An Animal To Rival Megalodon? - The Giant Killer Sperm Whale Livyatan 

"there's always a bigger fish" - Jedi Master Liam Neeson

If I had a nickel for every time a zoology/paleontology RU-vid channel I follow made a video about the Megalodon/Livyatan rivalry during Shark Week, I’d have two nickels. Which isn’t a lot, but it’s weird that it happened twice, right?

"The big fishy of death." I hope that gets used in scientific papers.

i love how you refer to one as "the megalodon" and the other simply as "Livyatan", it occasionally gave me the image of one being a species and the other being a singular whale that somehow terrorized all of megalodons at all times no matter what

I want to see a prehistoric planet like documentary set in the mid miocene pacific. It's would be really cool to see these two awesome animals on screen in one of those.

Granted I don't think the Orca vs Great White comparisons here are entirely fair since Orcas are like 4 times the size of a White while Megs and Livyatans are much more comparable sizewise. It's unlikely adult Megalodons or Livyatans would target each other given the sheer risk of major injury.

The clicks while livyathan made while echolocating would’ve been terrifying

I’m curious to learn more about the social habits of these giant whales. One biblically-sized monster is scary enough, imagine if they lived in pods like modern day sperm whales?

Finally, a weapon to surpass Megalo Gear.

Livyatan has literally given me nightmares.

In one vs one combat, these two creatures were pretty much equal and would depend on who got the first bite, but in reality whales are very social animals and would travel in pods while sharks are solitary hunters and travel alone. This really put Megalodon at a significant disadvantage. I suspect Megalodon only hunts young or sick Livyatan that was left behind by the pod.

5:14 So even if the genus name is invalid, it STILL can’t be used for a new animal? That’s dumb.

I would love to see more videos about Livytitan. It's a massive post KPG marine super predator that I feel gets overshadowed by Megalodon too often. I'd love more videos on extinct post KPG marine animals

I know you gotta prep material for next shark week, but I also hope you can still provide more shark content throughout the year as well. Also ye I'd love to see more Livyatan coverage!

The Livyatan report was facinating. Yes, I'd love to see more on whale evolution. Would you be so kind to give us a descriptive picture of the world of each species timelined. To give a better wholistic impression in the environmental pressures, with prey, they lived in. Thanks.

Wouldn't surprise me if they found signs that Livyatan ate Megalodon livers after ripping them out live.

Given that Hollywood keeps making megalodon movies, it's kind of surprising there hasn't been a megalodon vs livyatan yet.

With all the hype about Megalodon of course it has been described often, but I never heard of Livyatan until now. How could such a creature, just as big and dangerous have been ignored? Well I know about it now, thanks to you, and am appropriately awed, not to mention extremely grateful to evolution for not creating humans until these monsters had become extinct.

Livyatan would be a terrifying creature to encounter if it were still alive today.

Probably one of my favorite species EVER. It just did everything bigger and badder than anything else

Simply the thumbnail of all time, I like it 👍 😊 I already like this video and I hope you all have a great day.

**Animal Face Off would like to know your location**

Excellent video and excellent week of Sharks! The extinction of Livyaton, Megalodon and co must be due to the formation of the Panama Isthmus stopping the flow of some equatorial currents and hence brought on the Ice Age two to three million years ago. But for some millions of years before the closure the islands that formed there would have slowly but surely constricted the warm water currents and hence slowly altered the marine ecologies. For millions of years these mega predators would have been put under more and more pressure to find enough food. Not to mention what their prey had to go through too.

Why did Livyatan suddenly get popular? There have been like 5 big new videos from popular educational channels. Did they coordinate or did livyatan randomly go viral during this years shark week?

Really nice video essay and analysis! Quite thorough presentation!

Moby Dick 2: The Revenge from the Trench. Megaladon and Livayatan must join forces to stop the mad mariner, and this time it's personal. "Now there's two of them, capt'n!" -"Agh, then bring two harpoons, Ishmael!"

Interesting in the sense Megalodon likely had similar sensory organs as smaller sharks. Levytan the sonar of modern whales

Liv & Meg ⚡🔥

Megalodon vs levyatan? How about ben vs lindsay

Wow, I'm really digging this ongoing collaboration with Animalogic... oh wait.

Maybe Livyatan hunted Megalodon just like Orca hunt great white sharks.

I wonder if there could have been an evolutionary arms race that pushed both Megalodon and Livyatan to get that big together.

The Megalodon was not an over grown great white they might have even been able Suck water to their gills and asofigus to save energy

This is really interesting - they found megladon fossils in shallower seas where they grew up in relative safety. They probably did it in part to hide hem from this whale :)

Livayatan Melvillei did live alongside with otodus meg but Sigma on Megalodon

Shark Week is now Shark & Rivals Week

Great video! Theres a paper I read a while back that studied isotopes of shark and whale teeth, but it essentially boiled down to the fact that Megalodon and macroraptorial sperm whales didnt compete for food, rather filled different niches. You can also see rhis in the jaws,as the curve of livyatans teeth was made to grip and pin small prey in its mouth, while Megalodon could wrap its jaws around larger whales. You can also see this in a fossil of a macroraptorial sperm whale (As you mention in the video) with a puncture in its tooth by a similarly sized otodus shark indicating that megalodon had no problem attacking larger whales. I think that this was an active predation attempt personally, because if the shark was directly feeding off the carcass, it shouldve chewed directly through the bone. There had to be some struggle and back and forth face biting if the whale made it out with only scratches. (And of course, Im considering your reasoning too.)

