The Penguin Whale Trope in Spec Evo: Will Seabirds Replace Marine Mammals in the Future? 

Also, competiton between mammals and large seabirds doesn't mean they can't co-exist. Giant penguins and plotoprrids co-existed with whales for several tens of million years

Fantastic video. There's been a strange "backlash" against mammals in Spec Evo that part of me blames on the desire for projects not be be seen as "mundane" while another part of me sees it as a backlash against the older idea of mammals being superior to "less evolved" animals like dinosaurs.

The penguin whale was one of the two creatures from After Man I had major issues with (the other being the parachute gliding shrew). With the penguin whale you have two issues. The first being that no birds give live birth. The second being that penguins hatch covered with down and grow waterproof feathers as they mature. This two facts made the penguin whale seen especially unbelievable,

Another great video! Loved your ideas for realistic spec evo at the end!

Honestly, i think it's far more likely for loons to evolve into a fully-aquatic form than penguins, in fact, they are already kind of becoming one, since they literally cannot walk with their legs, and besides that, i think that their buoyancy and their flexible necks would help them fill a niche distinct from cetaceans and pinnipeds.

Just gonna say penguins had alot if time to become fully marine before mammals did

I guess the only exception would be seed worlds, such as serina.

40:27 Was this video a whole powerpoint presentation?! On a more serious note I love videos like these talking more in depth about specevo tropes! Much like the Unnatural History Channel you both have a number of points on how to do animal biology more accurately. Instead of following previous works like gospel (AfterMan/FisW), criticizing them is important as well. Videos like this may slow down my own specevo project, but at the same time I'm grateful for the information within them! All in all great video, I hope you get more subs, and why weren't Mosasaurs mentioned?

27:12 Actually except the Mesosaurs, there were marine Temnospondil amphibians and with new finds from Spitsbergen it appears that the Ichthyosaurs had their start in the late Permian, survived the End Permian extinction and diversified into the Triassic, so there were secondary aquatic tetrapods even back then.

Another genuinely good channel to add to the collection...

The attitude of pushing the blame onto humans for future mass extinctions kinda makes it seem like the author is dropping nuance and the potential humanity has to right our wrongs in order to present a narrative. Like, I understand if you're just interpreting it through a fictional lens, but as far as science goes, conditions are subject to change, so why is humanity getting its act together any less strange as birds replacing marine mammals for said authors?

One big problem(perhaps several) I have with this idea is that birds have small heads. It's been ingrained in them for a long time and with a small head therefore it'll be hard for them to develop the proper jaw size to compete in the sea. Birds have also evolved to be light creatures, hollow bones, wings, small heads, thin sharp beaks for most of them. They'd have to radically change to truly fill that niche which I don't think they'd be able to do honestly. I also like your view on this, marine mammals are in fact that best terrestrial tetropods to have evolved yet, should they all go extinct for some reason, i don't see why birds specifically rather than reptiles or other mammals evolving towards the sea, or perhaps fishes or cethlopods might lock that niche away from theropods. Marine mammals(especially cetaceans) are in their place of the dominance in the sea for a reason. Ig they only thing that'll truly eliminate them is either a KT level or perhaps a Permian level event, or if we want to do it easily and quickly just make humans do it, they're far more dangerous than any volcano or meteorite.

anyother trope I don't like is how they dismiss human survival or just say humans left the earth. i know it will cause debate but still

The explanation for humans becoming extinct in the end would be due to mass starvation due to collapse mass desertification, urbanization and collapse in marine food resources, and mass infertility caused by microplastics and industrial pollutants, which accumulate generationally and damage the genome. Since the human reproductive system is relatively vulnerable to pollutants compared to other animals, these other animals would survive. Another plausible possibility of human extinction cause would be particularly infectious prions(such as a human equivalent to scrapies), due to to medical research being unlikely to ever be able to treat prion diseases.

Nice video and for me It seems that the only for birds to frill the niches of marine mammals is a seedworld like Serina as their won't be any competition for the niche.

