You can eat nothing but tree sap with no water or anything else and be perfectly healthy either those trees are made of pure nutrition or we are very good at eating wood
Regarding bio diversity that feels random and disjointed form itself, planet went through a mass extinction event, and arguably is still going through it, so species that are here are most likely the best suited to propagate before Khara gets to them. I know it's a copout, but we're analizing an ecosystem that it slowly but surely dying off. Perhaps at one point seas were populated enough for all the megafauna to prosper, but right now we have two seadragons who apparently are feasting on last dozen of reapers. If we were to crash here three months later, our biggest adversary would be a lonelty crabsquid with survivor's guilt We've managed to save peepers and bladderfish, but even with Kharaa gone, reapers and sea dragons are going to be extinct within couple years or so at best
It's really sad honestly, I can only imagine how amazing the creatures in this game would be if they weren't actively being destroyed by a bacteria so deadly it's wiped out trillions of (presumably) human-like creatures. It's even worse imagining how many PLANETS worth of life were wiped out by such a disease, it's horrifying how adaptable it is since it presumably affected EVERYONE, even algae or microscopic life, as nothing has evolved in the void in the thousand years since the disease first got out. The worst part is I highly doubt it was natural, the extraordinary range of its hosts is far too much for any non-engineered pathogen. The ability to affect a completely new species to the ecosystem (humans) so quickly as to cause death within a few WEEKS makes me believe it's a bio-weapon, making it all the more sad what happened.
@@thunderspark1536 The architects were the species most affected by the disease. In the first game, everything that leads to the cure was locked down and researched by them, without much success, because they couldn't get momma Emperor to hatch her eggs, but they had everything set and ready to fix things. In the second game we find out that AL-AN, or Alan was the one that released the bacteria and killed, presumably, his entire species, accidentally. What I don't understand is, in the first game, the cure came ONLY from the poop of the baby Sea Emperors, but in the second game, the cure is simply the recipe of 2 ingredients, that was easily discovered by a single, human researcher. I can't tell if the architects were actually very dumb, because making a cure was so much easier but yet they spent thousands of years trying to find out what a single human did in a few months, or I am missing some important lore that explains this massive plot hole.
@@rigel8755 I think partly it's a matter of the Architects having no idea what the cure would look like, versus Sam just needing to access the Alterra files on the exact chemical composition of the cure and finding the materials that can provide the building blocks for that structure. Like trying to construct a building with no idea what the final building should even look like compared to having a nice blueprint to follow. Ultimately though I do agree that lore-wise it's way too easy to figure out and craft, and it would make more sense for Sam to have stolen some kind of emergency reserve that Alterra had stashed. Unfortunately the cure _needed_ to be craftable by the player for the sake of fun, as without a craftable cure item it would be possible for players to softlock themselves out of completing that side quest by losing the original.
A great example of that is probably the bone shark. When you see it in subnautica, you register it's large but not exactly how large compared to you even close up. Damn thing is nearly twice your size when you look at a scaling chart, but it doesn't look that way due to the first person view
When you play in VR you realise how everything is huge. Even the mushrooms you get on the ground are very, very big. Clearly the game scale was exagerated, but in VR it's incredible.
Lorewise, the reason for most of the creatures being unrelated to one another is because of a mass extinction event that happened when Kharaa broke lose.
it would be great to then see the far more interesting interspecies interactions (symbiosis, parasitism, whos outcompeting what in a niche etc) since survival of such has plenty of room for cooperative outcomes
@@isaac-v4n9d for sure. like the peeper interaction there is great. apparently on the wiki it days there is actual practical use for them to cure other creatures but ive not once seen another person do that so i should try sometime. but while awesome, its meant to be noticed after the very end, unless youve been spoiled (in which you wonder why it doesnt work on yourself/waste time doing that)
I have a few counterpoints: Reaper - love the mandibles, but over the years I’ve come to the opinion that they should be tucked in on the sides of the reaper’s head. It reduces drag while swimming and allows them to grab prey with a faster, smoother movement. Lava Zone - surprisingly, scientists have found a microbiome deep beneath the Earth’s surface, where they survive in extreme temperatures with no light, virtually no oxygen, almost none of the things we usually expect for life to exist. Sure, it’s only a microbiome, but it’s evidence that life finds a way. Crashfish - also surprisingly, there is a species of ant whose workers literally explode on intruders, covering them in a sticky, corrosive substance. Phylogenetic tree - unsurprising, given a mass extinction event only 1,000 years ago. The few species that survived could have almost nothing in common.
Thanks for this! As for the reaper I agree, however maybe not enough time has passed for that feature to have evolved. For the lava zone, the hydrothermal vents at the bottom of the ocean don’t support creatures nearly as large, at least not ones that are entirely dependent on them. The worker ants (and bees) that kill themselves to ward off intruders do not reproduce and therefore do not need to value their own lives; only the queen reproduces. And for the phylogenetic tree, I entirely overlooked the mass extinction event 😅
I look at the crashfish almost similarly to creatures from the alien franchise. I think the most logical explanation is that the egg they come out of is another living organism that possibly produces the fish and passively produces a kind of sulfer. On the topic of the crashfish commiting violent acts of terrorism against the player, I have no idea.