Livytitan being a ancestor of the Orca means that it would have flipped the Meg over to split it in two.

14:07 Oh please do make a video on Livyatan!!!! I love Whales :)

1) Lindsay Nikole 2) Animalogic 3) Ben G Thomas It's so cool that I follow enough zoology/paleontology channels that I get three Livyatan videos in as many days

I had heard of this creature before but didn't know it existed so recently, and that it overlapped with the Megladon and how freakin epic that is.

As the old saying goes ‘plenty of fish in the sea’ and this one takes the cake

Great video. Yes I would like to see more about Sperm Whale evolution. Keep up the good work.

Honstely megalodon is so overrated, every marine animals beside it is way more interesting than that shark, livyatan and basilosaurus are my favorites from the cenocoic, whales rule😅

Remember Livyatan was also a mammal, and if it was as intelligence as predator Cetacea are today then it might not be to hard to image that this animal was capable of what could be see as cruelty. Image a Livatan ripping off a Megalodon tail like a Orca dose to s great white

Thank you guys for another wonderful Shark Week!

I can't remember which book in the series it is,but in the Meg books these two super predators fight amd it is awesome.

Seems it mirrors the present day Great White sharks vs Killer whales competition :O

Goddammit. Mammals love to dominate any habitat. We should probably try the skies next time. Come on, bats, we are rooting for you guys!

The Whale wins. Whales are smart, big Whales with big teeth have no problem dealing to big Sharks.

Thanks for your dedication in putting these videos together - I always look forward to shark week

Really, the Otodontidae, aka the Megatooth Sharks, were really a fascinating,now completely extinct, family of sharks and predators. There was several taxa within it, others than Otodus itself, its nameshake. And each having several species in it. The family evolved during the Mesozoic, at around 115 Mya, during the Early Cretaceous, have survived the Kt-extinction, and survived until 3.6 Mya, at the Late Pliocene. Whatever in the Mesozoic or during the early stages of the Cenozoïc, these animal were always in general pretty big species (generally the size or slightly higher than a Great White Shark) and important predators of their ecosystems. Megalodon was the biggest and last of the Otodus genus. It's was the biggest shark, predator, macro-predator, sea predator, otodus species known currently to Science, in the same time. Like Tyrannosaurus, it's one if only with the latter to be reffered by the general public withr its species name, megalodon. (like rex for T-rex). Despite Levyatan being whithout any doubts a worthy opponent and had a big competition against it for food sources, Megalodon have survived longer than it. Levyatan becoming extinct a pretty significant good period of time before Megalodon. However, Megalodon wasn't the very last Otodontid to ever lived and to become extinct. It's was the last of its genus to exist, but not the only remaining Otodontid. At the time when Megalodon lived, Otodontid weren't no more very diversified like once. Since the juveniles of Megalodon have outcompeted most if not all the smaller species (like with the juveniles of T-rex reducing the smaller and medium species of others predatory dinosaurs, at their time). There was only few and big taxa remaining. Paratodus is THE true very last of the Megatooth Sharks to ever lived, having survived to Megalodon and becoming extinct after it. It's to it that this title of last member of the family go. The last and youngest of the 3 known species of Paratodus was a very large shark, yet slightly smaller than Megalodon both on average and maximum estimates. Its survival was due to being even more generalist than Megalodon. Whatever, the lost and extinction of these animals have a great impact on the modern ecosystem of today oceans. Allowing the whales as a whole to grew considerably into large sizes than they were able to reach due to Megalodon, Levyatan, Paratodus and cie's presence that forced them at the time to remain pretty small most to maximum medium of the time. To be enough fast in water. While Orcas and Great White Sharks were able to reach the now open niches of sea apex predators they continue to have today !

If the livyatan had a similar ecological niche to an orca, it might have a similar body plan, leading to a possibly 20+m in length and 120+ tons in weight

6:35 I have found a new scientific word today: Junk...I wonder what it actually is? Fat maybe? Still Great Job! :)

And thank you for such a wonderful show. Paleontology rules!

This is the second livyatan video I have seen released this weekend. Now im obviously biased and am subbed too many chad animal channels but its always interesting seeing the odds align like this in real time.

Meg vs Liv. That's a movie title right there!

Livyatan, despite being describe only one decade ago, have become very quickly popular and famous toward the public ! Mainly due to it's giant size, the fact it's was a more dangerous version of the Cachalot Whale, that it's was a whale eating others whales, and of course, in big part also because it was for sure the only animal capable to face and rivalize against Megalodon ! And battles between these two obviousely truly occured time to time (of course under specific conditions) But still, it's incredible to know that a true titans battle that could have came from a big action movie have actually really a real thing once, somewhere in the past. A pretty recent past in geological time !

