There is a world somewhere between reality and fiction. Although ignored by many, it is very real and so are those living in it. This forum is about the natural world. Here, wild animals will be heard and respected. The forum offers a glimpse into an unknown world as well as a room with a view on the present and the future. Anyone able to speak on behalf of those living in the emerald forest and the deep blue sea is invited to join.
(06-29-2023, 06:31 PM)Apex Titan Wrote: There's no way that a single Leviathan would be able to defeat multiple large male megalodon's. That video is highly unrealistic and ridiculous. Leviathan was just an ancient sperm whale with much larger teeth and more predatory, but would be no match for an adult megalodon. The megalodon was larger, more powerful and more lethally equipped for killing than any other ocean predator ever.
IMHO, the only way the Leviathan whale would stand a chance, is if a whole pod attacked a single megalodon.
I have a question... according to the general consensus of the worlds foremost marine predator experts, researchers and paleontologists, nothing in the ocean could have taken on a megalodon, nothing could have challenged it, so why do you think they say this?
You might find maybe one expert who thinks a Leviathan may stand a chance or being capable of defeating a megalodon, but the vast majority of the worlds marine predator experts adamantly state that the megalodon was the undisputed apex predator and ruler of the prehistoric ocean and could have killed anything it wanted to. Recent scientific research also shows this.
The Leviathan (Livyatan Melvillei) doesn't get mentioned by the experts (even in documentaries) for a good reason. Only on animal forums do posters mention the Leviathan to be a "worthy opponent" for a megalodon. Why?
Prehistoric animals are a mystery, best thing we can do is to try to study modern animals and see how they could correlate with the past ones. It sounds simple but there are several problems, as many of the past animals are just far related with the modern ones and we know that modern animals had particular behavious that we will not knew if we could not observe them directly.
The video is just a fan art, nothing more and nothing less, no more valuable than the Rex vs Spino fight in JP3. We can't avoid people express they ideas, I learned that in the hard way.
But talking about the real animals, we don't know if these species were solitary or if lived in groups, and we can only "guess" based in modern species. Most of sharks are solitary and they just come in groups when there is a good food source like happen with the white and tiger sharks, so we can guess that most of the time Carcharocles (otodus) megalodon was solitary but we can also guess that they could tolerate each other under special circunstances. About Livyatan melvillei we have the same problem, we can say that modern whales are groupal, but that is an oversimplification and even social animals like orcas have individuals (large males most of the time) that travel alone, and to add more salt to the soup, the modern relatives of this species, which are the two genus of sperm whales, have completelly different behaviors, so we can guess that as they are cetaceans they could travel in groups of "pods", but if they are like modern Physeter, males will be loners. So, as you can see, this is just a game of probabilities, based in more or less closer relatives, and the evidence suggest a behaviour contrary to what we see in the video. In fact, I will suggest that the video should be a big Megalodon killing young and female Livyatans until a big male arrive and kill it, that will have more sense honestly.
Now about the experts and why Livyatan is not mentioned. Honestly, tiger supporters had the same problem with the romans, if tiger won must of the fights why the romans supported the lion as the most powerfull cat? Well, the answer was simple, tigers were know in Europe until the time of Alexander the great and was only one skin, and alive tigers arrived to Rome like a gift to Augustus until year 11 B.C.E. for the dedication of the Theater of Marcellus. In fact, no more than 200 tigers were presented to the Romans in all they history, a ridicuous amount if we take in count that romans killed more than 300 or even 500 lions in just one show, and they had many of this shows! Lions were highly familiar to the Romans, and the new arrival was no match for the imagination and "love" for the old signs, so tiger were never familiar to the Romas as lions do. Now, it you ask to any marine predator experts about what is a Livyatan, I can tell that not all of them know about it, in fact prehistoric marine mammals are highly unknown to many experts and also most of the people outside, remember that we have less than 10 papers that mention it (only 4 specific about it) while on the other hand Megalodon is incredible famous, almoust like T. rex. To put other analogy, ask people about Mapusaurus and they will have no idea what you are talking about. We have no documental, no movie, nothing about Livyatan, or any other prehistoric cetacean, apart from Basilosaurus and maybe Brygmophyseter (and this last one was baddly represented), so there is no surprise why there is a "consensus" that Megalodon is the "champion". But this is going to change in the future years, now that the knowledge is been shared at higher speed and more people is knowing about the prehistoric cetaceans. In fact, there is many people that is surprise to know how small where the first whales.
So, playing the card that "most of experts" or that documentaries/movies "adamantly" show that Megalodon is the undisputed king is not correct, because you are just taking advantage of the circumstances and the lack of knowledge, basically using a falacy to back up a statement without base.