That’s definitely a good hypothesis; bees and some ants essentially commit suicide to protect their nest, however the members of the nest that do are non-reproducing. If the crash fish itself doesn’t reproduce then it makes way more sense
Could be that the crash fish is ment to spread *organic matter* across the insides of the caves they live in to give the host plant a nutrient burst. Like super aggressive composting
Just read the entry on crashfish and the plants they are in; it is clearly stated that these are two creatures living in symbiosis. It also states that the fish is the one producing sulfur: "The sulfur plant has evolved to feed on sulfuric compounds secreted by the crashfish, which makes its nest within its leaves."
I still think it’s extremely hard to believe any animal would evolve to make a loud, screeching “I’m going to die and my children will be unprotected” sound when defending their nest
@@scottcaramel maybe other fish know that this sound equals total death for them, so when they hear it, they always try to avoid the crashfish and their nests? In Subnautica, you can hear this sound before the fish goes for you. This is a warning: don't come any closer to my nest or you will be annihilated.
To me it’s clear that the Stalker has evolved from a terrestrial ancestor. It has a body plan different from mostly anything else in the crater, it’s snout is like a crocodilian’s (which might suggest a past lifestyle of amphibiousness), and it has a fully terrestrial close relative.
The terrestrial ancestor is certainly interesting, it does however raise the question as to how it got from 4546B’s polar regions to the tropics through the thousands of miles of open water. Maybe it was the aliens lol
@ yeah that’s what I realised as I was writing my comment. Maybe the stalker is a smaller, more shallows based off-shoot of a much larger pelagic relative. Or maybe it was the Precursors, perhaps they transplanted them from the pole and kept them as pets or for some other use. But yeah you’re right, it isn’t a perfect hypothesis.
@@DiscoverWithDeLo Considering the fact the planet is almost entirely ocean, Its not unrealistic migrations happen across it. And why would leviathans go near the surface? Ghost Leviathans might camp the edge of the crater but we do not know how long they have done this, or if the emperor leviathans spread life as needed, or if there used to be more competition and thus more likely to have opportunities to get through the ocean but now without as much competition its easier to get through. Any of those are explanations, imho.
@@DiscoverWithDeLo In lore most of life just extinct, could be another stalker ,like orca, that extinct so we just cant see him. Its come from polar region and adapted to this ecosystem (stalker what we all know and love)
hey i'm on my second year of oceanography right now, this was an extremely cool recomendation from youtube, never really stopped to have a look back in the game with the knowledge i gained during the past 2 years
There is actually an in-universe explanation for the evolution of the variance in eye numbers! Biters and Blighters are both related to the fossil of Specimen Theta in one of the Lost River precursor labs, which has four eyes. Specimen Theta also has armor plating, giving a connection to Sand Sharks that also possess four eyes, and Bonesharks which must have broken off earlier in the evolutionary tree as they only possess two eyes. Following the Sand Shark connection we can find that Specimen Theta is a VERY distant relative of Rockgrubs, as the PDA notes in the Rockgrub's entry that it is likely a distant relative of the Sand Shark. While this doesn't give an exact reason for why the number of eyes varies so much, there is at least a clear evolutional progression shown here. Additionally, if counting Below Zero, the Glow Whales have a pair of 'pseudoeyes' behind their main ones that seem to provide a connection to this family as well.
One explanation to the lack of links in the Genetic Tree could be the Kharaa Bacterium wiping out most of the present animal's relatives. It's explained in at least a couple logs or entries that the biodiversity is preculiar.
Underrated creator, congratulations, DeLo, this video was amazing, I really liked it, maybe other videos with deeper analysis would make a great series? Regardless, keep up the good work.
Thanks! While I don’t necessarily have plans for more subnautica videos until the sequel, I do intend on making videos regarding tales of our own seas and humans pioneering the depths
thank you for this video, it's really fascinating to hear a biologist's perspective on this! regarding the gigantism of the leviathans, planet 4546B is smaller than earth and because of that it's gravity force must be weaker than earth's, maybe that's why they were able to evolve to be so giant? you know, their bones are less dense than ours, maybe it does affect their size as well? (im not a scientist, just a space nerd, so apologies if im spitting nonsense 😭)
Not nonsense at all; Earth’s gravity does indeed limit the size of animals here because if they got too big, their organs would crush themselves. 4546B being smaller (and lower gravity) means things can grow bigger than on Earth.
When I saw this video on my page and watched it, I thought about checking out the comment section, then I realized how underrated you are. It’s the first time I saw Your video and thought you had at least 50 thousand subscribers. I love the way you describe these things and would love to see more, especially more subnautica but also more games! Love your work, I hope you get recognized more because you deserve it, good luck!
Great Work DeLo! I've loved Subnautica for ages and kinda wondered if its ecosystem was at all viable and yeah, the leviathans kinda ruin the Ecosystem balance. The one thing about the ghost leviathans that i always felt was that their territory was more of a residence in the abyss with a mate and don't want contending ghost leviathans to be in the area. Given that ghost leviathans are the only thing that willingly enters the abyss probably leads to a case of mistaken identity where the ghost leviathans mistake the player for a newborn Ghost Leviathan and given the already scarce food the pre-existing Ghosts don't want intruders using up their resources. Reaper leviathans are way too abundant for their lifestyle tho. [With mistaken identity i assume that ghost leviathans have deteriorated eyesight from their habitat and are thus using some sort of vibrational or electric field detection like sharks have, leading to judge based on size more than physical appearance] But that's just the ramblings of someone with 9-10th grade biology experience, lmk what you think.
