Our Ancient Relative That Said 'No Thanks' To Land
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 3 ต.ค. 2022
- Around the time that some of our fishapod relatives were crawling out of the water, others were turning around and diving right back in.
Thanks to Fabrizio De Rossi for the incredible reconstruction of Qikiqtania for this episode! / artoffabricious
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References:
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Those fish were smart to go back into the water just look at their cousins now having to work 8 hours a day and dealing with things like depression
I work longer (no depression though), but I had fish for dinner. I guess I won that ancient bet of land vs water then?
Yeah but fish work 24 hours a day while pursued by sharks
There's probably a chance fish experience depression and psychotic synptoms just like us. Y'never know
The land cousins get to eat the smart fish that returned to water. Rarely the other way around.
no one said you must endure having to work 8 whole hours a day. If you do that, it must be what you want. or you would find something else to do.
I’m afraid I won’t be satisfied until paleontologists find “true” fishopods, animals whose feet are actual fish.
*me, without looking up from my book*: Mermaid
@@Coffee-hj5di Best I can do is a monkey stitched to a fish.
Why would we need paleontologists when marine biologists have observed live ones, I saw it on an Animal Planet documentary
Well, if you're willing to allow for cladistics and some tinkering, I can give you one for 5 axolotls and and some decent liquor.
I was starting to wonder if I was the only one with that image in my head...
"Many were increasingly of the opinion that they’d all made a big mistake in coming down from the trees in the first place. And some said that even the trees had been a bad move, and that no one should ever have left the oceans."
Douglas Adams
“you may be interested to know that I am singlehandedly responsible for the evolved shape of the animal you came to know in later centuries as a giraffe.”
-Ford Prefect
According to this logic, if we didn't, mermaids would be real and humans would be myths in a alternative timeline
Douglas Adams was a poet, a scientist and a prophet
@@matheussanthiago9685 and both silly and weird, my kind of guy!
This was my immediate thought watching this video, followed up by thinking about fossilised towels
The intelligent one
fr
Well no. They extinct now
@@entropy8634 Exactly.
@@entropy8634 extinct doesn't equal dumb.
@@entropy8634 extinction is the goal
Qikiqtania wakei had the right idea. Their lineage only needed to take a couple of steps onto land before realizing that this path would eventually lead to the invention of taxes. I'm proud of them and I envy them.
Heck of a long game. 350 million years is long
Big brain
I love how she said 'who we had to thank .. or blame.. for the transition to land', knowing full well that tiktaalik meme 😅
What meme?
@@emeraldcrusade5016 Apparently, there are jokes everywhere about people hating tiktaalik for being responsible for the crappy world we have now.
9:46 definitely lol
@@emeraldcrusade5016 meme about blaming them cause they evolve to us, then get to work 8 hours deal with depression etc
@@emeraldcrusade5016 some stupid fish crawled into land and now hundreds of millions of years later I'm sitting here with depression and paying taxes
Other fishes: how was land?
Qikiqtania’s ancestors: 7.8/10 too much land
igntania
I understood that reference
I read an entire book about tiktaalik and no one EVER mentioned how big it was. I have been thinking this entire time that this creature was a cute little salamander maybe a foot long maybe two feet long, but almost 9 feet long???
@Ren Short - Yes, but that's measured in fishy-feet.
But what size feet?
You can get a sense of how old it is from the fact that back then people measured in feet.
So...almost 3 meters
_Qukiqtania crawls out of the water and sees land arthropods. Slowly backs up into the water_
I had no idea Tiktaalik was so huge, I always imagined them at the size of a giant salamander at most, but I wasn't expecting an alligator sized fish
A favorite professor, in undergraduate studies, was the one who taught me this. I'm impressed with the things I never knew, and when learning about this, I continually had questions. Being to his office hours so often allowed me to notice a recent magazine cover. I thought, who knew marine reptiles likely gave birth? It makes sense. My professor allowed me to read the article, only to find he was the one to discover the fact. He was as humble as Tiktaalik. How cool would it be to be the first to be able to do a pushup? To poke your head out of water? My professor made comparative anatomy the most fascinating subject of all
@@Isis-wm4po he seems like a brilliant professor, I hope I can teach like him
What?!? It was that big?!?!
@@Indoraptor_2012 a medium alligator, not a giant one, but still
Still quite a bit, I thought it was smaller
I always kinda though tiktaalik looked like it could never actually kill anything with it's dopey looking head and jaws. Rather, the prey realize it's just been caught by the gooberiest looking salamander-fish, be like 'awh seriously, how's this happened' and just loose the will to live in a slimy embrace.
