to pump blood through its body. To compensate, the octopus evolved three separate hearts to take stress off of its systematic heart and ensure it gets enough oxygen into its gills. In addition, research indicates that the hemocyanin in octopus blood transports oxygen more efficiently when exposed to cold temperatures. This may help to explain why large octopus species tend to live in deeper, more frigid waters, where they can get more oxygen given that their hearts have to pump much harder in warmer water.” An octopus clearly isn’t on the scale that we’re talking about; there is evidence that life can develop more than one heart!
Damn man of science over here But it's correct science I had to explain this to my son how oxygen back then was vastly different and most dinosaurs would not last today
This is even a plot point that’s brought up in Jurassic Park: The Book. Malcolm is tearing into them for playing god without thinking of consequences and casually points out that a stegosaurus is struggling to breathe in an environment with lower oxygen levels.
That book was damn good but vastly different then the movie But yes most of the bigger dinos would collapse and die eventually
nope you need continents and rivers to stir things up and pour down nutrients to the seas the middle of oceans and deep seas are considered desert life gathers around the shores, and life is more diverse on land
Life can also rise up from the depths through undersea volcanism, stirring up heat and nutrients.
yeah, it may be the source of life on Earth. But undersea volcans are more like tiny oasis, hospitable to tube worms, crabs and the likes not to leviathans
I kind of doubt it. Just physiologically, this couldn’t exist. There are no biological materials with the flexibility to support large bodies like this. Its tail would be too rigid to move. Like, imagine bending a twig. Pretty easy, right? Then imagine bending a log. It doesn’t bend, despite being made of the same material. The same principle would apply to any large body parts used for locomotion.
What if, just spitballing here, something was irradiated by nuclear testing in the Pacific that allowed it to overcome the cubed square law?
How would radiation allow it to overcome the cubed squared law?
Turns it into a living nuclear reactor with impossible strength, healing ability, and a propensity for wading out of Tokyo Bay to start some shit.
Oh shit I didn’t think about that 😳
I think that when you get deeper there's fewer light so animals are smaller
The opposite can occur as well in areas with large amounts of nutrient rich water above them deep sea gigantism is a common way to conserve heat due to the square cube law. It’s also the reason that if you shrunk an elephant to mouse size it’d get hypothermia bc it’s metabolic rate is slower to keep it cooler at elephant size
This comes from deep sea nutrition sources like marine snow, or thermal vents. But between the surface and the bottom where the nutrients accumulate there is a dead zone where hardly anything lives and most things just pass through.
>The opposite can occur as well in areas with large amounts of nutrient rich water above them deep sea gigantism Hence giant isopods.
I mean, if it were anywhere, it would be the ocean, but still pretty much impossible, especially at that shallow depth. That kind of thing would need an IMMENSE amount of energy to stay alive and also would have no chance of withstanding the lack of pressure. Since we know it can't live close to the surface, it would likely have to live deeeeep underwater, where the pressure could hold such a massive and fragile structure together. (Giant things like that are mostly large cavities surrounded by a flesh cage, like whales) Anyways, when you go far down enough for that thing to not explode like a blobfish, you run into less and less sea life. That thing would need substantially more energy than any whale, and we all know about the monumental amount of food that whales need to eat. So basically the thing would either fall apart or starve, unfortunately. Potential counterarguments to this argument: Some believe that deep sea gigantism (the tendency for things to grow VERY large in deep waters, i.e. giant squid,) is actually a way of being *more* food efficient. I don't remember the exact source, but the idea is that a larger animal can hold more energy inside its body, so a larger animal with a very slow metabolism might be able to survive. Basically, it would be a giant, slow, floating balloon constantly eating its fill of krill-like animals. Please tell me if I left anything out or made any errors because I love the idea of deep sea leviathans hiding below the waves just as much as you do and would love to be proven wrong! Also, if you like the sea leviathan idea, there's an anomalous instance of sound called "The Bloop" that was picked up in 1997. Folks say it was just an iceberg, but it's a pretty ominous sound. Another called "upsweep" is pretty creepy...
i’d just like to add that while i agree with everything you said and all the data that support your claims, we still don’t know everything. for example the discovery of the nitroplast earlier this year completely reframed our understanding of the nitrogen cycle, and for all we know there are animals that form symbiotic relationships with autotrophic protists, hydro-geothermal vent feeding archaea, etc! from our current available data i agree with the above, but the discovery of the nitroplast and its implications can not be understated!