I love these kinds of videos that relate fictional biology/technology/geology/politics/etc to actual feasible real life counterparts and possibilities...
the reason the sea dragon "breathes" fire, is that it swallows the molten rock, which it can do because its body is a certain percent made up of inanimate materials from eating said molten rock, this means it is just spitting out molten rock it has eaten at you. as a bonus it is also immune the the effects of your thermal knife, seeing as it live in an active volcano. this fire immunity is a part of all the creatures in the lava zone, from the magma rays and lava larva, to the lava lizards, they all evolved to has heat resistance due to the fact that they live in an active volcano. they have such strong immunity that the aforementioned lava lizards can burrow into magma to give themselves amour and they can shoot magma similar to the sea dragon. another note is that deep sea gigantism exists so that creatures that live deep underwater grow to be massive to conserve energy due to cold conditions and many other reasons. the electrical charge of the ampeel and crabsquid seems to be a relatively common gene, seeing as multiple creatures have it, example is the lava larva and how it saps your power on your PRAWN suit or cyclops. the ghost leviathans aren't just filter feeders, they will eat anything they they can find, they are highly territorial because of they lives living in the crater. the giant skull you find in the lost river is called the gargantuan leviathan and literally could keep growing forever, they only lived in the void during adulthood as they grew to be over 1.5km long. the skeleton you find in the lost river is only 1 third of its size and the caves likely formed around the skeleton, its dead body literally influenced the planets geography,
1: not even deep sea gigantism can explain the sizes of most of the leviathans, and certain ones like the reaper and reefback live in relatively shallow waters 2: like they said in the video, realistically ghost leviathans cannot be territorial because theyre so massive that they need to constantly be searching for more plankton instead of wasting valuable energy on other things 3: the gargantuan leviathan does not keep growing forever, that is *never* stated in game. check the skeletons pda entry on the wiki
@@R4N5OM I have read through the garg PDA and it even though it isn't explicitly says they don't stop growing, it is heavily hinted at that and the devs have mentioned it. either early in growth while they are still young or starve as adults because they don't have a good enough food source due to their size. as for the territorial nature of the ghost leviathan, they are trying to eat anything that will fit in their mouth, that might look like it being territorial to us and our PDA where they are really attacking anything that moves. as for reapers living in shallow waters, the only relatively shallow place we find the in is the crash zone, and they most likely migrated there because of the sound of the ship crashing, we otherwise find reapers in 300m depth areas like the mountains and dunes. as for reefbacks, they are in 150m-200m deep waters and probably hatch even deeper than that.
@bobbycarnie2993 1: how is it heavily hinted at and when did the devs mention it 2: the thing is, the ghost leviathan hunting anything whatsoever costs much more energy than if it just continued swimming around and eating plankton 3: that is why i said "relatively" deep, and there are many more creatures that are deeper and nowhere near as big sorry if i seem like im taking this all too seriously btw im just interested in spec evo also i personally dislike how so many people believe things about the garg leviathan that straight up arent true because of confusion (probably mainly caused by the non-canon mod even though it IS cool just not realistic whatsoever)
@@R4N5OM if the mod your talking about is the return of the ancients, then I'm sorry to say, but almost everything they added was either cut content or canonically in the game lorewise
@@R4N5OM also i watch subnautica youtuber who have inside information from devs that they share on their channel. people like the last bacon, aci, and Anthomnia. their videos are the main source of my evidence and they are pretty credible as they get a lot of their info by reading through every PDA log and actually asking developers
LOVE your content! A humble idea, you could make a mini series talking about all the life forms and how marine biology and science “apply” or act etc, pleaseeee
My man, I do not know where you have been during all the other internet content, but BY FAR, you are the best creator for genuine, wholesome connection and communication, I love the way you present and would love to see more!
The sand shark, bone shark, blighter, biter and the fossilized fish in the precursor lab all seem to be related in some way in my opinion, general body structure, the ribcages and armours seem to be similar for sand sharks, vone sharks and the fossil They probably look so different because of the kara virus causing rapid evolution as creatures die very quickly meaning they have to adapt a lot faster
loved this, very high quality content from such a small channel, defintely earned a subscriber, maybe consider doing a video like this for below zero? would love to see that
you gained a subscriber, your content is pretty good! hope you do more like these adding some thoughts to this comment, i wonder if one should also account for the lack of variation of many of the species(like the ej that only the peeper and boomerang have a variant) because of the Kharaa bacterium, it was said in one of the entries that it killed off a lot of biodiversity before we came here if i remember correctly, the ecosystem didnt collapse thanks to the enzyme infused peepers, but it still took a hit. so that could be a reason(besides normal game limitations)
Your comments on the environment are very interesting! It got me wondering if there’s a possible explanation for it, and there’s actually a really good explanation: the sea emperor life cycle. Eggs on 4545B are unique in that they’re largely dormant until desirable hatching conditions develop in the local environment. Sea emperor eggs, most uniquely, require an enzyme developed from five unique flora distributed across five unique biomes. Since we know the sea emperors are intelligent, I think it no small stretch to suggest that the crater was cultivated, by sea emperors, to be an ideal breeding ground.