✨Amazing✨ Definitely what happened (at least in my heart)😌
yeah, but, competition is relative ;) prey get more dope to thwart more badass predators, so to paraphrase forest gump, "dopey is as dopey kills" imagine us when we've been fighting and avoiding xenomorphs for 3 or 4 million years. If that ever happened I like to imagine our descendants would look at our fastest gunslinger or martial artist as slow like a sloth.
Is it venomous? The bite seemed to immobilize it...
No, that's just shame...
I am pretty sure that Tiktaalik lived in very muddy and dark waters and was probably an ambush predator that could do with a quick burst of speed to survive, like some modern crocks or frogfish. Cool sleek aerodynamic and energetic looks are not needed for that lifestyle.
I mean if you don't have any salamanders to compete with, being a fierce fishapod is quite scary.
**Qikiqtania wakei crawling out of the sea**
**Sees 2.7m Tiktaalik**
‘Ight imma head out
Lots of space something would fill it . Life just works that way
More like aight amma head in
"too late, the idiots are already here" -Qikiqtania
Qikiqtania wakei: Lemme see what's so hyped about this "Land" thing...
*Tiktaalik raving on land
Qikiqtania wakei: Nope. *Sigh "Kids these days..."
@@swimdownx6365 I mean, there were other things living on land but, it took 3.5 billion years for life to become multicellular. It doesn't seem unreasonable that there is a development that would be advantageous and possible but, just hasn't happened in the half a billion years multicellular life has.
The idea that evolution is just winging its entire job weirdly gives me hope for my future.
It really shouldn't. Do you want your future to look like a platypus?
@@incanusolorin2607 Venomous spurs and the ability to sense magnetic fields? Kind of sounds cool.
Being the best isn't necessary from an evolutionary standpoint; you just have to survive long enough to pass your genes on.
I think this is also how bureaucracy works with forms.
@@patrickmccurry1563 Magneto and Poison Ivy's baby?
@@incanusolorin2607 yes
From a historian's point of view, this is a really cool illustration of fallacy of sorts that's really easy to fall into: In fields like national history or history of technology (and many others, I'm sure), one is tempted to only look at the path that worked, which makes it feel almost preordained:
"This modern nation state was the direct and single logical continuation of this medieval rulership".
"This idea/technology is based on this one and that one, and its advent was basically inevitable".
No, it wasn't.
The Devonian had most amounts of carbon dioxide
Same here! I'm doing my history major and this is a textbook example of how people tend to understand history as a line of logical events and with a purpose, but in reality, human history and natural history are as random as they can be. Of course everything has causes and consequences, but there is not really a future we are heading to, or a recipe that makes certain things happen or not.
""This idea/technology is based on this one and that one, and its advent was basically inevitable.
No, it wasn't."
ACKTUALLLLY, that doesn't mean it wasn't inevitable, just that it doesn't logically follow from the premise. It could be that no other path to land based megafauna was as likely, and when it comes to evolution, the simplest change from an existing organism that can provide an immediate benefit is usually the one that occurs, because simple changes are more likely.
You can say that the modern tetrapod was the logical conclusion of evolution, but only after you rule out all other possibilities.
Now regarding the recorded history of humans, it sounds like this line of thought is meant to be a direct challenge to historical materialism. Just an interesting thought, I wonder if you agree.
Agree
If you've never watched the series "Connections" with James Burke, you would LOVE it...
Well, I've always seen my life as kind of a landfish-out-of-water story.
Dolphins and whales too kinda disagree with that story 😅
Land shark
This and the "Are We all just fish?" video almost make you realize that (to paraphrase Obi-Wan Kenobi) from a certain point of view, we're all fish anyway
Some time ago, I was active in a fiction writing community. It's shocking how many well read individuals thought evolution, technology etc worked like a computer game with hardcoded, linear options to choose from and improve your species. Kind of wish this video came out for referencing before I quit that thing
So, kinda like spore?
I'm a software engineer. I was just thinking how code evolves a lot like animals, IE we take what's already there and just kind of bolt the new features onto the existing mess. 🤣
@@mallninja9805 DNA still contains at least some of the old code though
@@mallninja9805 I guess it's the same thing if you believe that life also has an intelligent designer with a specific purpose in mind
@@MrTaxiRob Exactly. That’s why it’s “bolting new code onto the existing mess.” All the old code is still there.
Could the reason Qikiqtania turned around been because a new environmental niche opened up? Like legs were developed while they were a lesser predator and constrained to hunting in shallow water, but then the larger predator died out allowing Qikiqtania to take advantage of the more bountiful open waters
this is probably exactly what happened, or alternatively the niche they were trying to fill was taken by a different species and they could no longer compete with them and had to ‘devolve’ so to speak
He went back because he didn't want his descendants to pay taxes
@@saulnavarro4730 Don't you mean descendents?
