Spec evo long : How to build a predator

20 seconds before throwing shade at Magnamalo. That's a new record!

Bit late but I’d actually really like a “how to build a herbivore” video. Very few pieces of media actually discuss the strategies that different herbivores use in getting their food. It’s often only as simple as “they eat plants”.

One time I saw a young red-tailed hawk trying to catch mallards in a pond. He kept swooping at them and they would easily fly out of the way every time. He did this for about an hour before leaving. It's really hard to learn how to be a predator. It's not surprising that so many of them die before reaching maturity.

"A term made by me, just now" lmaooo I fucking love it

Sci-fi writers remind me of George MacDonald- Remember a beast does not know that he is a beast. And the nearer a man gets to be one, the less he knows it

Love how we're have 3 kinds of spec evo videos. Ones that focus on the creature(s) from certain media, shorter videos that talk about tropes, and now longer form ones like this. I'm liking how it's going!

Thanks for the shoutout buddy! We'll definitely get you on as a guest again; it was great fun joining forces and you provided some wonderful input! I know we've already been brainstorming some ideas, but we'll definitely follow up once Dominic's back from Zambia.

This channel is just a goldmine. My little brother and I simply cannot get enough of this content. Thank you kindly for doing what you do!!!

While Jurassic World has a lot of problems, I think the Indominus Rex is a good example of an over-the-top carnivore done right. Even in the context of the film's own world, the I-Rex is not a "real" or natural animal. The park's shareholders demanded "more teeth", and the end result was a hyper aggressive animal that was more dangerous than any natural predator would be. Dr. Henry Wu designed I-Rex in pretty much the exact same way a lot of writers design their uber-strong OC monsters. There's definitely an element of satire there. The painful irony of the Jurassic World trilogy is that the filmmakers seemingly forgot about the satire element when they designed Giganotosaurus in Jurassic World Dominion. They made yet another over-the-top carnivore but unironically and without any pretense of scientific accuracy or in-universe logic.

Time to take notes for my settings

UHC: •Drops Spec Evo video• Me: WRITE THAT DOWN!! WRITE THAT DOWN!!

"Educators" cough cough Tierzoo cough cough. No hate tho animal content is always fun. It's just so obvious when seeing a lot of popular YT biology content that it uses sensationalism and hyperbole to hype up animals so they sound like these perfectly evolved machines built for survival, when life in reality is messy, imperfect, and pretty RNG. What makes life so fascinating is how it responds and adapts to the many pressures they face. Predators especially suffer from this hype, which we have seen how dangerous this could be with sharks, wolves, lions, and other animals hailed as super predators being hunted to almost extinction by fearful humans

It feels like we just got the Nergigante video yesterday and now this? it’s Christmas in June!

For being the UNnatural History Channel, you are THE best source of real ecological insights I rely on for world building. Seriously, huge props to you for really explaining top-down and bottom-up concepts from a place of deep understanding, with plenty of cited sources. I'd like to think my fantasy world has much better ecosystems thanks to this channel. Also, I listened to this video as a podcast, but I could feel in my soul when Magnamalo must have been on screen lol

I can actually see two reasons why a predator would roar/scream/bellow before an attack. The first--and more fantastic--is that their voice is itself a weapon, loud or powerful enough to actually stun keen-eared prey before they launch an attack. (It's far-fetched, but not implausible: if you've ever been listening really hard for something, a sudden, really loud noise will scare the absolute hell out of you and disorient you for a few seconds.) The second would be to panic prey that would otherwise present a dangerously united front, or flush out something that would otherwise remain hidden.

This is why I love the Kaimere project because the guy making it knows what he is doing it and his speculative animals can make sense and are unique and cool in their own way. Without making it overkill. For example a theropod made is called the Uktan is a megaraptoran that took the niche of apex predator that uses its claws to make a kill.

Thank you for the shoutout! I very much plan to make more informational animal content in the future in relation to debunking another commonly cited and seemingly trusted individual, but it's a lot more ambitious than the Forrest Galante one and I have another project before it.

Gonna need to save this for my project. It’s a seed world where the only mammal is the collared peccary

Question: Are you going to make a video on kaiju? Specifically on what godzilla is actually closely related to or what would godzilla actually eat aside from radiation.

Great video as always! One thing you touched on that could be fascinating would be the behavior and effects of captivity/domestication on animals. My personal headcannon for the original jurassic park, for example, is that the predators were so aggressive and broke out so quickly because they were under-enriched and *bored*.