How come none of these guys are still around?
What did sharks do to stick around for so long that these guys didn't?
How come none of these guys are still around? What did sharks do to stick around for so long that these guys didn't?
How come none of these guys are still around?
What did sharks do to stick around for so long that these guys didn't?
Where are the feathers?
And sharks can rebounce from anything because they pretty much fill every niche in the ocean. Kill all the big sharks, the smaller ones that are usually bottom feeders will evolve to take their place.
The permian extinction was fucking brutal. Humans are heading to a similar extinction event.
Ichthyosaurs where outcompeted by Mosasaurs, who in turn where wiped out during the end-Triassic extinction event because most megafauna didn't make it through that. Sharks made it because not all are mega, and because they are really good at not dying, as they've made it through multiple mass extinctions, including the Great Dying
Ah yes, the end of the Triassic was a rough time for those poor mosasaurs wasn't it?
>ocean temperature changes by a couple degrees
>uh oh!
>*goes extinct*
dumb cucks didn't even make it to K-T, just fell over and died in the early cretaceous
How come none of these guys are still around? Orcas are a gay apex predator, dolphins are a faggy animal.
They were so good it took a meteorite to wipe them out
Too big, Not enough food after climate changed. Being cold blooded must suck.
>Too big, Not enough food
When are we gonna get new oceanic superpredators that evolved to feed on baleen whales
Orcas
Orcas… are basically the humans of the ocean. A super intelligent apex predator that passes learned knowledge on through culture and feeds on all levels of the food chain. They will be the only super predator for a long long time
Ignoring the fact that all orca ecotypes A through D and offshore, transient and residents have specialised in a specific type of food and that the lack of their ONE food source, chinook salmon, is the reason residents are fucking starving because they're too unequipped and retarded to figure out how to hunt different fish. They've gotten too comfy eating large salmon and that's gonna kill them all in the end, their teeth shape would enable them to hunt rays, flounders, everything similar but they won't do that because....?
Because.... they aren't sapient, lmao. They have large brains for processing sonar, "saying pictures", being able to half-sleep while not dying, excellent social organizational skills and empathy, and keeping a 3d map of the ocean in their head. However orcas like pretty much all nonhuman animals and most NPC-grade humans totally lack the capacity for self-reflection.
Yeah, I know all of that. Much like the fact that their local accents make them difficult to recognize among other populations, thus making it hard to share knowledge. But their downfall comes from specialization. Seals are also dependent on mostly one single species, herring for Stellar's seals for example but they're able to hunt different prey because their tooth structure allows for it. A starving animal would usually take any food and I'm not talking about South African shark eaters suddenly switching to baleen whales [because their teeth structure simply won't allow for it]. What I'm bothered by is the fact that, for their size and cognitive ability to develop language, names and dialects, they're unable to adapt to such a significant change. Even the Antarctic populations have multiple food sources they use when, for example, penguins are scarce. Why would they adapt to eat one single type of salmon of all the species to catch?
whales are truly a retarded species, on par with pandas and koalas
Actually, being warm blooded would be worse in that situation, as it increases energy requirements by like an order of magnitude.
mass extinction collapsed the foodchain, everything at the top died
is this how we defeat capitalism?
Clearly not, as demonstrated by communist regimes.
you think whales and dolphins are going to keep existing? because why would an AIR breather be at an advantage compared to the WATER breathing one when they both live under water
because the air have more oxygen than water, allowing to bigger size and more active metabolism
>more active metabolism
literally the down fall of most species, the species that survive the extinction events are the slow ones
I'm gonna make it bros.
Is it better to burn brighter for a short time as a dominant apex predator or to last longer as a comparatively smaller or less unique generalist species?
i think crocodiles are pretty rad since that entire linage has "existed" since before the dinosaurs
also
>less unique generalist species
you mean humans, the only reason why homo sapiens did as well as they did was because they were generalists and needed much less calories than the neanderthals heavy meat diet
>the only reason
That isn't "they only reason". Theres a multitude of reasons, chief amongst them being we were simply more likely to hash out disagreements between groups rather than flat out skullfucking each other over small quarrels like the other hominins. This is why we still carry some archaic DNA in the first place. I'd wager it has to do with us being so neotenic (in comparison to other hominins) in general. We also traveled in larger, more coordinated groups as well as had better weaponry (pretty sure first documented spear usage is attributed to H.Sapiens, but I could be wrong)
homo sapians came from africa, and theres literally food everywhere in africa, neanderthals lived in europe, and europe is basically death half of the year without farming
and itll never happen again, the closest we'll get is maybe another thalattosuchia
I wish we still had terrestrial and herbivorous crocs.
>terrestrial crocodiles existed in one form or another from the Permian to 3,000 years ago
in the case of both sharks and crocs time and again the unique specialized offshoots tend to burn brighter but nowhere near as long as the more generalist species.
Generalists are better at surviving extinction level events and later on more specialized new subspecies arise from those that survived.
Humans are specialized, the human brain is the greatest evolutionary achievement in the history of this planet.
>Become the most aquaticaly specialised reptile to have ever existed
>outcompeted and killed of by fucking lizards
lmao
More like they went extinct on their own and the lizards radiated to fill in the gap they left for the niche. Many such cases.
They're gay and had to come up for air. Sharks are based and don't. Sharks also come in tons of different sizes, so when the ecosystem collapsed the little fellers were probably the ones still able to catch shit and hide. This'll probably happen with cetaceans during the next natural mass extinction.
Atmospheric air allows air breathing marine animals to physically outperform those that use gills
not if there is a bigass layer of dirt and ashes on the surface
Wasn't enough to keep the big sea reptiles around after KT extinction completely fucked the entire planetary ecosystem.
Will orcas go extinct? No...
>What did sharks do to stick around for so long
being real, for starters
Meds
fpbp