You might as well argue that Q pushed T onto land and took over its niche. Legs were probably tastier than fins.🍗
Or maybe the shallow environment had flooded and turned into more open waters over time
I think with the lungfish being our closest extant (living) non-tetrapod ("fish") relatives they definitely deserve a PBS Eons video of their own! The coelacanths are also fascinating fish and also deserve a PBS Eons video, but they split off from the tetrapods *BEFORE* the lungfish did.
Discovered in my home country!
I had no idea Tiktaalik was such a recent discovery. It was something that was in a lot of the books I read as a kid, probably only a few years after it was discovered. Really shows how important it was.
I remember one of my biology professors brought it up during a class, not very long after it was discovered. So cool and exciting.
@@slwrabbits how long ago would that be?
@@heinzarniaung2915 probably around 2009? could be pretty far off, I have a terrible sense of time. of course, this is the same class I accidentally slept through ...
I think most depictions of Tiktaalik don't do it's size justice. I've always had the impression that it was an arms length long.
Wow, I never knew that tiktaalic was so big. Just thought it was like 40-50cm or something like that.
You’re thinking of Icthyostega
It's really too bad it's so difficult to establish a sense of scale in paleoart. I actually thought it was smaller yet, like maybe 20-30 cm.
@@juanjoyaborja.3054 I used to think Tiktalik was 60-70 cm in length and Ichthyostega was a full meter long
@@juanjoyaborja.3054 no, most depictions just really do a terrible job of depicting the scale (probably because nothing we know of now is like how it was back then, but still)
These fish lived in a tidal river delta. They would get trapped in tide pools that shrank over time before the tide came back, so they had to go over the muddy land to get back into water. The ones who could do this survived.
As land fish aren’t we kinda reverse mermaids
Yup. Why do you think king triton was so pissed at Ariel falling for a mere deserter???
Since whales are sea mammals, does that make them mermaids?
@@iankrasnow5383 no
@@iankrasnow5383 manatees arr the true mermaids
No lmao. Don’t try and simplify science with laymen terms like “reverse mermaids.” We’re just fish that adapted to life on land, that’s it.
Ancient whales : "yeah those guys were onto something"
this video gives me a similar feeling to watching scishow in 2016-17. i really enjoy the energy the hosts bring to the episodes, and i enjoy the work Eons has done to set a specific familiar tone
Weren't there already giant insects inhabiting dry land at the time? I would have noped out too.
What's disturbing about trying to out-crawl a spider ancestor the size of a small continent?
Those came later. Checking around, it doesn't look like there were even any flying insects then. But there were giant so called sea scorpions. So the water wasn't a great place either.
@@patrickmccurry1563I think insects were already there, the first animals colonized land around 400-500 million years ago.
@@vanillajack5925 the giant ones that the og comment was referencing still werent, though. the carboniferous wasnt for 20+ million more years after when the Q Wakei fossil has been dated to
Insects were presumably what these guys initially came out of the water to hunt.
Can't help feeling like the ones who went back into the water ended up making the smarter decision in the long run - the really, REALLY long run!
Depends on whether they're still swimming, or breaded and deep fried.
Right now it looks like the squids and the jellyfish will inherit the ocean because we are killing too many of our cousins
@@benoitavril4806 yeah! The ones that got on land became humans... the ones in the ocean have their home destroyed by humans
in the long swim
@@malavoy1 😂
That fish was like "reject humanity, return to fish"
5:29 one of the most misunderstood parts of evolution so enthusiastically explained!
7:40 even more to the point!
Tiktaalik is one of my all-time fave Old Bois, and I love learning more about them
Tiktaalik is a Inuit word for freshwater fish that live in shallow waters.
your nth grand father😆
"This fish crawls out of the ocean; now I have to pay rent and taxes"
Qikiqtania: "not my fault."
These fins were made for walkin'
And that's just what they did
One of these days these fins were gonna walk all over earth
Couldn't get that song out of my head!
For the second line, you should've said something like, "And that is just the trurth".
Wow! I'm glad you guys came up north for this exact reseach I didn't know was in my home territory of Nunavut. We have a lot of space here and not many people with the proper research capabilities to trace fossils and artifacts as much around here in the north. It was exciting to watch and learn from you guys! Big thanks PBS Eons!!
I'm reminded of a tiktaalik meme....
