Jaws vs. Livyatan 2024 - Sep 17

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, so let us briefly talk about the ‘Jaws vs. Leviathan’ that was aired during the summer 2024. It is a sequel to the ‘Jaws vs. Meg’ that also aired earlier, and was discussed by us as well. Therefore, what about this show?

On one hand, it is an improvement over the first show, if simply by virtue of having a better CGI, one that is not almost all-monotonous dark blue. There are different shades and colors, and one can easily notice what is going on here. Moreover, the plot/script of the final face-off is a bit better, and is less reminiscent of the dragon-not-quite-a-fight in the HoD S1 finale. Therefore, why is the rant?

Because the premise of the show just feels somewhat wrong. Sharks are cartilaginous fish, while whales are cetacean mammals, alongside the smaller dolphins, porpoises, and co. The physical similarities between the two groups (and the extinct ichthyosaurus reptiles of the Mesozoic) are only superficial and physical, and are not even complete, given how the cetaceans (and the extinct ichthyosaurs) breathe air, while the sharks (and their relatives) do not.

Yet, the differences between sharks and cetaceans is more than just physical, it is mental: like most of the mammals, the cetaceans take care of their young, (as it was shown in the show), while the sharks – not so much. The cooperative hunting/feeding by the great white sharks is something else again: it is a pecking order, and a cooperative pecking order, but it is not pack hunting of the orcas.

Orcas… they’re the top pack hunters in the modern oceans; great white sharks attack and eat whale calves, to be sure, but orcas attack and successfully eat adult whales instead, including such big species as the modern grey whale, and even, according to some rumors, sperm whales.

Now, male sperm whales are the biggest modern toothed whales (cetaceans), period, and not even orcas like to mess with them, but sperm whale females and calves are smaller and thus have bigger chances to end up on the orcas’ menu. That said, what matters here is that the orcas do what the great whites can do, only better, and their existence is one of the reasons as to why the Megalodon shark did die out by the Pleistocene epoch. (Recent past, but still the past). In addition, the modern sperm whale?

First, the modern sperm whale is a carnivore specialist, as it feeds primarily on large species of squid and octopus, while the modern orca will try to eat anything at least once. Second, the two species are not close relatives; the sperm whale’s close relatives are the Kogia whales, two species of really small cetaceans that look slightly like the sperm whale does, but without the oversized head; there are plenty of debate as to how close they are to the sperm whale… but they are still more closely related to it than the killer whale does; more specifically, the sperm whale, the Kogia whales, and the extinct Livyatan whale are one group, and the killer whale is another, in the overall cetacean clan; and to involve the orca with the sperm whales and their relatives is wrong and incorrect.

Yet genealogy does not really play a role in the ‘Jaws vs. Livyatan’ special, and it doesn’t matter; what matters is that comparing sharks to cetaceans is like comparing apples to oranges… or even potatoes – the two groups of animals are too different on the inside to compare and contrast; but-

-but frankly, the ‘Jaws vs.’ series doesn’t care about such scientific niceties; instead, in the best tradition of AFO, it does its’ best to come across as both informative and entertaining; the version I watched was rather skewed in favor of the sharks – but then again, these are Shark Week specials after all – but still informative and entertaining enough for me to watch till the end, even though the repetitive reiteration that the CGI sharks act just as the live fish do was annoying. Still, the show was better than the reality is, because real life flat-out sucks – but that is another story.

For now, however, this is it. See you all soon!

FH: Sohei - July 24

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, but at least there is entertainment, on the other hand.

First, there is the ‘Despicable Me 4’ film. It… is not bad, but it is still apocrypha: see, the first three films were about Gru changing from an anti-social villain into a more social anti-hero. Then there were the Minions’ movies, which acted as something like a prequel to those first three films, explaining the Minions’ general history and their shared history with Gru. Now, the DM4 film seeks to reset the timeline, by introducing Gru’s new son, by introducing Gru’s history with him, and by rebooting the Minions and their new employers, (cough). It is not a bad strategy, just a weird one, and given that the DM4 is a less than a successful film, (by the critics’ standards, anyhow), I guess we know as to which side the coin has landed.

