Wow, thank you so much for your support, I'm glad you appreciate the work that goes into these time lapses. The money will be used to make future videos even better. :)
I think the container is painted white inside and that's what peels up at the end. Compare what the bottom of the container looked like at the start to what you can see as it peels up.
I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure that reversing the video doesn't bring the watermelon back. I'll ask my dad. EDIT: Dad says I'm right. But I suppose he could be wrong too...
Man saw the entire world taking shelter from a unknown virus and was like: "you know what would be cool as shit? filming a goddamn watermelon decomposing. That'd be sick." Legend.
Had a watermelon for less than a week and it exploded. Was already rotting from the inside by then. The one in this video took over 200 days to "pop." wtf
It is amazing how long this particular family of fruit can stay unspoiled. My wife and I had a Chinese "winter melon" sitting on the kitchen table for more than a year. It underwent no noticeable change, and when we finally cut it up, it was as fresh and delicious inside as ever, ready to be cooked.
@@vedantsridhar8378 I think flies and maggots would eat it and think, "This is to die for." Anyone else would eat it and just die. I assume the taste would be putrescent, the sixth sensation of the mouth after sweet, salty, sour, bitter and umami
@@tuddgrimley8532 true. I also believe eating the whole spoiled 500 day old watermelon could kill you, but taking it in small amounts would cause food poisoning. When I suffered it a couple of years ago, it was terrible. It happened because I ate some very old food. Btw I accidentally deleted my comment
@@vedantsridhar8378 goes to show you, a lot of unpleasant sensations are only to save you from harm but then ppl like Swedish eat syrströmming which is just. rotten. fish. in a tin can. this civilization is odd
According to Social Blade in August 2020 (I started the watermelon time lapse project on August 15th 2020) I had around 1300 subscribers, so yeah, you are right :)
@@maliciouslycryptic5529 nah most my comments get like 2 likes and then i have one comment that just says "sheesh that last one" which got 45,000 likes
You know, when you said “a whole watermelon” I didn’t expect to see the whole melon in the 4th dimension as well. This is the only watermelon I can say that I’ve fully seen.
@@Ateszika the Xbox series x and ps5 were brought out while this was decomposing, advancements in graphics cards, and there’s a lot more I just picked the ones that came to mind first
I actually really wonder what people would answer if I asked them what the object at 2:20 is, without showing them the title of this video and somehow hiding the days and hours count? Would some people also say it's a strange kind of sweet, with the mold being just sugar? Would even one person among a pool of 10,000 people guess that it's a decomposing watermelon?
@@PhotoOwl Damn bro, I'm sure you have other surprises for us in the upcoming years😂 I'm writing to see a 10 years time lapse, that would be EPIC!! You would be in history bro
Yeah. Even the 10-day-old food in my fridge, which got spoiled smelled quite disgusting to me, just imagine how terrible the one-and-a-half-year-old watermelon must have been. The best I can imagine would be the smell of poop, but I can imagine it would be much worse than that.
@@vedantsridhar8378 it's honestly much better than poop. It would be a mix of strong alcohol and a heavy sweet smell, with a hint of earthy mold. Source: I've worked around food for a long time. Eventually you learn what these different things smell like. I'd take a rotten piece of fruit over something like a potato any day of the year. Those things smell like fish when they start actively decomposing.
What was more difficult - Filming a watermelon rotting litterally to dust, or cleaning the Container? Thanks for your endurance and sharing the result with us.
that's honestly so fucking beautiful, the way it dries up makes it feel like an island thats losing all of its water and eventually becomes surrounded by a desert. very pretty.
Holy bro imagine like what we were doing and who we were when this man decided to put a watermelon in a container for 2 years. Thats is insane. Keep up the dedication bruh keep up that good work
in a big timelapse like that, we wouldn't even notice if he stopped the record at some point, changed the SD and the battery and continued filming to cut it all together in the end. I think the rendering is more impressive.
It was very neat to see the stripes leave and return. And when the melon peed… man those were some times. Thank you for having the patience to film such a process.
Trying to quantify the amount of life you experienced in almost two years, and comparing it to the decomposing of one silly little watermelon. I hope you enjoyed those two years. This was cool. :)
I think it also depends on the environment he was filming in, which seems to be controlled well. I think it would rot in a quarter of the time if this watermelon was kept outdoors.
*It was certainly interesting to watch this watermelon go from fetus to pulverised juice. The fact that you spent two years doing this is pure commitment. I wonder what other foods you have brewing in the timelapse right now*
Fun fact: depending on the environment, watermelons will actually start to ferment before exploding. Speaking from experience; we grew a bunch, left them on the counter undisturbed (we dont eat melons very often), and would only occasionally have one. Middle of the night we hear a hissing noise followed by a pop and the sound of liquid dripping; sure enough, the innards had fermented and there was juice dripping from everything.