One of my favorite games. I have hundreds of hours in Subnautica, and still pick it up again every few months. Thanks for this educated take on the realism factor of the biological aspects!
At a first look i thought you have,like,10k subs at least,but 300? damn. like,this isnt much less quality than most people with 10k,and even 100k-1m have. great video,earned a sub.
The ghost leviathan being not territorrial I think is probably ok. 1/2 of the ghost leviathan body is lightweight translucent tissue, so it wouldn't be as heavy as you would think. And as for food, I when it chases something, it would be moving more than it normally would, getting even more plankton; and since the void is of low population, ghost leviathans most likely want to be one of the only creatures there. The reason for protecting the void is most likely to prevent parasites traveling in from other creatures and reproducing there, because they could be very vulnerable to parasites due to their large size. Another thing to consider is maybe the ghost leviathans don't want competition for food. as too many other filter feeders may need to lack of microbial reproduction, as groups are being depleted. This isn't to change your veiw, just a curious speculation on how Subnautica may be more accurate than you think :D
Super nice video, I had the same thought process! I studied Biology and I also thought that there isn't enough biomass (food) around to sustain so many leviathan class predators. 😉😊
The coolest and most scary thing about the biology trivia on this game is that the Reaper Leviathan has echolocation. If you can hear him, he knows exactly where you are. Now sum this up with how terrifying his encounters are. That's unnerving but doesn't make much sense, as he only goes after you if you enter his AI space enclosure, and he gives up really quick on eating you, if you get out of his reach. Also his size, he's too large to only care about a few hundred cubic meters of territory, litterally. There are mods which remove that completely, and if you hear him he WILL follow you throughout the whole map, which essentially breaks the game, and the experience, but it's what would be "realistic", for him.
For some reason it helps me suspend my disbelief with things like the numerous and distinct biomes when the game itself acknowledges that it's kind of weird. I guess because that's like the creators are saying they _know_ it's weird and are knowingly making an artistic and/or fun choice, rather than just wondering whether it was a goof? Although on the topic of the biome density, I believe the databank entry underestimates the diameter and it's closer to 3-4km. So the number of biomes is definitely still kind of ridiculous, but not _quite_ as ridiculous as the PDA would have you believe.
also, while it's not believable life would survive with such a top-heavy food chain, 1: the apex predators, specifically the sea dragons, are starting to die out, and 2: when the bacteria first broke out, a large amount of the ecosystem died out and went extinct.
The Sea Dragon is able to breathe fire as the PDA says it consumes molten rock, and it fires that at things. Technically not breathing fire. Just slightly believable.
btw the gargantuan leviathan went extinct thousands of years ago, likely due to its food going extinct also this mass extinction event is likely why a phylogenetic tree is so hard to make
As with most video games, I imagine that in-universe the area represented by the map is actually much larger, and simply shrunk down for the sake of playability; this would explain the proximity of the different bioregions to each other, and would be more in-line with what we see from space
Oh yeah I mean the GTA V map is only like 30 square km but it’s very clearly meant to represent a much larger world. This video was just me entering my 🤓🤓🤓 arc
You mentioned the body plan similarities between the Sea Dragon, Sea Emperor, and Cuddlefish… but did you notice the Reefbacks also belong to that group? They have vestigial "paddles" on their undersides, resembling those of the Sea Emperor. The Sea Emperors also cultivate a special symbiotic ecosystem around themselves like the Reefbacks do, and both species have forms of long-distance social communication. If I had to guess, I would say the Sea Emperors are more closely related to Reefbacks than they are to Sea Dragon Leviathans.
I have no idea how sea dragons go so fast despite having frog hands and squid tentacles (but no squid jets???) also I love how depth and pressure doesn't affect the player at all haha
Funny you should mention that, I’m actually working on a 5 part series right now about depth and pressure irl and how we got to challenger deep! The first episode will (ideally) go live on Saturday morning
My biggest nitpick is the Sea Dragon leviathan. And not even due to its size or fire breath. Its breast stroke swimming just looks too humanoid for my sense of spec evo. Still the best spec evo ecosystem in any game I've played besides maybe Monster Hunter.
I mean a big reason the creatures seem like one offs could be because the bacteria tanked the larger biodiversity of the area and the reason that there are so many big creatures without the proper things to keep them alive could be from this same reason, same with the ghost leviathan, it's aggression could be because of a creature that just didn't survive the bacteria and they had no reason to lose that trait. I mean these are all just thoughts and what if's about it. Love the video and god I love this game.
I love this video, I do have to say a lot of the time their explanation for why some creatures are weird unrelared one-offs is because they're adapted to a weird relatively newly opened niche, sincw the game is set after a relatively recent extinction event. It's not an explanation that makes a lot of sense but I appreciate that it's there. I also appreciate that a lot of the species ARE related and although sometimes the relations again makes no sense and is purely morphological, it's there and is often explained, like how rhe jellyshroom cave allegedly got separated for a period of time which is what lead to pink peepers (oculi) Another thing is, i agree the gargantuan leviathan didnt exist in this ecosystem, the lost river ecosystem formed around its corpse, kinda like a whale fall but of a creature so large that it formed an entire ecosystem. Now whether that ecosystem could survive 3 million years + an extinction event is more questionable, but yeah rhw lost river as far as im aware should be rhe oldest ecosystem in the game.
if you want to go all marine biologist "sea&me" here on youtube is another marine biologist that loves the game and working with her might give suggestions more weight. I'd suggest reaching out to her.
