The Meg - April 9

The long-mastered and semi-obligatory disclaimer: the real life sometimes…no, not really suck, but is crazy and unpredictable and sometimes is very easy to hate, or at least to feel confused, for those of us for whom ‘hate’ is a too specific and concrete word. Okay? Now where were we…?

With ‘The Meg’. It is yet another monster movie, shark movie, based on, not surprisingly, on the biggest real life shark – the megalodon of the Miocene and Pliocene epochs. Ever since Discovery Channel’s ‘Megalodon: the Monster Shark Lives’ mockumentary, done for a Shark Week special week, megalodon was given a special status in human mythology: it is the latest embodiment of human fear of the sea.

Let us elaborate. Humans have always feared the sea, as it was an alien element for them, and an inhospitable one. They feared the fresh water bodies too, but the ocean-sea? Especially so. Those fears manifested in various monsters, such as the kraken, (later identified as the real life’s giant squid species), the sea serpent, (whose real life identity remains undetermined by now), and the other monsters from the myths of the ancient Greeks, Scandinavians and beyond. Jolly good, and then there was the shark.

…The shark is the alpha predator of the sea; not the only one, but the most visible one, (though lately the killer whale and the saltwater crocodile are beginning to muscle in on its’ turf). Yes, we are talking about the great white shark, whose fame was made via the ‘Jaws’ franchise. Yes, the initial ‘Jaws’ novel was based on true events that happened in the U.S. pre-WWI, but as more modern examinations have uncovered, the culprit might’ve been the smaller bull shark instead. Both of these fishes were discussed when we have talked about AFO, so let us try on focusing on the megalodon.

Here is the thing. In real life, in the prehistoric past, megalodon was a shark. A giant shark, but just a shark. In modern times, the sharks are proportionally more fragile than the crocodiles are, because they do not have real bones, but cartilage, and they are not as smart, versatile and adaptable as the killer whales/orcas are. They are formidable fish, but nothing more. And yes, megalodon fed on whales, but preferably on smaller, softer species of the baleen whales; when the bigger, tougher toothed whales, including the ancestors of the modern killer whales and sperm whales appeared on Earth, megalodon began to die out – but that was just one of the reasons why.

Another reason was the climate. Most fictional movies, including mockumentaries, place megalodon in the cold dark depths of the ocean – a proper place for a fictional monster, but in real life megalodon died out because it was a native of more shallow, warmer, tropical seas, (that disappeared when the Panama isthmus formed, BTW, in the Pliocene epoch), and couldn’t handle colder deeper waters, such as at the Earth’s poles, whereas the whales could, because they were warm-blooded – and the same goes, sort of, for the great white shark. It does not really like the cold either, but it is also warm-blooded. No, honest, the scientists have discovered, not so long ago, that while some sharks are cold-blooded, (like the blue shark), the great white shark and its’ cousins – the mako sharks, the salmon shark, and the others – have evolved some sort of a warm-blooded system in their anatomy, maybe because they specialize in warm-blooded prey, such as the marine mammals, or…bony fish like the tuna, which have also evolved to become warm-blooded. Neither the great white shark and its’ immediate cousins, nor the tuna and its’ relatives are really related to the mammals beyond that all the groups are vertebrates rather than invertebrates, but there you have it – and where’s the megalodon?

Elsewhere, it seems. National Geographic’s ‘Prehistoric Predators’ series have done a megalodon-related episode, because, well, duh, it couldn’t be avoided. Fair enough and they showed the genetic mapping of the megalodon, the modern great white shark, and an extinct mako shark, (a relative of the great white). The megalodon located quite some distance away from the two cousins; the mako and the great white had a lot in common with each other; with the megalodon…much less. Ergo, the megalodon was not warm-blooded, and it could not survive in cold waters, so…no megalodon in real life. What is left?

A movie monster. Judging by the trailer, ‘The Meg’ is going to be yet another monster movie, combining both horror and lighter, more tongue-in-cheek, humor. Fair enough, maybe it won’t be so bad, but why make it look like a great white? For a while, there was a ‘Beast Legends’ show on History, which featured a monster shark of its’ own, the Dakuwanga, (or something similar), which was a mythical monster, a shapeshifter that could become a shark, a man, or a sea snake. (We are talking the real life sea snakes, not the giant sea serpents of myths and legends). They based their sea giant on the bull shark instead of the great white, so why not do that with the megalodon instead? Fossil animals are defined by their fossilized bones, (duh), but the megalodon was a shark, it had no bones, but cartilage, and cartilage fossilizes much worse than bones do, so what we have from megalodon, (and the other fossil shark species), are mostly teeth, and again, they aren’t very similar, the teeth of a great white shark and a megalodon…so why make the movie/fictional megalodon an oversized great white shark? Who knows…?

Well, this is it for this time; see you all soon in the future, (hopefully)!