How Whale Evolution Kind Of Sucked 

As such all other cetaceans! What’s crazy is thinking about how really the only aquatic species that are known for making vocalizations are cetaceans, because they all used to be land mammals who obviously vocalized as well. We always like to imagine those early cetaceans’ limbs changing to become mobile in water, but just imagine how their vocal cords have changed 😳 This hit me when I was really high watching a nature documentary, and all I could think about was how cetaceans are like cows screaming underwater lol

Hippos have a little more chance to become marine

Man when you find out about manatees your mind is going to be blown

@@cerperalpurpose yeah a hippo with flippers is basically a walrus

Of course they are mind blowing, it’s how they breathe!

Yeet😭😭

It sucks even more that researchers of a particular kind of prehistoric whales aren't called "baleentologists".

It's ok, the original ancestor was called Mistake-o-don

@@paulpeterson4216 Oops, I fell down to the floor and found, just, SO MUCH food down here!

I was this-comment-years-old when i realized the pun. thank you.

That would be so interesting to deliver into. Are there lice that are host specific, and can/will only live on certain species, compared to other life species that might be more flexible in what species of whale they live on? I'm curious if there's a neat, traceable pattern in the lice evolution alongside the whales, kind of how like some mold species coevolved with ants that farmed them and whatnot.

WOW !! That`s possibly the most interesting comment I`ve ever read on RU-vid.

That's insanely interesting

Human pubic/head lice also has an interesting coevolution history

the knowledge.

I agree as we are the living embodiment of the universe becoming conscious and looking back and understanding itself. To paraphrase Carl Sagan.

The interesting thing about archeology to me isn't finding awesome bones, it's the fact that we can make incredibly well supported claims about the live cycle of T-Rex and how they impacted their environment. We know they had feathers all (on every area we've found) of their skin. We know the COLORS of animals that no simian ever saw!!! We know the sexual habits of wolves that died out before (or around, I don't remember which) humans hit north America. Everything we know and how we know it and how much more we don't know but someday might and everything we'll probably never know is so cool!!!

@@junodonatus4906 His exact quote was "We are a way for the universe to know itself."

@@junodonatus4906 and yet people mostly focus on the most insignificant things in life

The sheer amount we have been able to put together??? Like the MAY have eaten like this other creature MAY have ate. That’s not putting anything together at all. That’s call speculation of speculation not putting anything together nor science. It’s a bunch of want to be know it alls that like to make guesses off of a few clues. That could have been caused by 1000 other speculative guesses.

Hydrodynamics makes such things insanely easy with a flexible spindle with rudders and speed. There's just *so much* mass in water to push off, yet it parts easily on the edge or point.

They’ve been tracking dolphins for like a century and had underwater cameras for decades and they JUST discovered this? Wow

@@anonnyanonymous4800 We've been living with domestic cats for longer than written history, but how they drink water was only resolved about 10 years ago with high speed macro cameras and advanced knowledge of fluid dynamics. da Vinci described/identified the airfoil shape of bird wings over 500 years ago, but it still took over 400 more years to get combustion engines for achieving powered flight. Sometimes you have to wait until the right equipment/science is created/discovered before you can get answers.

Schlorp!

Wouldn't most predatory fish _and_ fish eating birds & animals (spinosaur !) swallow fish, or any underwater prey, by sucking them up? At least to get them between teeth and then _snap_ use those special fish grabbing teeth. Doesn't work much on dry land or in the air (too thin) though I can imagine swallows & bats sucking up butterflies, dragon flies and moths