Please do more! Love to hear more, biology is so interesting The island to Atoll part got me like so shook. I’m playing the game and getting too much close calls with Leviathans 😭 I got chased by like two crabsquids How would you find a logical explanation to the void considering irl stuff, like realistically there’s no way the entirety of the planet can be that deep without life and stuff? Right?
Here on Earth, the average depth of the ocean is about 2 miles (more than 3000 m!), so most of the planet being extremely deep is very realistic. As for only supporting planktonic and leviathan class life, I chalk that one up to the PDA having a limited data set, as we are only on the edge of the crater and not able to examine the entire ocean of 4546B.
I love the video, and perspective. I do have to mention a covieat though. You can't just talk about the biolife without going into the lore. Mostly because Subnautica cimbines the two wonderfully. As others mentioned to you. The kharar mass extinction event is on going event spanning for who knows how long. We just know that it has gone on for so long that like our worlds mass extinction events. Life has nearly gone out. Its a close representation to what we see in actual fossil records. The difference is that, kharar is very clearly much more recent and old, because it is foreign to the world. The previous people on the planet were not from there either. They brought it with them to study it. The disease would eventually kill them all. With a the most recent ruins from them. Being the gun that would shoot spacecraft out of the sky. The planet used to have so much more life. It literally is a dying a world at first. Below Zero showed us that life still found some way, and the another?... I might be miss remembering that. But the kharar itself is an extremophile. I don't think that term serves it justice. Is there a word for a multi world ending space pathogen? What everything we deal with as the player is stressed to be the left overs. The damage was so extensive that the ecological dead zone is very much implied to very UNNATURAL. That even assuming we will even ever have a chance to learn what is down there. Or if there is anything even left. This is also an alien planet to us. The microscopic life outside of the kharar is basically unknown to us. But I acknowledge your video is not a lore video. Its a perspective and analysis video. Entertainment Writing too. And for that. It does its job wonderfully. The given knowledge on the subject can even help inspire new lifeforms in future Subnautica games if we get any. Besides the lore reasons of explaining why some of the things seem weird. Which is something disconnecting from the analysis does a disservice to the games efforts. Two other issues exist. Don't say something is completely impossible. Because you can stand on the grounds for being wrong. And the diversity we do see is... Actually smaller compared to real life. Bio diversity in real life is explosively larger than what we see in the game. Im not holding this against you. Biology of any kind doesn't fully delve into ecology, and paleontology, or the rest of thw long list of other ologies (there is way to many to list, and this post is long enough.) I'm not saying your perspective isn't important. But its not the full picture. You are just one piece to a puzzle. I would like to see future videos of marine botanist, and marine ecologist would have say. And what would a paleontologist for plants and animals have to add. You have a potential real good series of videos to latch onto here.
about the tectonic activity I see your point, but from the same shot (rocket launch) we could see oceanic ridge (lighter blue), which would suggest tectonic activity
personally i think the reason the leviathans are all so big and territorial is they have some bizarre sci fi secondary method of gaining energy that simply doesn't exist in real life like the sea dragon somehow evolved a biological thermal reactor and the ghost leviathan somehow has biological solar panels or an alternative explanation is due to the simply obtuse rate at which the fish can reproduce and grow to maturity if you put them in a containment module you could argue that the leviathans can afford to be big and territorial since food replenishes itself so quickly we just dont get to see it
I wholeheartedly agree with the added colossal creatures. Having the Leviathan was enough, but they had to keep scaling up to add horror and challenge. Considering the Reaper Leviathans already have a large health pool, and aren’t easy to kill without cheesing methods, they should have remained the only largest creature, or add one more larger than them but far less numerous. Even the Ghost Leviathans was unnecessary. Wouldn’t reusing a Reaper have served the same purpose? They clearly want to keep introducing new designs, and up the stakes each time. It gets to a point, for me personally, that it becomes overwhelming to even bother another playthrough. Surely there are other ways they could have increased the challenge as you improved and acquires more equipment/vessels.
genuine question why couldnt anything survive in the lava zone when we have those sharks and fish that live in a volcanic crater on earth in acidic water?