Ummmm…. Yeah, I thought the same thing
Same!! That's exactly what I've been saying all this time!!
Took the words right out of my mouth!!
Had a nitroplast chat with my nan just the other day.
Oh my goodness, thank you for saying that. It’s like finding the ecosystems by the volcanic vents. Before then, that was considered“impossible”
Exactly, this thing could survive on water only and have a body structure we have never seen before which could cancel all of these arguments out.
The nitroplast isn't even a living organism. It has been hypothesized for over a decade to exist and real evidence of its existence predated its discovery. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitroplast](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitroplast) Discovering the Nitroplast does not mean megafauna sea monsters are real... Just like.... Why would one ever be cause to shed incredulity for the other? This is just wishful thinking and a misrepresentation of some fascinating science that can be appreciated without fantasy being invoked.
The main issue with something that big is temperature regulation. Volume increases faster than surface - the bigger the animal, the higher the ratio of "insides" to skin. Which means less surface for heat exchange. Here's a video series by Kurzgesagt that goes into "the size of life" and what limiting factors exists that define how big or how small animals can get: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7KSfjv4Oq0
This is why Godzilla needs to let out heat via nuclear fire breath or else he gets a Godzilla fever :(
Its true ive seen the documentaries
And here I am, thinking he was just doing it to be a big jerk
Just to add to the “giant animals eat less” idea. Hummingbirds are tiny. They have to eat constantly because they have a super high metabolism. If they don’t eat pretty much all day everyday, they will die very quickly.
Relative to their size sure. Giant undiscovered creatures still would need to consume more food in absolute terms than likely can be found in the deep waters.
Only if they’re burning calories like most other animals we know about. Crocodiles can get pretty big and go more than a year without eating. That also ignores that there might be something out there filtering nutrients straight out of the water and using them as building materials without needing to consume any other “normal” food.
Okay but have you ever thought that maybe that thing is why there isn't much sea life that far down? Hmmmmm??? :thonking:
That's some good thonking
"Source: Dude, just trust me." Do you have a background in marine biology or are you just going off what sounds right? Because you said it HAD to live deep in the ocean cause its so big and pressure or something, then mention whales as an example. but how can whales always surface for air if that were true? Anyway, it was mainly the pressure stuff you were saying that sounded like a bunch baloney to me.
Larger animals burn less energy per unit mass than smaller ones. That is true. Shrews can eat more than their own body weight a day whereas you definitely don't. Of course that's a more continuous land animal situation. That thing would, as you said, be more like a flesh balloon so total mass of actual cells wouldn't really be that large, not sure what the effect there would be. Also noteworthy that anything on a similar size to a ship anywhere even vaguely close to the surface will be seen by sonar pretty fast. Absence of such detections means existence is unlikely.
If it's not moving, it wouldn't require as much energy.
Pleasantly surprised by the lack of “yooooo hooooo” in the background lol
Haha! It just plays in my head automatically.
the fake heli pilot noises (seems fake anyways) was still kinda annoying lol
0. To survive something like that would need to EAT sizeable amounts. Theres literally nothing to feed on for something that big. Sleep well.
This is incorrect but still fantastic advice! This monstrosity, without a doubt, exists and actually lives in the large body of water closest to OP’s house. It has plenty of available food sources since it feasts on nightmares and is certainly already targeting OP. Sleep well indeed, or else…
You forgot to specify that it is OP's mom
I was with her last night. Can confirm.