@@reuireuiop0 Suction feeding doesn't involve the teeth. It's when the hunter creates a large suction and the prey goes straight down the gullet (depending on the animal, by opening the mouth very quickly, by suddenly expanding the throat, or by blocking the throat with the tongue and pulling it back rapidly). Ram feeding is when you swim faster than the prey, but still swallow it whole without a bit. If biting is involved to kill/disable the fish before swallowing, it's called raptorial feeding. Most marine birds do their fish catching this way, hence why it's called raptorial feeding. There are other feeding types, too, used by different animals. Filter feeding is pushing the water through filters that food can't fit through (whales, whale sharks, some crustaceans, tube worms, anemones, etc). And lunge feeding is a specific type of filter feeding: swimming very quickly to get an enormous mouthful of water that's then filtered. Other critters use tentacles (ocotopuses, squids, cuttlefish) or claws (crabs and lobsters) to catch their prey (or talons, in the case of birds like eagles and ospreys). And there are other methods, too. That said, it is undeniable that most fish use suction feeding (ever watch a goldfish eating?). Non-fish animals in the water, however, are a much more mixed bag. And many employ multiple feeding tactics depending on their prey. The paradigm shift here isn't that dolphins _can_ suction feed. That's been known. The surprise is that suction feeding is their _main_ way of catching fish. It had previously been assumed, because of their teeth, that raptorial feeding was their preferred method .

The hole thing blows

Makes sense with convergent evolution.

There are clues of that even in living whales, as not all vestigial legs are preserved the same. Most species only have a few isolated bones left, but the bowhead and right whales still have somewhat articulated legs tucked inside their bodies, indicating that the loss of hind legs didn't occur at the same rate across all modern species even though they did all ultimately reach that point.

@@Xnaut314 I would assume the ancestors of the Balaenidae took longer to lose vestigial hind limbs [including hip bones] because they are slow swimmers. Extant whales lack hind-limbs to reduce drag while swimming.

Same.

@@Reyma777 : I wonder how much this could indicate about e.g. plesiosaurs.

That's really cool, thanks for sharing!

@@slwrabbits I went to an alternate timeline where the whales did not go into the water millions of years ago. They are now dogs. They fight and they also have holes on the top of their heads. oh boy it was a real trip! New York City is a huge rock quarry and Jamaica is the capitol of the planet. It was a lovely timeline.

Bro what did you smoke gimme that too

@@blackleague212 how was electricity generated?

@@TheEasterRabbit1 smoke a car battery pickled toad.

thats pretty much right😅. wanna learn more about whales. all the whales. check out clint's reptiles.

The nostrils did not move back as much as the skull became longer in the front. Imagine a dog's nostrils staying where they are while it's snout elongates. It'll give you somewhat of an idea of what actually happened.

Or the snouts got elongated

@Erik Yes, I've seen those pictures of embryonic development but when I looked deeper into the evolutionary history, the explanation of what's happening showed that it was actually the snout that elongates as this happens.

@Erik Thanks.. I'll have to do some more looking into it. It has been hard to find a good source.

@John Walters, actually, the Grey Whale (Eschrichtius robustus) is the only surviving member of the family Eschrichtiidae, which belongs to the superfamily Cetotherioidea, which includes the Pygmy Right Whale (Caperea marginata) of the family Cetotheriidae, Cetotherioidea actually is most closely related to the superfamily Balaenoidea which contains the monotypic families Balaenidae (Bowhead Whale and Fossil Relatives) and Eubalaenidae (Right Whales and Fossil Relatives), both superfamilies belong to the infraorder Balaenicephalia, which contains all baleen whales except rorquals (family Balaenopteridae).

@@indyreno2933 The grey whale has been recently moved into the family Balaenopteridae. Genetic studies show Balaenopteridae to be paraphyletic if the Grey Whale wasn’t included in the family. Most the rorquals are more closely related to the Grey Whale than they are to the Minke.