Thank you for the question! The sharks and fish on Earth that are found around the volcanic crater (known as Kavachi) are only in there when the volcano is not actively erupting. While it is an active volcano, unlike hydrothermal vents it is not exuding superheated rock from deep within the Earth 100% of the time, allowing animals to exist inside during those times. There is currently research being done to learn how exactly the fish are able to detect when an eruption is going to occur and evacuate. The lava zone of Subnautica appears to have lava in constant contact with the water (another puzzling feature), and due to the assumed lack of water circulation with the surface (being in a several kilometer long underwater cave) the water within the lava zone should have boiled over millennia ago. Kavachi sits less than 100 feet from the ocean’s surface and can readily cycle through the water around it
I definitely could give it my best shot; evolutionary biology isn’t my area of expertise, but the main problem is that most of the animals that originally lived in the crater went extinct during a recent extinction event which I regrettably forgot about in the making of this video 😅
Speaking of the gargantuan leviathan…. Lore suggests it wasn’t native to the lost river but rather the skeleton was there before the lost river and the cavern simply closed in around it. So tectonic plates might still be present…
Yeah I mean the gargantuan leviathan still seems way too big to me simply because the weight of its own body would crush itself, as for the tectonic plates it could be that the garg died on top of the crater before it erupted again, sealing it in the river without the need of shifting plates
Funny you should say that small animals can hide in crevises from reapers becouse my current strategy for crash zone looting is zipping around with my glider and hiding behind/under the rubble when i get attacked and it works like a charm
Is it feasible that 4546b simply has much less active plate tectonics in comparison to Earth rather than completely lacking them? The presence of the giant mountains in Below Zero seems to suggest that at least *some* tectonic activity has taken place in the area
For the really high biome concentration, could it be like New Caledonia in Pacific? With a great variation in soil composition making different area more or less agressive/toxic for some being forcing evolution on small spaces? I'm not a profesionnal, I just have a licence in biology making me not specific, especially in marine ecology
It’s true that New Caledonia is considered a biodiversity hotspot, however those endemic species are on land, making it harder for the plants to spread than in the water. In the ocean, currents are able to carry organisms and substrate alike to make large areas more or less homogenous. It is a very interesting hypothesis however!
@@DiscoverWithDeLo I see thanks for anwsering. I did'nt had marine ecology in my cursus in college (I took science of life and biology spé human biology). I have another question now: the substrate carried by currents would be only on a relative surface level? We don't see sedimentary layers/stones [excuse my poor english] but only lava activity (including some pillowlava) leading me to think the activity looks "recent" [geological ages speaking] so with maybe an high tectonic plate activity and low volcanic on this hotspot making the next island of this hotspot really far or closer but too deep underwater.
About the crash fish, could it be a symbiose (i think its the term to say 2 species mutualy help each other) between it and the plant? Like the plant give the crash fish the nutriments to give birth to his babies in the plant but the crash fish sacrifice itself fo protect the plant also creating space for the mext generation to grow. Maybe the plant implants seeds in the fish so when it explode, it would spread the plant seeds! Between, sorry for my bad english, i literaly learned english by copy-pasting games wiki in google translate.
The sea dragon doesn’t actually breath fire, it eats and expels molten rocks which it of course has an abundance of due to the environment it resides in.
When I first started playing Subnatica, I really struggled. Not because of the marine biology. The safe shallows look like any reef I have snorkeled. And having 45 seconds of air seemed reasonable too. Where I struggled was with swimming very deep depths without being crushed. The idea that you can open the hatch on your sub and swim out over a kilometer down isn't realistic, and I struggled with this until I just accepted it. Recently while playing hard core and in the lava zone, my Prawn suit fell into a deep hole. At over 2 kilometers down and no end in site, I exited the suit to swim to the "surfaces", or actually my Cyclops which was at about 1200 meters. But at that depth, the pressure is 3,000 PSI. I know the reinforced diving suit is awesome, but 3,000 PSI?
Yeah the diving mechanics in the game are completely detached from real life, but if they made them realistic it would be a much less fun game lol. I actually plan to have a video out Saturday morning explaining pressure and diving mechanics, so if you’re interested in that, be sure to stick around!
Considering the mass extinction event due to the Kharaa, we're likely looking at a VERY broken life system here, where normally MUCH more would exist, likely even things to explain this stuff. For example, why do Sea Dragon leviathans exist at the scale they do? Easy, there was a LOT more reaper leviathans back in the day, and there was a lot more food to sustain reaper leviathans back in the day in general. Why do the Ampeels and Crabsquid have electrical abilities? Well, its not IMPOSSIBLE that a living battery could exist its just not on earth as there isn't any need nor any conditions weird enough to create life that can do that: aka No evolutionary pressure. Though yes, the ampeel should not be visibly electrical I imagine thats for gameplay sake. Why do crashfish die? Well, this is harder but its likely that its a similar explanation to Creepers where they spread spores to reproduce, and the fish itself has kind of been assimilated. We know for an absolute fact the Kharaa is an infestation, which is a bio-technological(Technology that exists purely out of organic technology and nothing else) species that assimilates others into utilities. Its not impossible it merged two incompatible species at one point to make a weapon which the crashfish represents. Alternatively, Crashfish could have a funny diet that just so happens to make gunpowder and over long periods of time ended up producing eggs within the plant and coincidentally evolved a button that causes them to either cause a chemical reaction or just heat up their bodies when distressed that it just... worked? But yeah crash fish are bs, this is just me guessing. And, the Gargantuan Leviathan makes sense only if you consider that it once had a HUUUGE Amount of food regarding leviathans which, Im pretty sure a PDA mentions outright. But, out of everything, the Gargantuan Leviathan makes less sense than the crash fish if you think too hard about it. But, It COULD have maybe existed as a beast that regularly goes on hibernation which only comes out when it needs more sustenance for a spree of slaughter that sustains it. There is also the possibility they're like some lobsters where as long as they remain successful, they survive. And with it so close to the lava zone, they very easily could have died while hibernating. And also that one we found could be an absolute freak who survived through being a complete and utter tyrant of the natural cycle by being too good at hunting that it only died of starvation. And as for the three having arms? (Cutefish, Dragon, Emperor), those three all have notably higher intelligence than ALL of the rest of the entire ocean. Emperor Leviathans are literally sentient and arguably above human intelligence and known to be very very capable of understanding complex systems like using the peepers to feed the entire crater and possibly influence the peeper's evolutions... Sea Dragon Leviathans are capable of fire breath likely as a result of their ecosystem being a literal lava zone and having the ability to tolerate severe heat may allow them to do a funny equivelant of the dinosaurs where they eat rocks except unlike dinosaurs they are eating liquid rocks and showed signs of intelligence in knowing that destroying an entire fortress would avenge its children(this one is arguable) and the cutefish is literally a companion which indicates enough intelligence to be friendly and capable of learning tricks like high fives. All of this indicates that theres a few roads: The emperors guided their own evolution and a few others(Unlikely), they evolved from a landmass that favors hands(Likeliest if you look at sea dragon leviathans) and/or notice that the "arms" of the cutefish and emperor leviathan are just long and extended fins indicating that they probably evolved bigger fins to be able to exert more force when swimming to move less slowly or they come from common ancestors. The one and only undeniable case of "They absolutely might be realistic" is that the Sea Emperor Leviathans are literally sentient and very likely would just be able to survive with how intelligent AND powerful they are. And you can see that not only do they control predatory animals near them but they likely are VERY long lived, so they could have influenced their own evolution. But that goes against the philosophy of the sea emperor we actually hear communicate with us.