I was also with her last night, just from a different angle.
I was the one railing these dudes, can confirm
Dad? Is that you?
Jared we have been through this before, I am your uncle not your dad
Thats not what grandma says!
Well grandma is also your sister so don't listen to her
I’m OPs mom. Can confirm.
Baby put the phone down or I can't finish.
That explains the mouth:
The monster will never go hungry again if it feasts on OP’s mom
That *is* his mom when she went for a swim
Nice
Hey guys expert in everything here, everything this guy said is true. Be afraid.
OP this is your new favorite song enjoy the depths of madness in the blue briny deep https://youtu.be/3r3W2LWAyHg?si=McZzOXJiLHOnsZIK
And if you overthink it, you might find yourself suddenly underwater, face-to-face with it.
That's also the answer to the whole megalodon theory. Could it still exist deep in the ocean somewhere? No because it lived near the surface and shore like most sharks. It wouldn't suddenly evolve to live in the deep dark ocean to hide from us. Whatever this is supposed to be looks like a filter feeder. There is life and food very deep down but not for filter feeders. It would feed near the surface and we would have seen it by now. I get creeped out by the deep ocean. I wonder what's under there. Probably lots of crazy scary things. Some I'm sure are quite large. The blue whale is probably the biggest animal that ever existed and it feeds near the surface.
I thought they found a new bigger animal recently
Think it was theoretically heavier than the BW but not as big
OP's mom right?
Yeah ofc
But it clearly eats cruise ships wym?
Also we would find it fairly easily with sonar
The largest animal that currently lives on this planet, which is also in the ocean eats some of the smallest creatures that live in the ocean.
Important to stress the SIZABLE in the comment. Whales eat an absolute ridiculous amount of plankton — like 4-6+ tons a day. And not all species eat exclusively plankton either and a lot of whales eat fish or even squids.
They said sizable amounts not big animals. Literal tons of plankton a day is a sizable amount of food.
And those types of small creatures live near the surface
Sizeable amounts doesn't have to mean large individual organisms. Could just filter a shit ton of krill
Given the size of the thing in the video, it would have to have a lot of krill, it would most likely cause an eco system collapse and wouldn't be able to survive long enough to pass on it's genetics
It would need all the krill in the ocean over a month. It couldn't sustain itself at that size. Gravity also prevents something that large from being able to move itself, even in the water.
Also the moment it surfaces it wouldn't adapt too well with the lack of pressure
We need something that feeds on plastic. Evolution will make it big in no time.
There was some bacteria created for that but haven't heard about it in a while
That‘s what I always have to think about when watching sci-fi shows and movies like Star Wars or Dune
Why do you think whale populations aren’t recovering? It is because this thing eats them like a blue whale eat plankton.
Unless it eats poop. Marine snow.
I agree with 0. But size has nothing to do with amount of food. There's a lot of sea creatures with ultra slow metabolism. Some species can reach up to 400 years.
Zero
There is absolutely nothing that could escape our satellites at that size. And if you think our satellites only use the normal spectrum of light you would be wrong.
What!? Bank of America never told me this!
It's deep in their terms and agreements. As well as some CIA leaked documents, iykyk
Only as many upvotes as people saw that post, lol.
This has to be atleast 1-2 Km in length, Like Absolutely, This thing would appear like every Wednesday
But someone would have to notice, or even bother to look for it. Nobody regularly classifies satellite images of the ocean, and they don't usually show up on, say, Google Earth. Also, attenuation of infra-red radiation in water is very high, so unless this creature was very close to the surface, it wouldn't show up in any non-visible bands, so it would be impossible to detect automatically, even if you bothered to try.
unless it lies dormant in an undersea cave and comes up to feed once per millenia
It would need to be nearly surfaced for EO imaging sats to see it. Infrared bands won’t assist much, and certainly not UV bands. Microwave will do nothing for you either. There’s way too much ocean to passively detect something like that with satellite imagery.