@MrReyno Tanks, actually, the closest living relative of the Grey Whale (Eschrichtius robustus) is actually the Pygmy Right Whale (Caperea marginata), both species are the only two surviving members of the superfamily Cetotherioidea, which actually belongs to the infraorder Balaenicephalia, making the grey whale and pygmy right whale more closely related to the bowhead whale and right whales of the superfamily Balaenoidea, the rorquals (family Balaenopteridae) are the most distantly related from all the other extant baleen whales as they are the only extant family of the superfamily Balaenopteroidea and the infraorder Balaenopterocephalia, the Balaenoidea contains two monotypic families that are extant being Balaenidae for the bowhead whale and its extinct relatives and Eubalaenidae for the right whales and their extinct relatives, the infraorders of baleen whales (suborder Mysticeti) are defined by the facial appearance and their abilities of filter-feeding, Balaenicephalia and Balaenopterocephalia, the infraorder Balaenopterocephalia contains only the rorquals (family Balaenopteridae), while the infraorder Balaenicephalia contains all the other extant baleen whales, there are only ten extant rorquals within six genera and three subfamilies, the ten living rorqual species are the Fin Whale (Balaenoptera physalus), the Arctic Minke Whale (Pterobalaena acutorostrata), the Antarctic Minke Whale (Pterobalaena bonaerensis), the Blue Whale (Sibbaldius musculus), the Humpback Whale (Megaptera novaeangliae), the Sei Whale (Rudolphius borealis), the Omura's Whale (Rorqualus omurai), the Rice's Whale (Rorqualus ricei), the Bryde's Whale (Rorqualus brydei), and the Eden's Whale (Rorqualus edeni).

The crazy thing about sonar is that even humans have a weak version of it. Anything with advanced hearing and vocalization can hear shifts in acoustics while vocalizing. For example, when approaching a wall. The transition from the basics to *better than sight* is definitely crazier, though.

@@bob.5857 quite a lot yes

You may be interested to know that some members of the team who described Maiabalaena recently dropped a really important paper in which they made a really compelling argument against the use of those lateral palatal foramina to infer baleen. Those same structures are also found in terestrial artiodactyls, and we know those don't have baleen for instance. I believe this paper was Peredo, Pyenson and Uhen (2022) if you're interested! Was it the most recent Ekdale and Demere paper that brought up the point about the margins of Maiabalaena's palate? thanks for sharing!

Wasn't the Tethys actually a full blow ocean back in the Cretaceous and early Cenozoic? I think it had largely started to close by the time whales moved towards the ocean, particularly due to India, rapid motion and the Iberian plate having been sandwiched between Africa and Eurasia by 70 Ma but that long dynamic history probably had some effect on what lived there specifically in that it would have been quite deep involving numerous subduction zones and if modern ocean basins are any guide probably also spreading ridges and transform faults which all could support a wide number of environments.

Get yourself a bae who'll read you whale facts before bed

you do realize how deep whales can go right? a mile is NOTHING to them.....

@@ravinraven6913 feeding at extreme depths is not beneficial

@@Maelthras toothed whales disagree, but yeah filter feeding at excessive depths isn't great.

@Benjamin David Lurie so that he can regurgitate the script of the video later on, and seem intelligent.

@@johnqpublic2718 or maybe, just maybe, it’s because it’s imteresting to them!

@Benjamin David Lurie what does that matter? Do you have some preconcieved notion about people who don’t show their face? Is what I said lesser to you for no reason other than that or because you just didn’t like what I had to say?

@@johnqpublic2718 projection is a hell of a drug

@Benjamin David Lurie bold assumption there, got literally anything other than my pfp to back it up? And what does that have to do with anything?

So,...you are an energy vampire?

@@DaveCM no, but if you're going to shadow me at work and not contribute to the task, you don't get to control the topic.

@@GLitiatc0 well said! educate away!

@@GLitiatc0 LOL! Very valid point?

Or maybe they did.

I will throw up if you do this again

They certainly didn't do it on Porpoise

im intrigued to see more puns in the replies

Oh we got a punn-isher here folks!!!!!!

Stealing this. 🤣🤣🤣

Happy Birthday. 🐳Hope you have a whale of a time.

Whales can really range between being on land to being in water and everything in between. They are all related. It is just that the water extremists are the only ones that still live. So that is the only ones that we are used to. The Whale's closest living relative is Hippo, and that is something in between. Hippos lean more to the land end.

@@sylviadailey9126 And the scientific evidence for that little story ?

@Benjamin David Lurie I’m not a bot lmao. I was just trying to get the comment in as fast as I could. The Beecher’s Beds are genuinely lit tho

@Benjamin David Lurie projecting again

Did you know that rabbits have fur on the inside of their cheeks?

