Dinosaurs: Perfect Predators. Review.

Few days ago I have watched a DVD: “Dinosaurs: Perfect Predators”. What conclusions can be drawn from it?

Firstly, Beyond T-Rex: this program deals with the discovery of two of T-Rex’s biggest competitors: giganotosaurus and carcharodontosaurus, two closely related carnosaur cousins. As such, they were closely related to the allosaurus of the Jurassic time period, meaning that they were more primitive than the T-Rex, in some ways, mainly in regards to smarts. T-Rex itself had an IQ somewhere between the American alligator and the common house cat, and the carnosaurs were even less intelligent.

Furthermore, size for size, the carnosaurs had a weaker bite than the T-Rex’s but stronger – and larger - forearms with bigger claws to compensate this relatively weaker bite; if T-Rex and its cousins acted like modern crocodiles do, bit down hard and tore deep, gaping wounds, the carnosaurs acted more like the sharks’, inflicting shallower, but heavily bleeding wounds – hence the difference in their teeth. If the T-Rex’s teeth were ‘railroad spikes’, then the carnosaurs’ teeth were more like blades, more easily broken and which slashed rather than stabbed.

This was demonstrated in both Beyond T-Rex and Monsters Resurrected: Giant American Predator, which featured yet another carnosaur: acrocanthosaurus (acro). At 8 meters in length it was smaller than the carcharodontosaurus and giganotosaurus, but still larger than the T-Rex with much more developed forelimbs yet a slimmer, and relatively weaker, snout. That said, this weaker bite was compensated by its neck and backbone ridge that allowed acrocanthosaurus to clamp on, like a vise, onto its prey – giant sauropods like paluxysaurus, now apparently re-named into sauroposeidon. T-Rex could not do that for all of its awesomeness, if it bit down, it would bite right through, unlike the carnosaurs, which could not bite through bone.

On the other hand, at the end of the Cretaceous, when T-Rex walked the Earth, there were little to no sauropods in North America, so who knows how tyrannosaurus would have handled them overall.

Finally, there was Clash of the Dinosaurs: Perfect Predators, which focused on T-Rex, deinonychus and quetzalcoatlus. The latter, incidentally, is a pterosaur – a flying reptile, not a dinosaur. This feature showed clips of the predators hunting herbivores, including paluxysaurus/sauroposeidon, and it was done by deinonychus the raptor, (also featured in Monsters Resurrected: Giant American Predator), not tyrannosaurus.

In other words, here is how the cookie crumbled. The carnosaurs, featured in Beyond T-Rex and Monsters Resurrected: Giant American Predator had remained relatively basic, somewhat primitive creatures, only growing larger in size and specializing in feeding only on sauropods: when acrocanthosaurus, for example, had to deal with an armored dinosaur called sauropelta, it failed completely, and when the sauropods died out, so did the carnosaurs.

The tyrannosaurs and the raptors, on the other hand, were more specialized. Size for size, tyrannosaurs – especially T-Rex itself – were more stocky and robust than the carnosaurs, probably ambush hunters than long-distance chasers. Their forelimbs were smaller, especially in proportion to the rest of the body, but their heads and jaws were much larger and their bite – much stronger.

The raptors, on the other hand, had well-developed claws both on front and especially on the hind legs, but their teeth, though sharp, were small and probably relatively ineffective as killing tools, especially for smaller species such as velociraptors. (An utahraptor, easily 6 m long, was probably a somewhat different story.)  Thus they used their claws to deliver the killing blows, as Clash of the Dinosaurs: Perfect Predators demonstrated. So...

So, the DVD “Dinosaurs: Perfect Predators” demonstrated three ways that the evolution of dinosaur predators occurred. One was the basic design of the carnosaurs, similar to that of the original carnivorous dinosaurs, but blown to gigantic proportions. The second – that of the tyrannosaurs – was the increasing specialization of jaw power. And the third – that of the raptors – was the increased specialization of claws instead. Put otherwise, the carnosaurs were the biggest, the tyrannosaurs – the strongest, and the raptors – the fastest. Neat.

As for the DVD itself, it is well put together and the viewing quality is quite good. The images on the cover, admittedly, belong to none of the features mentioned inside, but that is beside the point. I rate this DVD 4.5 stars out of 5.

"Megalodon: Monster Shark Lives" movie review

A small, but stable branch of Animal Planet is creating monster quasi-documentary films. There was “Dragons: Fantasy Made Real”, “Mermaids: The Body on the Beach” and “Mermaids: The New Evidence”, and now “Megalodon: Monster Shark Lives” – and it is this movie that I am going to rant about. Let us begin.

What is so special about megalodon? In the previous films AP can shoehorn mythical creatures, dragons and mermaids, into real life while doing it realistically. Seriously, a dragon or a mermaid in a sci-fi/fantasy show is expected, it belongs there – in a documentary show not so much. AP had to come up with some really fancy explanations how dragons and mermaids really worked and where they come from...with a mixed success, in my opinion (do not get me started on the mermaid/aquatic ape theory). 

Megalodon is another story. It already is a real-life creature (albeit one that is supposed to have died out during the Ice Age) – a shark, that may be 15 m in length on the average, but nothing more. People have encountered and studied sharks for a while now, and outside of its length megalodon does not appear to be very different: extreme in its size, but nothing else.

But...

Ever since humans have encountered sharks they feared them. The sharks are some of the biggest predators in the oceans and unlike their terrestrial counterparts – lions, tigers, hyenas, etc – they cannot be controlled. Nowadays it is relatively easy to track down a lion or a tiger if they become man-eaters; a shark – not so much.