Second, there is, well, the second season of Hulu’s ‘Hit-Monkey’ series. It is based on a Marvel comic line, but it is not a part of MCU, which might be why such sites as the Marvel comic database are downplaying it in favor of the D3 film, which we will discuss at another time. ‘Hit-Monkey’ S2, meanwhile, might not be something epic, but it is still worthwhile to watch, you know?

Finally, we come to FH (‘For Honor’) newest hero, the Sohei. In RL, they were warrior monks of the Buddhist variety, so GM has never utilized them in his ASOIAF, at least not in the canon, or even the GoT, versions. FH, again, created something, or someone else entirely, armed with seven different weapons of all things, and the primary one appears to be some sort of a glaive – aka a variant lance. Again, FH’s PC has little in common with their RL counterpart other than their name, but that is par for the FH’s course. Pause.

Now, here is probably when you expect me to rant about something or other, but the truth is I have no energy to do so, no motivation. I watched recently a YouTube personality rant about the Megalodon of all things, how is has most definitely not surprised. Now, I agree – the Megalodon has died out, if only quite recently, but ranting about this fact? It will not affect anything at all, by now there are two Megalodon, in a manner of speaking – the RL fish that died out, and the imaginary sea monster that continues to exist, and the two entities are both separate and combined at the same time… The point here is that ranting about things is never helpful; fun, but never helpful, and besides, I just do not have the energy, given how things are going on in my RL: yes, Marvel’s treatment of its’ not-MCU-properties is bad, and FH is something else, but it does not matter – things will change soon… or they will not.

For now, though, this is it. See you all soon.

Jaws vs. Meg 2023 - June 18

 Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, so let us have a flashback to the Shark Week 2023 instead. Now, there has been some consideration about the new SW: Acolyte series, but at the end of the day? It does not deserve the hate that it is getting… or does it?

From my point of view, the people who hate ‘Acolyte’ are the same people who hated the SW Sequel Trilogy, aka films 7-9, and who were handled by Disney/SW… however they were handled. Regardless, they weren’t vanquished; already by the time of the ‘Mandalorian’ S3, when Disney/SW were beginning to bring, well, the SW universe from the 6^th movie’s setting to the 7^th, the old criticisms were coming back. They stopped when the ‘Mandalorian’ ended, but apparently did not go away, as they resurfaced once more when the ‘Acolyte’ came out. Now what?

So far, Disney/SW franchise is not backing down from the TV show the same way they did with the 8^th and 9^th films. Back then, they fluctuated between total support and full reboot, and the result was a big setback, much bigger than any other Disney branches had to deal with. Since then, Disney/SW tried to retcon and circumvent its’ rebooted/redesigned universe, but with more mixed success than they would like, and ‘Acolyte’ is part of this mixed bag. What will Disney/SW do next, now that the ‘Acolyte’ is not being as successful/accepted as they expected it to be? It is anyone’s guess, of course, but hopefully they will be more consistent with their response than how they acted during the SW Sequel movie trilogy… Back into the real world?

No, ‘cause the reason I’m writing this entry is because I got to see the Shark Week special ‘Jaws vs. Meg’. In this special feature, people made a CGI battle between the great white shark and the Megalodon, with the latter winning, because of course it did. Pause.

Here is the thing. The reason as to why I was watching the special in the first place was because of nostalgia for AFO (Animal Face-off), as well as JFC (Jurassic Fight Club) and DW (Deadliest Warrior). In the first show, episodes ended with two RL CGI animals faced-off, in the second – we had prehistoric animals, and in the third, we had a live-action re-enactment of a quasi-historical battle – say, a Spartan vs. a ninja, or a Viking vs. a samurai. Here, in ‘Jaws vs. Meg’, we also have a CGI battle, both of a modern and of a prehistoric animals, well – fish. What next?