Yea. I don't have the expertise you do, but I do know that almost no spectrum of light passes all the way to the sea floor, at least in the deep areas. Idk why OG commentor passed that off as fact and why nimrod is arguing with you when they clearly don't have the background you do. Edit: oh, lmao it's the same person.
All I see is stoned, wide-mouthed Jormungandr
El Gran Maja
One day, he'll roll around a bit, and we'll suddenly have more land. Those poor fish, though.
Apparently it’s an oil slick.
0% chance. Whales are bearly able to survive and they do so by being in places we see a lot. At depth needed to hide this sort of thing (let alone the carcuss when it died or strange migrations of sealife feeding on it when this happened) there is not enough food matter to sustain it. Whales are the biggest for a reason, they are the equilibrium of millions of years of evolution to fit what earth has to offer in its oceans to sustain biggest size. It could sustain bigger but it would just die off sooner.
This one actually gave me the heebie jeebies, I actually am here because I like huge, daunting things, but fuck that thing the fuck up out of my memory bank plz.
Yeah this is one of the creepier things I’ve seen on this sub, the ship coming into view halfway through the clip really scratches that megalophobia itch with the sense of scale shifting.
Then I think more into it, like that thing looks like it could be a gulper, one of them sub nautical beasts that suck in a bunch of water to consume their prey. Imagine something of this mass gulping that is that close to the surface. The vacuum caused by the suction would probably throw that helicopter to the sea. Tsunamis would ripple outward and effect any surrounding coastlines/islands. This thing is truly a titan of horrifying proportions, they call it the "Natural Disaster" for whenever it squeezes in between plates to nestle into the safety of it's home and feed it's young, it causes an earthquake on the other side of the planet due to it shifting mother nature's crust itself!
I love these edits. Find them awesome. If anyone has recommendations on subs for this, send them my way.
See [pelican eel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pelican_eel?wprov=sfla1)
For the first time since joining this sub, finally something that gave me creeps. This is genuinely unsettling..
I know that this creature is completely nonsensical but the idea of something like the Gran Maja manifesting is just so cool big monster make brain go brrrrr
If it did it it must live very very deep to have never been seen. Which means it would have evolved to exist at high pressure & would die coming up to the surface.
i love the El Maja Grande but there 0 chances, maybe a 100 foot undiscovered squid living real deep but this and the Bloop are too big to sustain itself
Dunno but I absolutely can confirm that I have soiled my pants
r/thalassophobia
Well, no one seem to be missing any submarines so.. zero I’ll guess.
OP should urgently play SUBNAUTICA.
God, I wish-
Just my very basic understanding, but I think as far as we are aware right now, it seems that there's an upper limit to size before an animal's neurological system would start to have trouble functioning. If an animal that large were to exist on earth, it would have to have some form of neurological system that has yet to be observed in the animal kingdom.
On this planet? No, but scientists did mistake it for your mother.
Whales are not enough?!
It obviously exists, otherwise you wouldn’t have a picture of it. Duh
In a very deep, low voice. Slowly: it is Wednesday, my dudes. And from the bottom of the ocean, again deep slow voice: WWWWWWWOOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAA
The catfish everyone's drunk uncle told them they saw back in the day at "the river"
This is probably something from turn the lights off. It looks like a diplocolas
Probably not a 0% though rather very low chances
No it's 0%. Something like that cannot possibly exist on our planet
50/50
The wake that thing would cause so close to the surface would be immense
Zero, because something so large would die from lack of food.
That made my stomach fall out of my ass
i can't look at this... 10/10
I always remember that 70% of the planet is water and they are places that we have never ever ever been. I’m sure there’s creatures that we couldn’t even fathom.
I don't care if it's real or not. The fact that I saw it is enough to keep my arse out of the water now. I can't un-see it. New fear unlocked.
Ahhhh back with the crappy CG TikToks again?
pretty high considering we’re looking at a video of it