@@greanch1234 oh that's interesting! By now I did realise, what I said makes no sense anyway, given how quickly much bigger things rot away, compared to this melon. Still it's really confusing to me, that this exists. Why would a melon need them?
I recently had a whole watermelon that I didn't touch. It already leaked after about 30 days. And when I wanted to throw it away, it fell apart completely. Maybe his room was very cold or so.
So fun fact: The rinds on melons and gourds are so good at preserving the fruit that you have the terms “summer squash” and “winter squash.” Summer squash means you can eat it at any time during the summer and it will still be good, but it has a thinner rind so it will go bad sooner. Winter squash refers to when people had root cellars and would store their harvest in there. You harvest winter squash in the summer but if you store them in a dark, cool environment you can enjoy them well into the winter. These have super thick rinds. I don’t know when watermelon starts decomposing on the inside, but basically you’ll know if you take a bite and you want to spit it out. (Note: small children don’t have this learned behavior, please taste the juice or fruit first before giving it to a small child as they lack the experience to avoid rotten food.)
@@lindasano1552 Genetically modified fruit and crops can be incredibly natural. All GMO means is that it has been selectively bred for desirable qualities. Lemons are an entirely man-made species, therfore every lemon is GMO. Same with modern corn, it was bred to be big whereas ancient corn was small. Stop spreading misinformation that "GMO" means unnatural, that's a hoax by health nuts in order to sell expensive food and shady medicine.
@@freshgarbage1492 Bro, it's literally called Genetically modified organisam, it is not natural. There is something to be said about natural selection but such has limits, to go beyond those limits is unnatural, if the plant cannot reproduce on its own it is unnatural. You can breed different species of the same plants to get the desired results like larger fruit or a higher yield but the plant, much like dog breeds, will still be able to reproduce if it is natural. No most GMOs are not natural, why don't you stop parroting the main stream media.
I was literally about to make this exact comment. Word for word. More than once I’ve gone to pick up a watermelon while stocking and had my hand go completely through the melon only to be hit by that rotten melon smell. Worst smell I’ve encountered while working a produce section has got to be Brussels sprouts that were sitting in a tub of water for two weeks. People kept pouring boxes on top without rotating anything. Just below the surface of the sprouts was hands down the worst smell I’ve ever smelled and it just got worse as it got deeper. Rotting dead bodies piled high in a sewer filled with ammonia. I can’t describe it any other way and I still feel like I’m underselling it.
Worst smell in produce hands down had a bad batch drop its guts in the chiller room it smelt like rotten watermelon for 2 days even through a deep clean Asparagus gets pretty bad aswell when not rotated or overstocked and left for too long
Whenever I see a soft spot on a melon at work, I give my work mates a side eye with a smirk before performing fist no jutsu on the damn thing. Just me? Just me…
I especially liked how the color faded and then came back, I wonder about the mechanisms there. Did the pigments just get overshadowed by something that eventual decayed letting us see them again? Or did a new layer of the same pigments become freshly exposed the second time around letting us see them again? Or something else altogether? Thanks for the video!
It became lighter because it was losing chlorophyll from no water. It turned dark green again because it dried out and shrunk like a balloon losing air
@@paigeconnelly4244 I see. I have some hygiene products that change color through winter and summer because they are from vegetation. So I thought it could apply to this.
Well if any food is left for long enough, it decomposes fully and dries up until it becomes sand-like. Even a leftover hamburger becomes sand-like, and that is what I discovered when I opened an old bag that I hadn't used for two years. There I found a package and inside it was sand, which was once a hamburger I bought but didn't have time to eat. Scary. Sometimes it becomes chip-like. In the end, everything becomes part of the soil. That is what hummus is. Big respect to nature, and the decomposers, for doing such a fantastic job at recycling nutrients. I just learned about the carbon cycle and the decomposers in my biology class, and I just love that topic. It keeps reminding me of this video.
@@Gwynbleiddsanity or maybe the terrible smell of the decomposing watermelon is also thrilling. Because it's just not something you smell in everyday life. But yeah mask is a good solution.
melons and squash last a loooong time due to their thick shells. Some winter squash you cut off the vine ancure for a while before you even eat them, plants are amazing, there are some long lasting fruit and vegetables that you can keep in a cool dry pantry for quite some time before it's inedible. Potatoes and onions also seem to last a very long time.
@@Ecco502 Because it is a great demonstration of time. The rotten watermelon isn't beautiful. But the process, which is happening due to the time moving forward, is remarkable.
Imagine if I could "attach" a smell sample to the video...:D BTW this wasn't the worst, chicken wings is still number 1 on the smelly-scale. Unforgettable, it felt like I had the smell in my nose the whole day, I thought I got phantosmia. Luckily by the evening/next day it was gone.
I don't know how much I can respect a guy who simply records stuff rotting away for YEARS. That stuff requires EXTREME dedication, and I just can't respect this guy enough. They deserve all of my respect, which probably might not even feel like enough.