Well, for one thing, there was no doubt that this was the fight for the great white shark to lose. In nature, especially among the vertebrates, (the invertebrates are another story, admittedly – just watch Monster Bug Wars), size matters, and bigger and stronger beings triumph over their physical inferiors. Lions dominate over leopards, leopards – over cheetahs, wolves – over coyotes, coyotes – over foxes, and so on. The bigger and stronger Megalodon would dominate the great white shark during the time the two species coexisted, simply because while the great white shark could hurt it, the Megalodon could kill it far too easier than vice versa – as the special feature’s CGI confirmed. The Megalodon was able to take the punishment that the great white shark threw at it, and kill the latter with a single lucky strike. Overdramatized, maybe, but regardless, this would how it happen… what else?

Co-existing with the Megalodon caused the great white shark to become a specialist – it specializes it hunting seals, fur seals and sea lions, mostly in tropical and subtropical waters. It is more modernized than the Megalodon was, but it still prefers warm and tropical waters than temperate and colder ones. These days, with the global warming (or whatever it is called), the shark is moving north (and south?), including the shores of Eastern U.S. and Canada. What will come out of this, is yet unknown.

Back in the past, the great white shark had to stay closer to the shoreline, because in the open ocean the adult Megalodon lived and dominated – other sharks. However, there were also the cetaceans…

The cetaceans’ overall evolutionary history still hasn’t been completely resolved, but what matters here and now, is that during the Miocene and Pliocene, the baleen whales were smaller than their modern counterparts are, and more vulnerable to attack from such as carnivores as the Megalodon and the predatory prehistoric sperm whale cousins, (including the Livyatan). Just as the great white shark specialized in the pinnipeds – seals and their cousins that usually stay closer to the coast than in the open seas, so did the Megalodon specialize in the cetaceans, which preferred the open seas to the coastlines instead. The two species co-existed by specializing in different directions, and the Megalodon’s closer cousins, the mako sharks, specialized in yet a third – they aren’t as massive as the great white shark, but are faster and more maneuverable than it is. If the great white shark is a lion of the seas, then the mako sharks are the cheetahs instead. They would not outfight the Megalodon (or most other prehistoric predators), but outpace and outmaneuver them instead. The killer whales, for example, are known to attack great white sharks – successfully, too – but the mako sharks? Not so much. However, where do they fit in?

The main reason as to why the Megalodon is not around anymore, no matter what fan favorite theories proclaim. During the end of the Miocene and the first half of the Pliocene, the two Americas formed a single continent finally, and the world began to enter an Ice Age. The Megalodon (and many of its’ prey species) couldn’t handle the climate change and died out; also, in the Megalodon’s case, the disappearance of the warm shallow seas between the two American continents left its’ young vulnerable – well, more vulnerable, to predation from smaller sharks, including the great white and the hammerhead species. Megalodon vanished during the Pliocene and Pleistocene periods, and the smaller sharks flourished.

The same situation goes for the whales: the modern whales are giants, true, but they are specialists as well. The baleen whales feed on plankton, and many of their species spend their lives migrating between the two poles, following the seasons and the currents, to keep themselves fed, (and the global warming is throwing a wrench into this), while the biggest toothed whale, the sperm whale, is a deep sea hunter, feeding mostly on the big, giant, and colossal deep sea squid species. Its’ closest relatives, the two Kogia whales, are tiny by comparison, and little is known about them, so let us put them aside for the moment. The point here is that the time of easy living in the ocean has ended for now even before the humans evolved on planet Earth; compared to the Miocene, when the global oceans were full of small and medium-sized baleen whales, the modern ocean has only big baleen whales, or giant ones. Megalodon would be outmuscled in the modern ocean – but the great white shark would have nothing to do with that… Anything else?