"If you see a Horrid Beast evolving, *PUSH IT BACK IN*"
Hello my fellow landfish
You are our leader now.
presenter has the coolest vibe as they explain; 10/10
It would be a bit different for the channel, but I'd love to hear more about how the researchers interact with the native communities to get the permission or support to their research in the field, and about search campaigns in general.
honestly it makes a lot of sense for something bearing that low-belly body plan to have an equally easy time developing in either direction without risking too much, especially that early on.
Tiktaalik: Let's check out this land thing
Qikoqtania: RETURN TO FISH
Awesome. It is true that in school we are usually given that idea of evolutionary progression from one form to the next, but it is really just change based on the environment and competition, isolation, etc. and whatever is currently available.
This is the only channel where I regularly rewind to double, sometimes tripple, check if I heard things right and pay really close attention. I love this stuff. If I had somehing like this 15 yrs earlier in my life I'd be somewhere else right now doing something completely differrent
I just watched your inner fish in my anthropology class. It’s a documentary about Neil shubin and his trams expedition in the Arctic and their discovery of tiktaalik
Ostriches can probably feel a kinship bond with the way of thinking of these little fellas.
Shout-out to progressive metal guitarist Charlie Griffiths and his album Tiktaalika for getting me to read about this guy earlier this year.
Wasn't expecting my existence as a land fish to be validated today but I'm here for it.
I'm with these guys. I want to evolve back to water-dwelling too. Dry land sucks.
It's so cool thinking about how branchy evolution can be. Seeing this as yet another example just makes me appreciate how crazy long the Earth is, and the amount of time life has been around, constantly evolving. And creatures like these were all just living their lives, for all this time.
Thnx for all your work!
YEEESSS IM SO HAPPY YOU MADE A VIDEO ON QIKIQTANIA!!!!!!!!! SUCH a fascinating fish but it doesn't seem to see all that well known :( i really hope you make more videos about the fish - tetrapod transition!!!
I LOVE fishapods like Tiktaalik & Qikiqtania, and Neil Shubin, who I ACTUALLY heard speak at Ohio University!!! 😍😊
Keep up the great work, I love natural history and this show!
Really fantastic video! I love learning about these things, plus y’all make it so much fun to watch!
Scientifically accurate and valid: *Mermaids*
Thanks for the video!!
Could you imagine seeing Arthropods in the water and being like "Yea, I'll just go back to the water and take my chances!"
I love the little bloopers at the end!
You guys are great!
Loved the presentation, very open minded analysis and truth. Thanks for the land acknowledgement too. I very much appreciated the way evolution was described, as a non-linear process. Decolonising natural history and other domains is important. Wliwni thank you 💜💚
We think of these fish as living in shallow, murky waters. As I watched a video on rivers drying up, the pretty, narrow, ray-finned fish seemed to be the ones that were dead, while the ones that could still flop on their ventrals were surviving better. It makes sense that this proto-tetrapod body shape would also do well in seasonal bodies of water, much like lungfish and catfish do today.
Always makes my day when I see a new upload
This is a great correction of the common misconception that evolution is a linear process while also being a cool paleontological discovery in its own right. Adding Qikiqtania to my personal dictionary.
This is very interesting. And can be quite confusing!!! Thank you Michelle for the great explanations!!! Also, Michelle is looking AWESOME!!!!!! Thank you!!!
Great feat. That got me. Loved this one.
This video was incredible. Thanks!
This was such an interesting look at the early evolution of tetrapods, and of the complexity and diversity of evolution. I’m sure the thought that 98% of species have gone extinct already is a big underestimate.
That one mermaid documentary be like:
I remember that one
I had the amazing opportunity to see the original mold of Tiktaalik in person because Ted Daeschler worked in the same museum my now fiancé did. He was so cool
Нарешті! Я ледве дочекався.
Дякую за цікавий випуск!
Best video I've seen👏👏 I been wanting to know where dragon bichir came from for some long this so cool
What is dragon bichir
@@masonloeffler8064 a pet fish
Any plans on doing a gecko special? I've been becoming a bit obsessed with them of late and it turns out they are an extremely complex branch on the reptile tree that they kind of have all to themselves.
No
Gotta say, I was pretty critical of Michelle when she first started hosting, but she is knocking it out of the park now. Great video, and keep up the great work
This is the best channel on TH-cam. Change my mind.
We could likely guess this would happen from the numerous terrestrial vertebrates that have returned to the water from their ancestors lived on land. That there's irony too that some like amphibians have to return to the water to reproduce, while others, ex: penguins, sea turtles, seals, sea lions, etc. have to return to the land to reproduce.
Not a terrible choice, all things considered 🐟 💨 🌊 🏝
Tiktaalik: ARE YOU READY TO VENTURE ON LAND A MAKE A NEW EVELUTUANARY BREAK TROUGH BROTHER !