I find Sperm Whales to be quite mysterious. I'd love a video on them.

Yes please to more videos about ancient predatory cetaceans!

Thank you for great video! I would have liked to see a sketch of Megalodon and Livyatan together, to compare their sizes. 😊

I absolutely love how you give your mom a shout out at the end❤

Actually without observation (which is obviously impossible), the fossil evidence (even a megalodon tooth embedded in whale bones) can't tell if megalodons preyed on whale. Modern great whites feed on whale carcasses but can't attack big whales, so it's impossible to tell if megas did that versus preying on big whales like a lot of us like to assume.

From the Triassic to the Eocene, fishing in the oceans of the world would have been a trip! The problem is, I’ve never figured out what the fishing boat would look like. I mean, there were some very large bad guys prowling those waters. Which brings me to my suggestion. How about a series on the baddest times to be a fisherman? When were the confluences of the most terrifying predators to have ever lived? Love these episodes.

super interesting. excellent presentation. more please and thank you!

Megalodon had plenty of competition.

Kinda weird how Animalogic comes out with a video about Livayatan a mere day or so before... another video about Livayatan.

Really excited for The MEG 2.

"Big fishy of death"! Hah! Ibstill love that!

I saw the exhibit about this while visiting the natural history museum in Lima. My Spanish wasn't good enough to get the details right but the artifacts and pictures got the point across without difficulty.

Have any studies been done on the potential bite force of Livyatan? Would it have had an even more powerful bite than Megalodon itself?

i always love hearing about whale evolution!

A perfect way to end of shark week 😊

Wait why are there so many videos about Livyathan recently

I want to ask the big question of how strong was livytan bite force

Prehistoric Jaws vs. Prehistoric Moby Dick! That’s the best way to describe this rivalry.

If these two fought, I am in favour of livyatan winning.

Many of your viewers might be interested in a video reviewing current hypothesis on why both these huge apex predators, megalodon and livyatan, went extinct. I believe you may have addressed this to some degree with respect to the shark, in another video, but there is surely value to be gained in a discussion that attempts to correlate both species’ fates.

Excellent video Think about it The end of the dinosaurs was just the beginning of gigantic supermassive predators.

That Megalodon swimming in shallow water in the beginning always bugs me. It's far to dangerous for real animals to swim in such shallow water for their size. Indeed it's likely that that shark in the painting very likely would have been stranded if it was real. Still Great Art And Great Job! :)

Talking about a whale during shark week is like nominating a bat for bird of the year.

Woah the ecosystem you described with super predators culling down on orca sized creatures that would’ve otherwise dominated is so fascinating to me. It’s such a shame we could never witness such a profound ecosystem at work, would’ve been a truly brutal but awe inducing sight, thank you Ben

We need a movie about Megs vs Levys.

Can’t wait for this idea to become more wide spread. Then RU-vid channels like bright side will make videos like “Megladon dethroned?” Can’t wait.

Absolute amazing to see this monster in a video, in Rotterdam they have a (life sized replica) skull, it’s huge and the teeth look absolutely horrific. If they wheren’t fossilized you could litteraly just put some cloth on the end and tadaa: you now have a teeth short sword!

The Meg vs Moby Dick sounds like a crazy cool idea for a Meg sequel but actually was a thing a few million years ago.

Dude! I have two copies of "Sharks: Silent Hunters of the Deep" (the first copy is extremely worn out, so I bough a second last year) It's a bit dated now, but it was the first book I ever checked out from the library back in 1993, I was roughly 6 years old and my dad took after I saw Jaws and fell in love with sharks. I hope you like it as much as I do, and it's not just a prop!

It would suck to be an innocent fish minding your own business in the prehistoric ocean then some cracked out whale just bites your head off.

I would love to hear more about Leviathan its honestly such a cool predator. Heck, I would love to hear more about predatory whales in general, like the pseudo mosasaur revival in early whales.

Yes please, make a video on sperms whale evolution! I've really enjoyed this coverage of Shark Week this year

I like the shark "STUFFY" on the shelf!

The amount of stuff they have found in the past decade has truly been astounding.

Loved it. You guys are awesome. Paleontology rules.

Oh man, how do you not include a detailed comparison of the mass, bite force, etc., of the two species? The implications for the food web are very interesting, but everyone wants to know who would win a fight. 🙂

I had to replay it over three times. "Big fishy of death."

Nice video, I have a few more of yours to catch up on later. Sorry for going slightly off-topic, I heard of this species while listening to the audiobook of 'Vostok' by Steve Alten. I assumed it was just made up, although his version would have been exaggerated it's surprising to know that there was a real version of it.

Finnaly! Some appreciation for this beautiful creature!

Topic video idea I guess: That time that sharks received a massive drop in numbers. Like, they are usually not really affected or too affected by extinction events. But 1 time they got very targeted and it's not quite known why I don't know where but I watched smthg on the matter

I really loved this week's content!! Great work

Can you send me the article about the content of the video? Because I'm Vietnamese, there are many things you say I don't understand and I find your video quite interesting, so I want to read it to understand better.