The CGI battle of ‘Jaws vs. Meg’ could have used some tweaking and twerking, but this is splitting hairs; the point here is that it was an enjoyable TV program, while the ‘Acolyte’, for example, is much more forgettable.

Therefore, we will end the discussion for now - This is it. See you all soon!

Paleologic: Dunkleosteus - Jan 15

Let's talk about Dunkleosteus of all things. This fish, (also known as Dinichthys), was featured on the first two episodes of the ‘Walking with Sea Monsters’ trilogy, (made by Impossible Pictures in 2003), but little else, to my knowledge. What next?

It isn't easy to make an extinct fish sound exciting, but because Dunkleosteus wasn't just an extinct fish, but a giant extinct fish the size of a modern school bus, it has a good chance of being so. Where to begin?

Well… there's a tendency to have it compared to the Megalodon, but that isn’t quite right; the giant shark was still better than ‘the Dunk’ was; why?

Because, the baseline answer, is that the Megalodon was a more derived fish predator out of the two; it existed in the Miocene and the Pliocene, aka the Cenozoic, (about the same time that our direct ancestors descended from the trees and became our direct ancestors – they just didn’t know about that yet), whereas the Dunkleosteus lived during the Devonian, aka in the middle of Paleozoic instead. So what?

So, again, if you compare the two fishes the Megalodon just comes across as the better predator – mostly. It may be a cartilaginous fish, but it was still more modern than the bony Dunkleosteus was, (see their times of existence in the paragraph above). More precisely, Megalodon lived during tougher times and it had to be tougher (and smarter) than Dunkleosteus was. Another pause.

Proportionally, the Paleozoic was longer than the Cenozoic is, so far, but while that might be because of the human P.O.V., we do not have any other, (Nessie and Yeti do not want to share theirs right now), so we have to stick with this, and in this timeline P.O.V. the Devonian was more plentiful and less climatically tough than the Miocene and the Pliocene were; that climatic toughness was one of the main causes of the Megalodon’s extinction in the long run, actually.

Secondly, whereas Megalodon usually hunted marine mammals, (up to smallish prehistoric baleen whales), Dunkleosteus hunted smaller and weaker prey – fishes and invertebrates, (since nothing else existed on Earth in the Devonian anyhow), and so, its’ great size was almost overkill from an ecological P.O.V.

There was another animal discussed on the Paleologic that’d done a similar thing during its’ time – the giant snake Titanoboa, which became a giant because the climatic conditions favored it, and because it could, as a cold-blooded animal. While it was a giant, it was also a specialist, specializing in fishes, tortoises, and similar animals, as its skull and jaws show. Dunkleosteus too had a specialized jaws and skull, though its’ specialization was to enable it to eat as much as possible, as quickly as possible: it had no teeth, just giant bony plates, great for shearing, but little else; and it was so big, that it could swallow many of its’ smaller prey just whole, without any shearing or chewing at all.

…Sadly, great bulk also meant a great appetite, even by the standards of cold-blooded animals, and once the climate began to deteriorate, and Earth entered another mass extinction, Dunkleosteus just died out, just as the rest of the placoderms did. (Placoderms being the group of bony fish/vertebrate animals that Dunkleosteus belonged to, scientifically speaking). When the next time period of the Paleozoic – the Carboniferous – rolled-out, the placoderms appeared to have already vanished.

…Yet so had the Megalodon, and so did many other animals and animal dynasties of planet Earth. What is left of them are fossils, obviously, and various online features about the extinct fishes and other animals, which you can still buy, online and otherwise, so there's that.

That is all, folks! See you all soon!

Insatiable II - Aug 8

Life cannot be avoided, and while it can be changed, even that is not done easily. The end of the introduction, now onto more pleasant – and unreal – topics.