I really liked your video and its sad that you dont have more subscribers But maybe if you do more subnautica stuff you could get more subs Because many people would like to watch longer videos of you analyzing the biology of the diffrent fish in subnautica And maybe even a video for subnautica Below zero Anyways i really like to watch this video and im sure you will become a big youtuber one day ❤
Subnautica is unrealistic
You can't crouch
Smh UnknownWorlds
You can’t parry in subnautica. What’s the point in even playing
@@crunchybro123 one day I will parry a reaper in a prawn mark my words
You can eat nothing but tree sap with no water or anything else and be perfectly healthy either those trees are made of pure nutrition or we are very good at eating wood
@@Streetcleanergaming we got whatever bacteria termites and beavers have
I would absolutely watch a 4 hour video of you analyzing the biology of every plant and fish in this game. Or y'know any more of it. Very cool.
That may very well happen based on how well this video was received; due to the length it would be in the fairly distant future lol
i need to see this video
That would be soooo cool and relaxing
@@DiscoverWithDeLo YES PLEASE DO IT PLEASE
I vote for this
Regarding bio diversity that feels random and disjointed form itself, planet went through a mass extinction event, and arguably is still going through it, so species that are here are most likely the best suited to propagate before Khara gets to them. I know it's a copout, but we're analizing an ecosystem that it slowly but surely dying off. Perhaps at one point seas were populated enough for all the megafauna to prosper, but right now we have two seadragons who apparently are feasting on last dozen of reapers. If we were to crash here three months later, our biggest adversary would be a lonelty crabsquid with survivor's guilt
We've managed to save peepers and bladderfish, but even with Kharaa gone, reapers and sea dragons are going to be extinct within couple years or so at best
It's really sad honestly, I can only imagine how amazing the creatures in this game would be if they weren't actively being destroyed by a bacteria so deadly it's wiped out trillions of (presumably) human-like creatures.
It's even worse imagining how many PLANETS worth of life were wiped out by such a disease, it's horrifying how adaptable it is since it presumably affected EVERYONE, even algae or microscopic life, as nothing has evolved in the void in the thousand years since the disease first got out.
The worst part is I highly doubt it was natural, the extraordinary range of its hosts is far too much for any non-engineered pathogen. The ability to affect a completely new species to the ecosystem (humans) so quickly as to cause death within a few WEEKS makes me believe it's a bio-weapon, making it all the more sad what happened.
@@thunderspark1536the game states quite clearly that it's only been 1000 years since the Kharaa containment breach, not millions of years
@@killerbee.13 My bad been a bit since I played it
@@thunderspark1536 The architects were the species most affected by the disease. In the first game, everything that leads to the cure was locked down and researched by them, without much success, because they couldn't get momma Emperor to hatch her eggs, but they had everything set and ready to fix things.
In the second game we find out that AL-AN, or Alan was the one that released the bacteria and killed, presumably, his entire species, accidentally.
What I don't understand is, in the first game, the cure came ONLY from the poop of the baby Sea Emperors, but in the second game, the cure is simply the recipe of 2 ingredients, that was easily discovered by a single, human researcher. I can't tell if the architects were actually very dumb, because making a cure was so much easier but yet they spent thousands of years trying to find out what a single human did in a few months, or I am missing some important lore that explains this massive plot hole.
@@rigel8755 I think partly it's a matter of the Architects having no idea what the cure would look like, versus Sam just needing to access the Alterra files on the exact chemical composition of the cure and finding the materials that can provide the building blocks for that structure. Like trying to construct a building with no idea what the final building should even look like compared to having a nice blueprint to follow. Ultimately though I do agree that lore-wise it's way too easy to figure out and craft, and it would make more sense for Sam to have stolen some kind of emergency reserve that Alterra had stashed. Unfortunately the cure _needed_ to be craftable by the player for the sake of fun, as without a craftable cure item it would be possible for players to softlock themselves out of completing that side quest by losing the original.