Honestly, huge props to you on this. I worked in produce while in college, and let me tell you, there aren’t many things nastier than a rotting watermelon.
It's not an full length video, it's just photos taken every set time. A second of video is like 7 days. At 30 frames per second, it's like 4 or 5 frames a day. You just need to take a photo every 6 hours or so.
Day 1: yum yum Day 150: stripes began to fade / slight color shift Day 470: let's take a leak Day 480: molding begins Day 500: *OMGOSH LOOK!!!* Day 520: 🤮🤮🤮 Day 600: death valley
I was at school when you put this melon and now am at uni, wow crazy to think it took this long to make! Keep the amazing content, you're doing something amazing and so unique =)
@@freedom6984 and yet people spend their lives trolling and hating others, forming groups to do so... and doing crime. They don't realize how insignificant they are.
I became somewhat attached to the watermelon during the video. On the outside it seemed fine for a while but in reality we all knew what it would come to. To watch it deflate and mold in its own disgusting juices, really moved me, almost to tears.
Same for me, it was hard. That poor watetmelon has grown to be eaten and he end up like this. Stay in a box dying in his own blood. Why i said that ,i will not be able to sleep ;-;
@@georgiykireev9678 but I mean usually any fruit would start molding within a few days, max a month if left like that. Its very suprising how the melon lasted over a year. Shows how tough the skin around it is against microorganisms
Fascinating from an evolutionary perspective. Melons and gourds are adapted like time capsules, protecting the seeds as well as the moisture and nutrients needed to get those seeds a strong start for so long, maximizing the plant's ability to procreate through adverse seasonal change.
That takes insane amount of dedication almost to two years. Don’t give up on any other stuff you have recorded. I’m staying tune and sharing this to over 11 people
It's hardly possible to "give up" on doing basically nothing for year after year after year! All he _really_ needs, are plenty of cameras, boxes, batteries, light bulbs, memory storage devices - and of course, perishable items set up all in one go, then just leave it all for as long as you choose. I don't really understand why there's all this hype around what he/she does??
It’s really interesting to think about how this is basically how dirt is formed. The reason the pulverised watermelon just looked kinda earthy is because yeah, dirt is just dead trees, animals and other stuff that has gone through that exact process.
That’s neat. We had these decorative mini pumpkins on Halloween, my son insisted on keeping one in his room. It didn’t start getting a little soft until the end of March. Much more resilient than I thought.
@@spirituser7354 since you want to be smart, cucurbits aka gourd family are a family of flowering plants with include many different plants from watermelons to cucumbers to squashes and pumpkins
If there isn’t one already, I’d love to see a video showing where you do these timelapses / what your setup is like? Genuinely curious as to how and where you keep a camera on a watermelon, for almost a full 2 years lol!
@@achillxs7458 More than likely he has the camera set up on a tripod and has it set to take a photo every hour and then just changes the battery when it dies, you can get some time lapse cameras pretty cheap.
I bet the smell was revolting. Still, I wish RU-vid had a smell feature too where you could smell the environment where the video was taken, that way I can know how bad it smelled.
@@PhotoOwl I'm curious, do you have a 'how it's made' sort of video for your timelapses? I imagine you have a small field full of containers filled with rotting stuff somewhere, and I'd be interested to see how you manage all of them
On a side note: everwhere where mold grows, spores exist. Spores don't die if the mold dies. Spores basically live for the eternity. They can be reactivated at any time. If you open up such a container, it is filled to the brim with spores. They are invisible for you, as they are so tiny. Maybe you see a little dust. Nothing more. That's why in laboratories petri dishes with fughi are never opened without the petri dish sitting in the air suction chamber. If these spores get into airways, they can cause a serious illness called aspergillosis. In this illness the fungus will grow in your mucus membranes and in your bones. You never get it out of your body again completely. You can lose your eyes, if eye sockets are infected by the fungus. You can get seizures if the fungus grows into your skull. You can lose your smell or your teeth. Imagine aspergillosis as a net of fungus (it's called hyphes), which slowly grow through every existing matter they come across. People with aspergillosis have to take strong medication, usually life long, ruining their liver with these. Now why I say this. You most likely wore a respirator and it's great that you were under fresh air. But your dog straight up inhaled millions of spores. Aspergillosis is contractable to dogs and cats. I myself had a rescue cat with aspergillosis. His skull had to be sawed open in a surgery to remove parts of the fungus. But you can't eliminate it. My cat lost his fight against this illness after years of intense struggle. Aspergillosis symptoms in pets are hard to differentiate. Often the pets suffer years before a knowledgeable vet does a radio tomography and a biopsy and finds the fungus. At this moment it's generally already too late to prevent harsh side effects, like loss of various senses. Please, if you ever open up such a container again, get your dog out of the way. Leave him inside the house until you securely have gotten rid of all of the container (so out of reach, that he can't go for it afterwards). Please make sure your dog is safe in your experiments.