Firstly, more info about the ‘Insatiable’ series proper. Just like the trailer, the series itself is a bunch of good ideas executed badly, an approach that can, well, backfire onto the original messages; there are some scenes in the episodes that cast a bad light on the entire ‘me too’ movement in real life, (where it already encounters issues not foreseen by its’ makers), for example.

Again, this is no end of the world, ‘Insatiable’ can fix it, if it survives beyond the first season; and if it does not, that is the end of that. Debbie Ryan used to star in Disney shows, so she still got some momentum left, most likely, and will survive that setback too. Whether Netflix and co. can afford it in the increasingly toxic and politic atmosphere of the U.S. society is another matter.

This brings us to MCU, because as we have discussed earlier, it, and especially AoS, had its own share of problems regarding good ideas depicted badly. This time, though, people have pointed out that ABC, aside from AoS, AC and ‘InHumans’ had also fiddled with a TV series called ‘Most Wanted’ that was supposed to star Nick Blood and Adrienne Palicki, aka Hunter and Morse from AoS. But! ‘Most Wanted’ failed on its pilot episode level, so it does not count. It certainly matters – Blood did return to AoS in S5: for a single episode, where his role was almost superfluous and unnecessary on one hand, and for an interview, which was very brief and perfunctory too. There’s clearly some bad blood between AoS (MCU?) and those two actors, something that AoS (and the rest of MCU?) could do without…so it is unlikely that ‘Most Wanted’ will appear on TV, or at least – not as how it was initially planned.

The other possibility is regarding ‘Damage Control’, which was a subsidiary of S.H.I.E.L.D., or something related, that was supposed to fix S.H.I.E.L.D.’s mistakes on a physical, obvious level. There were rumors about a show based on that back in AoS S3, but nothing came out of it, even the rumors died, so it is hard to say just how likely that a show like that will happen.

This brings us to the movies in general. The month of August 2018 brings us such diverse films as ‘The Meg’, which can be called ‘Not Another Fictional Shark Monster Movie’. I do not remember if we have discussed in detail or not why the fictional megalodon does not have much in common with the real life shark that died out during the Miocene-Pliocene epochs, but it is irrelevant; ‘The Meg’ is coming to the movie screens, and everyone sounds excited; couldn’t someone make a sea monster movie starring a good old-fashioned sea serpent instead? Now that would be unusual!

And then there are the ‘Rich Crazy Asians’, yet another movie-version of a novel. It already sounds like an opportunity for Hollywood’s Asian-American actors. Yay! However, the novel itself? It is a soap opera-drama-etc. with only some ethnic Asian flavor; having read it, I found it actually bland; there are some Asian features in the novel, but mostly as decoration; beneath it, ‘Rich Crazy Asians’ is generic, and it showed: the sales of novel and its’ sequels, (again, it is a trilogy), were very low. Maybe the movie will be better; so far, it is anyone’s guess…

Well, this is it for now; see you all soon!

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)!

Upcoming 'Shark week' rant

And so, once again, Shark week is almost upon us in Canada. Hooray! Sharks, after all, are magnificent and powerful creatures, alpha predators of the oceans, just as big cats or bears are on land, and crocodiles and alligators are in fresh water.

Sharks are very varying creatures. For example, both the whale shark and the basking shark are filter feeders, but whereas the basking shark just swims around with an open mouth, with the water flowing in and out (through the gills), the whale shark actively pumps the plankton-filled liquid and in general is a more active fish among the two. The megamouth shark, which is also a filter feeder, does its own thing by actively feeding on plankton at night, when its competition (including the baleen whales) is asleep. 

The carnivorous sharks, of course, are an even more diverse group. The great white shark is Jaws, one of the most powerful denizens of the ocean; only the killer whale (and perhaps the sperm whale) can defeat it. The bull shark is smaller, but still very solidly built, and is one of the few fish that can live both in fresh and salt water. The sand tiger shark (no relation to the actual tiger shark) and the blue shark, on the other hand, are graceful inhabitants of the open waters, specializing in catch fish, not warm-blooded mammals and birds, as the great white shark does – and the list goes on.