Qikiqtanis: Nope
*makes back flip back into the ocean*
Tikraalik: I:
So happy to see this acknowledgement 9:04!
"Piscapods" sounds better to me than "Fishapods"!
Excellent video.
I had no idea Tiktaalik was so big! 😱 I always pictured it as big as like an iguana
I was just thinking about how I need to find this out, you read my mind!!!
Idk why, but it just cracks me up thinking about an ancient fishopod that evolved over (possibly millions of) years to get onto land, then just NOPED right back into the water
Whoa, this is like the most OG form of “return to monke”
“No thanks, I choose life.” - Sid
Why did it "return" to deeper waters? I can imagine two reasons: There was a minor extinction that killed off some major predators, making it safer to live in this niche, or open freshwater areas were simply not that explored by fishes yet. The other reason is that the larger predators were so successful as shallow water hunters thanks to their fins that deeper waters was a safer place to live than shallow water.
Prey evolves legs to escape predator. Predator evolves legs to hunt prey. Prey evolves fins to escape predator.
Woman inherits the earth? 😂
Love the episode! Thanks Eons :)
underwater average fish: hey Qikiqtania you said you're going to the land
Qikiqtania: no, the sun is a deadly lazer
Thank you!
Bless the writers for these great puns. :D
What if the two populations were originally together and were separated by the slow rise of a land barrier between them that forced one population out to sea while the other one was isolated in a lake or pond of sorts and the result is that the group that was in the lake was exposed to slowly reducing water content or size of the lake and slowly over time they eventually become amphibians and progress from there. Just an interesting idea that makes sense to me.
what if it was more of based on mating habits. perhaps the development for land was to lay eggs in safer shallows or in lake inland, however the reverting to fins maybe a group that found waterways to swim upstream like salmon and thus need the fins more than the ability to go on land. depending on how widespread the species was different areas could have work towards where it was safest to lay eggs and the route to get there.
The literal definition as:
Abandon land, return to sea
"thank or blame" loved it.
Pretty much like the fish version of tree-kangaroo evolution. Bunch of ground-dwelling wallabies develop climbing adaptations and become tree-kangaroos, but one member (the dingiso of New Guinea) turns around and reverts to a ground-dwelling lifestyle while retaining the anatomy of its arboreal ancestors.
A fascinating subject and potentially an extremely complex one:
Yes, while the 'fishapods' we know are considered our ancestors (this may be true) it's just as likely they are illustrative cousins only. There are pretty 'advanced' seeming tetrapod tracks older than any 'fishapod' we have found but no seeming tetrapod to match them. So what is going on..?
a) Our 'fishapods' are our ancestors but these mysterious tetrapods are an earlier venture on to land that didn't work out for some reason.
If so having gotten to an 'advanced' state what finished them off and why? Why not 'us' later on? What changed? Chance..?
b) The mysterious tetrapods are our ancestors and the 'fishapods' were a convergent migration on to land that went nowhere.
If multiple vertebrate lineages moved on to land that would be a surprise and require something of a rethink.
c) -Land animals as we know them radiated from multiple sojourns on to land- Not true, all modern tetrapods are known to be one group.
But has that always been true? If not true, when did out 'distant leggy cousins' die out and why? Are we aware of any potential candidates?
d) We've got our dates wrong and these mysterious tetrapod tracks aren't that mysterious at all.
A few million years younger than the likes of Tiktaalik there would be no mystery.
...all these questions are unanswered besides the subject of early tetrapod evolution being an utterly fascinating one. Whatever your branch of science it's always a journey of discovery and there's no sign of us running out of even fundamental things to discover any time soon.
Here's a thought:
Apart from five digits not being the norm early on the tetrapod limb as we know it comes in only one version. Either there really has only been one venture on to land by vertebrates (so what's going on?) or the evolutionary pressures that have resulted in 'our' limbs very strongly constrain the design indeed, but not necessarily the number of digits - if so, why? It's certainly not obvious.
That last outtake "now I have to pay rent & taxes".. SUCH A MOOD, TBH
1:25 "and nothing about it is inevitable"
me: *gestures at Crabs*
?! :D
Lol!! 🦀
Tiktaalik is actually from Inuit and means "the large fish"
Not a very creative name but not wrong.
@@Acridotheresfuscus lol we also call clams tupkiyuqkuk meaning "mouth creature" and crabs "tuaqiitmiqkak" meaning agressive water spider
@@kaniq6120 I mean y'all are not wrong that's what they look like lol
At least it was polite enough to say “thanks”
When will the podcast continue? I love it and can't wait!!
Thanks for the meme at the end! :D