If you going to back up an statement you must use facts, and there are no facts that Megalodon "won" agains Livyatan, or the other way around. The only thing that we know is that these two animals were the top predators of they area, that they compete for the same resources and that at the end both whent extinct. Also, remember that marine predators must of the time hunt smaller animales than themselves (orca is the exception, when hunt in groups), and "if" Livyatan lived in groups, with a similar size than the average sized Meg, probably the big shark will avoid those pods of cetaceas and focus in the more easy prey like the "small" Cetotheriums. But all this is just speculation at the end, although based in the behaviour of modern animals.
I am not going to touch the point about sizes as is a real mess, because the "Meg" change every new study, and for "Liv" we have only one "official" estimation. However, at least, one more-or-less complete skull is better that a bunch of teeth and a lot of speculation, I think.
I know prehistoric animals remain (and always will) a mystery, however, recent scientific research strongly indicates that the megalodon was indeed the ultimate apex predator of all time. According to the evidence, the megalodon occupied the absolute highest position in the food-chain and regularly killed and ate other predators and super-predatory animals.
No surprise then that recent research by palaeontologists at Princeton University in the US has shown that megalodon ate whatever it wanted – including other predators. The results of the research, published in Science Advances, indicate this ancient shark was an apex predator with no comparison in all of Earth’s history.
“We’re used to thinking of the largest species – blue whales, whale sharks, even elephants and diplodocuses – as filter feeders or herbivores, not predators,” says the paper’s lead author, geoscientist Emma Kast, now based at the University of Cambridge, UK. “But megalodon and the other megatooth sharks were genuinely enormous carnivores that ate other predators, and Meg went extinct only a few million years ago.”
“If Megalodon existed in the modern ocean, it would thoroughly change humans’ interaction with the marine environment,” adds senior author Danny Sigman, professor of geological and geophysical sciences at Princeton.
Kast and Sigman’s team discovered clear evidence that megalodon and its ancestors occupied the highest rung of the prehistoric food chain – called the highest “trophic level”. So high is their trophic signature that the researchers believe megalodon must have eaten other predators and predators-of-predators in a complicated food web.
Helping megalodon on its way to the top of the food web is cannibalism. There is evidence of cannibalism in both megatooth sharks and other prehistoric marine predators.
“Ocean food webs do tend to be longer than the grass-deer-wolf food chain of land animals, because you start with such small organisms,” says Kast. “To reach the trophic levels we’re measuring in these megatooth sharks, we don’t just need to add one trophic level – one apex predator on top of the marine food chain. We need to add several onto the top of the modern marine food web.”
A May 2022 study revealed that great white sharks which coexisted with the megalodon preyed on the same animals, causing competition between the two species, which may be one of the factors how the megalodon went extinct. But even so, a more recent study shows that the megalodon is the ultimate apex predator that ever ruled the oceans.
According to Daily Star, researchers examined thousands of shark teeth to prove that the megalodon is the ultimate apex predator, surpassing records of other marine predators. Dr. Emma Kast, the first author of the study, said that megalodon teeth show that megalodon was indeed an enormous carnivore that ate other predators but went extinct a few million years ago.
To know that megalodon sits at the top of the food web, scientists looked at the nitrogen in recovered fossil teeth. The more nitrogen-15 it has, the higher its trophic level. Their findings show that megalodon sharks hunted around the world at the very top of a global marine food chain.
Why would the video make "more sense" if a big male Livyatan whale comes and kills the big megalodon?? What makes you think a single Livyatan whale could kill a megalodon in a one-on-one encounter? I honestly can't imagine that happening, after all, it's just a predatory sperm whale! It makes much more logical sense for megalodon to kill the large male Livyatan whale. Megalodon was literally a specialized whale-killer. It was specifically built for this purpose and highly adept at killing even large whales.
No, I'm not playing the card: "most of the experts" or because "documentaries show" it, I've clearly been referring to the most recent scientific research, peer-reviewed studies, which strongly suggest that the megalodon was indeed the greatest and most formidable apex predator of all time and was the undisputed top marine predator - ever.
Forget the movies, I'm not referring (and never was) to Hollywood crap.... what do the marine scientists, researchers and biologists say? What do recent scientific studies show about megalodon? This is whats important. I don't know why you're mentioning movies.
I'm taking advantage of circumstances and lack of knowledge?? Using fallacy to back-up a statement without base? Are you serious?? All this time, I've been referring to scientific research/studies conducted by marine scientists, researchers etc, which clearly indicate that the megalodon was the highest-level apex predator - ever.
Why don't you just read the studies and articles and see why the experts came to this conclusion?