Some of the sharks are downright bizarre – the aforementioned thresher shark with its remarkable tail; the hammerhead shark with its head; the sawnose shark which is similar to the better-known sawfish because it also has a saw on its nose – etc. All of these features make sharks stars of the ocean world – and of the Shark week that will be airing on the Discovery channel starting from August 10. 

Sadly, there is a rather big fly in the ointment, and it is called “Megalodon: The New Evidence”. It is a sequel to the previous mocumentary, “Megalodon: The Monster Shark Lives”. That particular film played with the concept of Megalodon surviving in modern times, feeding on such animals as the humpback whales...and for a while it led many people astray, by making them think that this was a real documentary instead.

Now, in part this is his or her own fault – one should not be so gullible about what one sees on TV or the Internet...never mind. I need to go a make an appointment with my vet about the health of my unicorn that I have bought on EBay. That is an old story. The thing is that Discovery channel generally airs documentary films and series, which are based in real life; even on such specials as Shark week what we usually see are documentaries; the Megalodon duology (and before that – the duology about the mermaids) are not – they’re fiction, just like the Sharknado or the Mega-Shark films are.

Now, Discovery channel currently does not have it as bad as the Animal Planet, by comparison; they still do not regularly air such tripe as “Man-Eating Super Wolves” or “Zombie Cats”, etc. But this is a disturbing tendency all the same.

If we are talking about sharks, what about Megalodon itself? Can it still be real? No. Sharks do not readily leave remains, other than their teeth and the occasional backbone vertebra, but their teeth quite take up the slack, and people find them very often. Megalodon teeth in this case take a very specific position: they are fossilized, not fresh. There are no fresh Megalodon teeth, which means – that there are no live Megalodon sharks living in modern oceans. Giant sharks, on the other hand, are a different story – in general, cold-blooded animals tend to grow throughout their lives, and great white sharks, in particular, can reach 3, or even 4.5 m in length: still smaller than Megalodon was, but far bigger than a human is. This is more than enough to fill-in Megalodon’s econiche.

And what econiche is that? That of a mega-predator, of course. Megalodon was the biggest shark of all times, of course, but it was also a part of the mega-fauna of the previous Cenozoic epochs. During that time, most animals were larger than their current relatives are, and the same goes for the sharks.

Speaking of relatives, there is some speculation that Megalodon might be related to the mako sharks. While the great white shark evolved into a powerhouse, the mako (two species) evolved into the aquatic analogue of the cheetah (sort of) – it is the only fish fast enough to catch and kill the legendary swordfish. Real life being what it is, however, sometimes the swordfish is the one who comes on top and dead or dying mako sharks were found, with pieces of the swordfish’s sword still in them – but that’s not the point. The point is that some scientists believe that Megalodon was more closely related to the mako than to the great white, and others – that the mako is the close relative of the great white, and Megalodon is related to neither, and if we don’t even fully know to whom Megalodon was related to, then how do we know what it looked like? Any depiction of the Megalodon is fully speculative, period – maybe it looked like a giant bull shark instead, who knows...

Back to the econiche. The great white shark has taken over Megalodon’s place – to a point: it still does not attack and eat whales. But it does not need to – the killer whale does it instead. Smarter and more social than any shark, even the great white, the killer whale does an admirable job of killing baleen whales, sharks, giant squid and other denizens of the oceans. Not bad for a relative newcomer to Earth – just like humans, the killer whale is very much a modern animal.

The shark, on the other hand, is very old – they have been around roughly since the Devonian, over 300 million years ago in the past, and they were able to handle everything that the Earth, and the universe, threw at them. Lately, this includes humans, who kill many more sharks than sharks kill people. To paraphrase Josef Augusta, a famous paleontologist, ‘the hunter man of the Pleistocene had little impact on nature, unlike the gatherer man of the Holocene’. These are true words, and hopefully, the upcoming Shark week shall discuss them as well.

