Megalodon vs Livyatan

[Deleted]

Dec 30, 2022 19:20:30 GMT Hardcastle said:

So how do you imagine baleen whales evaded predation? Or did they just not and were sitting ducks that got obliterated at will?

I don’t think those baleen whales would’ve fought back. Instead they would choose to outrun their predator in a flight response, similar to minke whales fleeing from orcas in the present day.

[Hardcastle]

So you are saying the megalodon was as slow as a baleen whale?

I feel like we have to choose between too big or too fast to be easy prey. Not too big or too fast to be prey, but to be EASY prey. As outlined earlier prey needs to have an advantage. Some do it with hiding somewhere hard to reach, breeding really fast and abundantly and/or living in big packs, some are very fast and evasive and some are too big and/or too dangerous to easily kill... one way or another, the good ones have to evade predation long enough for their offspring to have a decent chance of being successful. For baleen whales that's a really long time. A baleen whale doesn't reach sexual maturity until it is 12 years old. Then it is pregnant for a whole year, then it's offspring (and it only has 1 a time, which is significant) depends on it for at least 2 years, and ofcourse isn't able to breed itself for another 10 after that. So for the species to exist we need some vein of success where each generation is reaching at least 15 years old before they fall prey to a megalodon.


To me this means Meg is either smaller than we think or slower than we think. Or the baleen whales were inexplicably epic back then at either speed and agility or fighting giant sharks. I just find it curious, to me it's one of the great mysteries of prehistory. How some of these super predators could be viable is perplexing. I think the most impressive estimates, in size and ability both, have to be generous over-excitement from the enthusiastic experts.

I actually really liked the arguments of that guy who said T-rex was a scavenger. He may not have been totally right, but he made some really good points and got shot down super aggressively by arguably some of the most passionate fan-boys in all of animalia (t-rex loving paleontologists). The fact remains there is a problem with their vision of t-rex. It's too OP, and that can't exist. I feel the same way about meg.