Shark attacks are also random: lions and tigers tend to treat humans as a steady and regular source of food once they start eating them – sharks do not. To a shark a human has considerably less blubber and more bone (sharks do not really eat marrow) than a seal or a sea lion of a matching size does. That is why they tend to leave us alone...after they bit off an arm or a leg or a chunk of torso – not that that is any consolation to a shark attack victim, you know? Sometimes one bite is enough to kill you, if the shark is big enough or the bitten place is vital enough in its anatomy.

Sharks are also highly mobile and thus unpredictable. A great white or a tiger shark can travel – in fact, it almost constantly travels across the world for different places to get a meal: one week it is in South Africa, the next – at Mexico or Hawaii: why not? It is humans who are aliens in the underwater world of fish and other creatures of the depths, and the sharks are perhaps some of Mother Nature’s most formidable reminders that that is so, alongside giant octopi and squids. Naturally humans fear them – megalodon is just the uttermost manifestation of those fears inflated to an extreme size – big enough to sink a boat in one bit and swallow a human in another.

How realistic are those fears? Firstly, people want to believe that sharks are giant carnivorous monsters that just want to eat people attacking them from below (as in “Jaws”) or from above (“Sharknado”). There is probably nothing that can change this picture so the idea of the monster-movie megalodon is going to persevere for decades to come.

Secondly, cryptozoologists want to believe that megalodon exists. Basically, this is the same point as the one above, save that fear has been replaced by awe. They are going to seek out proof that megalodon exists no matter what. So far official science says that no, it does not, but when ever did this stop people? Ergo no, I do not think that the hype around sharks in general and megalodon in particular will ever go away.

As for the movie itself... the name “megalodon” was used mostly as a brand: people know this name and associate it with a giant shark, so AP just appropriated it for their newest monster. They showed it quite realistically too, save for the fact that in real life megalodon (well, Carcharodon megalodon, if you want to get technical) was not a deep-sea fish: the depths of oceans and seas are cold, have little food and not much more oxygen – hardly a place for a warmth-loving whale-eating shark!

Furthermore, megaldon did not start out as a whale-eating giant: the first years of its life were probably spent in shallower coastal waters (BBC Sea Monsters) hunting smaller prey – dugongs and manatees, dolphins, sea turtles, maybe even large fish - and avoid the adult megalodon which would probably eat the youngsters instead (as modern sharks tend to do). This would have brought them into contact – and conflict – with humans much sooner than “just now” and I do not know who would have won...

Then we have the humpback whales – that was probably the most annoying part of the movie. Why humpback whales? There are 15 species of modern baleen whales (you know, the ones that feed on plankton as the humpback whales do), plus the sperm whale (that has teeth rather than baleen), all of which can be food for megalodon if it existed in modern day and age. 

Why the humpback? Sharks do not have the sort of food specialization that the carnivorous mammals, birds and reptiles may have. Great white shark prefers to eat sea lions and fur seals, but it will probably try anything to see just how edible it is. The bull and the tiger sharks eat anything, including garbage that ended up in the sea; so does the blue shark but it is a fish of the open ocean and encounters people less often than the great white, bull and tiger.

And so probably had megalodon – it was willing to eat anything if it was big and meaty enough. If it lived in modern times, the humpback whale would have had no preference: megalodon would have eaten it just as willingly as it would have eaten the blue and pygmy right whales, for example.

The closest I can come up with for the reason behind the humpback whale is that it is one of the more popular and well-known species of whales among people (at least for now): its footage is easily obtainable, the audience would just look at the humpback knowingly and return back to concentrating on the shark. Fair enough.

As for megalodon's coloration – dark above, light below – I believe that it is called cryptic countershading and many of ocean-dwelling animals have it. The fish have it: not just the sharks, but also jacks, mackerel, tuna, etc; the penguins have it as well, especially smaller species like the African penguin: it helps them blend in with the waters around them. (Terrestrial animals often have lighter bellies than backs as well, but for slightly different reasons.) This does not make megalodon some sort of an unstoppable super ocean monster, but-

“Megalodon: Monster Shark Lives” was released as part of Discovery Channel’s 2013 Shark Week, when the Discovery channel does its best to cash in on the shark hype that was discussed before. And it seems that 2013”s version is going to be the most commercial Shark Week yet, as Discovery Channel is actually airing “Jaws” and “Sharknado”, regardless of the fact that they are fiction. They are about sharks, they are popular with the TV audiences, so Discovery Channel is airing them.

And “Megalodon: Monster Shark Lives” is just a manifestation of the same hype. People wanted to see it because it was a movie about a monster shark that lives in the ocean’s depths – a giant bogeyman rather than a real-life monster, a creature no more real than the mermaid is. If that is what they expected they got it; if they did not – they probably turned it off and watched a megalodon-related documentary on YouTube or elsewhere. Still, as a movie “Megalodon: Monster Shark Lives” was a decent one, without any particular political hype, unlike the mermaid duology, even if it was also taking place in South Africa – but I’m guessing that someone in AP management has a very complicated or weird relationship with South Africa and just cannot let it go. Oh well.

The final bit of weirdness was the movie script. “Megalodon: Monster Shark Lives” did its best to cash in on the hype and fear that surrounds sharks, especially the mythical giants. The fact that it did not end with Collin Drake and his crew duking it out with Meg in a Captain Ahab-Moby Dick style a la “Jaws” was a good thing in my opinion but in the first parts of the movie it certainly sounded like it was going to end thus. I am guessing that someone remembered that Animal Planet is for nature conservation, not destruction, and changes had to be made...just not very thoroughly.

In any case, I believe that I am rating “Megalodon: Monster Shark Lives” three and a half stars out of five; well, maybe three and three quarters. It was not the best megalodon-related movie that was ever made, especially a documentary one, but it was not the worst either.

Peace out!