Thank you for the excellent breakdown of this complex and interesting topic. I always viewed this trope as lazy and unrealistic. Some may argue that certain sea birds already compete with whales for krill and schooling fish, they just do it in their own way: they are numerous and small, often finding the bait balls and krill swarms faster then the whales. I wonder if biomass of the seabirds is actually greater than that of the whales feeding on similar foods (I believe Darren Naish mentioned something like this on his podcast). In any case, even when birds feed on the same food as whales, they do not evolve similar features. There is also the viviparity thing. It is unprecedented in birds, and I think it will take them an unreasonably strong selection to gain it. Mammals are simply “preadapted” to becoming fully aquatic with their preexisting viviparity. Finally, I wonder how viable modern bony fishes for replacing cetaceans, especially when taken into account ability to breath air and limited endothermy in some of the modern groups.

Think evolving into seal like creatures would make more sense

Would the presence of humans really prevent biodiversity (including megafauna diversity) from bouncing back? Prehaps humanity can develop a society that can coexist with nature.

Honestly great video! I do wanna ponder fully aquatic birds in a speculative context. But on another question that you may have gotten before, given your knowledge on the topic. If your cool to respond despite it being a little unrelated. What is your thoughts on certain big spec evo projects if your knowledgable on much of them. Like Kaimere, Serina, or maybe even some of the many startups popping up. Though to get a bit more out there and general with the question. What is your thoughts on a speculative evo sonario of Mesozoic fauna [66 million years ago pre asteroid] vs Cenozoic fauna [about 1 million ish years ago. Modern but before our current extiction/the expansion of man]. As time examples as those tend to be the most common rough times where the two worlds speculatively butt heads. Either case sorry for the somewhat possibly loaded question but still loved the video, and it was quite informative in how I may go about things.

3 other extinction events larger than 4 of the big 5 occurred as far as extinction rates go, but no one mentions them. ~ 520 MYA, ~ 500MYA and ~260MYA. What is the reason(s)?

Maybe hollow bones the extreme retraction of the tail bones are part of the reason birds never managed to become major aquatic fauna.

22:04 I’m not sure this is a good argument. You could have said the same thing about mammals evolving to fill bird niches, if you lived before bats evolved. About anything, really, before they evolved to fill a new niche for the first time. Regardless, I’m sure it’s not unimportant that birds have never evolved precocious ovoviviparity, which would seem to be required for any of them to become fully aquatic. That would probably have to happen first, before any new niches open up for them.

What if fully aquatic oviviviparous sea bird or water bird decendents evolve in other places besides the oceans like in lakes, rivers or some seas independently and then, for a while, coexist with future cetaceans, pinnipeds, or any future mammal competing for the aquatic niche?

I think the largest of whales are doomed, seals could survive though. I do wonder why the Desmostylians went extinct though

I think the main thought processes behind the belief that anthropogenic climate change will cause mass extinction among all marine megafauna are: -its not only climate change but pollution and overexploitation of marine resources. The thinking is that within 200 years, the oceans will become so polluted with things such as microplastics and fertilizers, that whales and their prey species won't have enough time to adapt to them since the ocean got concentrated so rapidly with them. -overfishing of animals like sardines, herring, krill, anchovy, assuming it continues at the current rate, will cause a complete collapse in their population, due to current estimates that up to now, they have lost 40-95% of their original biomass due to human harvesting. Thus, from there comes the thinking that all whales will become extinct due to not only environmental changes but competition with humans. We see how overfishing has caused starvation among otherwise cosmpolitan whale populations, such as orcas around puget sound, due to the local extinction of salmon there. -if humans in alternate history continued industrially hunting all whales at rates of the 1930s-1940s(like 170000 humpback whales killed per year for example) for their oil and meat, one can assume, that within a century the vast majority of whales would become extinct, with the possible exception of porpoises and dolphins(though they were industrially hunted for meat too), and t6his would open niches for other animals once humans go extinct. -most whale species evolved in cooling climate(which cooled slower than the planet is warming now), so it would be hard for them to evolve in the reverse. Ocean acidication and disruption of ocean currents would cause nutrient upwelling to drastically reduce, thus dooming most baleen whales. What do you think of these factors?

What do you think of the possibility of crocodiles or monitor lizards to evolve to be semi or fully aquatic marine animals which would locally outcompete marine mammals in areas of very low ocean productivity and warm water, due to their lower metabolisms?

41:58 HEY I drew that :)

Great Video. This reminds me of Unnatural History Channels Spec Evo videos. 😄😁