End

Discovery channel: "Russian Yeti" and the Yeti 'family'

And so, last night I watched Discovery’s latest special – “Russian Yeti: The Killer Lives”. A mockumentary, made in style of Discovery’s films about the dragons, the mermaids, and the giant shark Megalodon, it was a fun film to see. It was designed in “The Blair Witch Project” style, as an American explorer Mike, and his trusty Russian sidekick/interpreter Mila, went into the wild Urals mountains to discover the truth – whether the Russian Yeti has killed 9 student tourists back in 1959. Designed as an action/cryptozoological film rather than a scientific one (the Mermaids duology comes to mind), it is very hard, if not pointless, to discuss the scientific aspects of the film. However, the titular cryptid, the yeti, does deserve some discussion, to say the least.

The tales and myths of giant apes and wild men of the woods have come from all over the world, and the territory of former USSR was no exception. The most widespread and used name for these creatures there was Almasti, or Almas. They played a rather negative role in the local tales, and were generally similar to the Bigfoot and the Yeti in appearance (seriously, since when does it matter where the Yeti lives, in Russia or not? I mean, if there is a ‘Russian Yeti’, does it mean that there are also Indian, Tibetan, Nepalese Yetis and so forth? What is the difference? Even the film itself did not really dwell on this fact), but they had some important differences: they were more human-like in appearance (and Bigfoot, conversely, looks more ape-like than man-like), and they were rumored to be able to use fire, again unlike the Bigfoot. 

Some greater regional differences come to mind. The Mediterranean world, curiously, did not really have many ape-men myths; the fauns and the satyrs are different – they are part goat or horse, not ape, but Northern Europe had humanoid giants of their own – the trolls and ogres of the Norse, and further down, in the mainland Europe, the wildmen proper. At about 2.7 m in length, and weighing 200 kg, these beings were just as intimidating as the Bigfoot and the Yeti are, but they were more civilized, they had their own culture (supposedly), and were not as hairy, so they probably could use fire and make clothing of their own. The trolls and ogres of the Norse, were not just bigger (about 3.5 m tall and weighing about 360 kg), but they truly were civilized, complete with culture, civilization, and societies of their own. In fact, if you read some of the Norse (Scandinavian, Icelandic) folklore, one can realize that the Norse trolls and ogres belonged, practically, to a world parallel to humans, inhabited not just by them, but also by huldra, beings that were half spirit and half-real. This makes it hard to decide if trolls and ogres were real and not purely imaginary, one of versions of the vague and mysterious ‘Them’, imagined by humans to symbolize the anti-humans – but that is another tale.

Conversely, the wildmen of Europe, including the Almas, were less sophisticated and more ape-like – they probably could use fire, and were more man-, than ape-like, but that was it. No civilization for them, no sir! Further to the east, where the Yeti and the Bigfoot live, the ‘wild people’ become increasingly more ape-like and animalistic, without any evidence that they use fire, or tools, and clothing? It is non-existent. They are also relatively smaller than the European analogs: the Bigfoot is about 2.5 m high and weighs under 200 kg, its southern cousin the skunk ape is about as big as a man and weighs under 150 kg, the Yeti is about as big as the Bigfoot, though probably is, and so’s the Yowie. The Yowie, incidentally, is interesting, also because it lives in Australia, where all of the native mammals either hatched from eggs (the Monotremes), or are marsupial and have pouches to carry their tiny youngsters around. Higher primates, including the great apes and humans, are placental and have neither. This makes the Yowie’s identity especially puzzling – just what is it?..