Soup stuck in mustache.. Those with ingrown hairs found their niche.. 😉

Well, a blue whale can more or less hold a buffalo like a plushy under one if its flippers, if that helps.

a big whale skeleton or statue can take up a a whole wing of a mueseum as its centerpiece, never seen a mueseum like that in real life as the few ive been too usually go for dinosuars as the center pieces but i imagine a few would use whales as well

​@@aprinnyonbreak1290 Thank you for this adorable yet terrifying image.

😂😂 that last bit!! 👍👍

I bet they're all tasty, though.

Lets go back to when there were land animals. Real estate was cheap! We can start the first coffee shop on Earth. We can call it Ground.

The theory of evolution doesn’t make sense. There’s too many plot holes. I ask how it can be accepted when there is still so much that is unknown.

The idea of species being transitional is an illusion arriving from misunderstanding the evolutionary process. Every species is in a constant transitional state, and conversely no species is ever an in-between species. Evolution has no end goals, or checkpoints, every speciation throughout the eons isn't a pathways to a final goal, it's an adaptation of that organism current niche and environment. Archeopteryx wasn't a just a stepping stone from dinosaurs to moderns birds, it was an organism within its' own right and calling it a transitional species is like looking at an elephant today and calling it a transitional species between it's forefathers and whatever species its' offspring will evolve into in the next 10 million years. The concept of species is really an illusion, it's just a tool to make the world more understandable for us humans. Also, transitions don't happen instantly or uniformly. It is unlikely we'll ever know exactly what the process was like for cetaceans when transitioning into being fully aquatic, but it's not like a hybrid land living animal gave birth to a fully aquatic animal. Probably the ancestors of cetaceans resembled seals in that they hunted for food in the waters and birthed on land. Gradually they started to give birth closer to the water, because it was closer to food, and their offspring would sooner and sooner go into the water with their parents, since that would also be advantageous and selected for, and they would start giving birth closer and closer to the sea. Eventually some individuals could've started giving birth in the shallows instead of the beach, and eventually this adaptation could've led to births in the sea. The important thing to note is that while at the same time some were giving birth in the shallows it's very likely many individuals were still giving birth on land, and when births started to happen by sea, many likely still gave birth in the shallows. Since living in the sea enables increased size and selects for shapes more advantageous for marine locomotion (meaning flippers instead of legs etc) I'd wager the transition into a fully aquatic life didn't happen until long after cetaceans already were living a fully marine life. It's not like an precursor to modern cetaceans was born one day and just was unable to live on land, more likely, cetaceans existed for thousand of years who technically could still crawl on land if they needed to, but they had no such needs, and so with time all those traits atrophied. Now this is all a hypothetical scenario, I'm sure paleontologists and marine biologists can correct me, but you can see how at no point is there's a requirement for a "leap" as it were between species.

Eventually, an animal wouldn't need to go on land, so it just wouldn't, but would still have the ability to. Since the animal doesn't need to go on land, mutations that prevent it from doing so no longer have pressure against them, so those features disappear over time. There's no real specific point where one species becomes another. We just choose an animal and decide when something is sufficiently different to call it a new species

@@seanm8665 "I`m too stupid to understand, therefore it`s not true"

Evolution is gradual, it's not a ladder or a stair. It's more like a gradient of colors going from one to another to another.

@Benjamin David Lurie go get er, Benji

@Benjamin David Lurie are you actually trying to hit on someone on a youtube comment? Why. And they don't have any obligation to answer you.

@Benjamin David Lurie Me thinketh she was not interested in anyway

@Benjamin David Lurie Unimpressed with your behavior and not interested

Obviously it’s a Penny Farthing bicycle

​@@AndrewTBPwith dinosaur-hangers

Within 25 milion years as well. Which is crazy

They used to have legs

so do chickens!

alright, its day 2, gimme anither joke. you have 5 more days after this one too.

They’re still predators, just that their prey is very much smaller.