“Russian Yeti” film did not mention the Yowie, but it did mention the Orang Pendek as the ‘Sumatran Yeti’, so to speak. The Orang Pendek is a humanoid creature, but at about 1-1.2 m in height and a very slight build, most cryptozoologists and other specialists feel that it has no connection to the Yeti, but is possibly the descendant of Homo Florensis, the Flores Man, instead. The latter has plenty of its own mystery; nobody is certain whether or not it was actually a dwarf race of modern humans, or a descendant of a more ancient species, Homo Erectus, for example. To connect the Orang Pendek to the Yeti family was wrong from the cryptoozological P.O.V. as well...

Getting back to the wildmen and ape-like creatures, “Russian Yeti” was a very good movie...and nothing more. Unlike “Mermaids”, or “Megalodon”, it did not pretend to be anything real, or to have been filmed in the real life. There are appropriate disclaimers and warnings that is drama, not suitable for children of all ages, and it should be treated as such by its audience.

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Animal Planet: from fact to fiction

And so, Animal Planet has brought us another Monster Week, which features the following pearls of bad television:

- “Man-Eating Zombie Cats”. The virus is turning wild cats, from wildcats to Siberian tigers, into man-attacking zombies. Basically, this is your typical lousy zombie flick, with a wildlife twist, where the ‘others’ (to use a genre term), are not just zombies, but also carnivorous mammals, predators, and thus – doubly dangerous. This idea is an old one – mankind has feared big predators – lions, wolves, tigers, bears, sharks, crocodiles, etc – since it was represented by australopithecines that just came down from trees. Ok. This idea got augmented by another old chestnut – that only mentally sick, unstable animals will attack the humans, who are kings (and queens) of beasts. Again, that is nothing new. But – where’s the educational angle in all of this? “Man-Eating Zombie Cats” seeks to purely entertain, tuning in with humanity’s oldest (and currently incorrect) fears. AP, can you hear me?

- “Man-Eating Super Wolves” or something along that line. According to this idea, wolves are beginning to starve and are starting to attack people. Again, this is an old idea, used by natives of Europe, North America, and possibly Asia, to justify their killings of wolves. The wolves (including werewolves) were some of the oldest villains in humanity’s history (and villains’ minions – remember the original ‘Dracula’ novel, for example?) and what AP does here is bring up an old literary/movie cliché yet again. Bravo! But there is a twist:

Currently, the American (and also Canadian, and European) society is divided into pro-wolf and anti-wolf camps. These camps are not all encompassing, of course, but they are well-known and well-established, and they are trying to recruit and influence people into their directions; AP’s special on man-eating wolves plays into the anti-wolf camp, of course, a rather strange site for a TV channel that is named Animal Planet.

Admittedly, this departure from the channel’s animal roots has went on for the last years, when AP began to air less wild nature shows, and more shows like “Tanked”, “My Cat from Hell” and “Too Cute”, which deal with pets. History’s “Swamp People”, or now-gone “MonsterQuest”, have more wild nature in them, than most of AP’s current shows, to say nothing of Discovery Channel or BBC. There was a time when AP featured wildlife, not just domestic, and some shows – like River Monsters – still do, but they are in minority: AP is steadily moving away from the wild into domestic, from educational into entertaining, and it shows no signs of stopping.

- The current peak of this trend became currently embodied by the film about lampreys, “The Blood Lake”. Made by The Asylum, the same company that made “Sharknado”, this is fiction, clearly and honestly: AP itself acknowledged that it was fiction (the incident after the mermaid duology and “Megalodon: The Monster Shark Lives”, where some misunderstanding about the docufiction nature of those films occurred remained fresh in AP’s collective mind, it seems), which means that it has basically abandoned the documentary genres and is filming and airing fiction, and fiction alone. 

Question: does AP think that it will be able to compete with other purely fiction channels, such as SyFy and Spike successfully? They have been in this field far longer than AP did, and pet- and pet-related shows are poor aides in this endeavor further. At least “Lost Tapes” are gone, so that is good...

Conclusion: AP has gone from documentary to docufiction/fiction channel with an animal flavor. This is a dark day for all wild animal lovers indeed!