Leviathans are made massive because it harder to have scale in a first person game, so to convey large creatures they have to go extreme
Extreme it is I think in the pda a basic reaper is I think longer then or equal to a blue whale
@@Hello100-i6s almost twice as long iirc
A great example of that is probably the bone shark. When you see it in subnautica, you register it's large but not exactly how large compared to you even close up. Damn thing is nearly twice your size when you look at a scaling chart, but it doesn't look that way due to the first person view
When you play in VR you realise how everything is huge. Even the mushrooms you get on the ground are very, very big.
Clearly the game scale was exagerated, but in VR it's incredible.
Lorewise, the reason for most of the creatures being unrelated to one another is because of a mass extinction event that happened when Kharaa broke lose.
it would be great to then see the far more interesting interspecies interactions (symbiosis, parasitism, whos outcompeting what in a niche etc) since survival of such has plenty of room for cooperative outcomes
@@LucillePalmer i mean, they kinda do, but only in the sea emperor tank. it would be nice to see interactions everywhere though.
@@isaac-v4n9d for sure. like the peeper interaction there is great. apparently on the wiki it days there is actual practical use for them to cure other creatures but ive not once seen another person do that so i should try sometime. but while awesome, its meant to be noticed after the very end, unless youve been spoiled (in which you wonder why it doesnt work on yourself/waste time doing that)
I have a few counterpoints:
Reaper - love the mandibles, but over the years I’ve come to the opinion that they should be tucked in on the sides of the reaper’s head. It reduces drag while swimming and allows them to grab prey with a faster, smoother movement.
Lava Zone - surprisingly, scientists have found a microbiome deep beneath the Earth’s surface, where they survive in extreme temperatures with no light, virtually no oxygen, almost none of the things we usually expect for life to exist. Sure, it’s only a microbiome, but it’s evidence that life finds a way.
Crashfish - also surprisingly, there is a species of ant whose workers literally explode on intruders, covering them in a sticky, corrosive substance.
Phylogenetic tree - unsurprising, given a mass extinction event only 1,000 years ago. The few species that survived could have almost nothing in common.
Thanks for this! As for the reaper I agree, however maybe not enough time has passed for that feature to have evolved. For the lava zone, the hydrothermal vents at the bottom of the ocean don’t support creatures nearly as large, at least not ones that are entirely dependent on them. The worker ants (and bees) that kill themselves to ward off intruders do not reproduce and therefore do not need to value their own lives; only the queen reproduces. And for the phylogenetic tree, I entirely overlooked the mass extinction event 😅
Honestly, it takes a lot of guts to do any sort of public speaking with rhotacism. Kudos tbh, never heard anyone else with it before
Thank you for this, it took me a lot of courage to start making these videos and hearing this seriously made my week
@@DiscoverWithDeLo I can honestly say I didn't notice, I was just enjoying a great SN video!
i love when youtubers do cutouts of themselves its cute
You KNOW the game is good when the sequel trailer drops and everyone replays the decade old original
Some games are timeless
I look at the crashfish almost similarly to creatures from the alien franchise. I think the most logical explanation is that the egg they come out of is another living organism that possibly produces the fish and passively produces a kind of sulfer. On the topic of the crashfish commiting violent acts of terrorism against the player, I have no idea.
That’s definitely a good hypothesis; bees and some ants essentially commit suicide to protect their nest, however the members of the nest that do are non-reproducing. If the crash fish itself doesn’t reproduce then it makes way more sense
Could be that the crash fish is ment to spread *organic matter* across the insides of the caves they live in to give the host plant a nutrient burst. Like super aggressive composting
Just read the entry on crashfish and the plants they are in; it is clearly stated that these are two creatures living in symbiosis.
It also states that the fish is the one producing sulfur:
"The sulfur plant has evolved to feed on sulfuric compounds secreted by the crashfish, which makes its nest within its leaves."
I still think it’s extremely hard to believe any animal would evolve to make a loud, screeching “I’m going to die and my children will be unprotected” sound when defending their nest
@@scottcaramel maybe other fish know that this sound equals total death for them, so when they hear it, they always try to avoid the crashfish and their nests?
In Subnautica, you can hear this sound before the fish goes for you. This is a warning: don't come any closer to my nest or you will be annihilated.
I was not ready for that jumpscare
It was a video about subnautica; I couldn’t resist lol
To me it’s clear that the Stalker has evolved from a terrestrial ancestor. It has a body plan different from mostly anything else in the crater, it’s snout is like a crocodilian’s (which might suggest a past lifestyle of amphibiousness), and it has a fully terrestrial close relative.
The terrestrial ancestor is certainly interesting, it does however raise the question as to how it got from 4546B’s polar regions to the tropics through the thousands of miles of open water. Maybe it was the aliens lol
@ yeah that’s what I realised as I was writing my comment. Maybe the stalker is a smaller, more shallows based off-shoot of a much larger pelagic relative.
Or maybe it was the Precursors, perhaps they transplanted them from the pole and kept them as pets or for some other use. But yeah you’re right, it isn’t a perfect hypothesis.
@@DiscoverWithDeLo Considering the fact the planet is almost entirely ocean, Its not unrealistic migrations happen across it. And why would leviathans go near the surface? Ghost Leviathans might camp the edge of the crater but we do not know how long they have done this, or if the emperor leviathans spread life as needed, or if there used to be more competition and thus more likely to have opportunities to get through the ocean but now without as much competition its easier to get through.
Any of those are explanations, imho.
@@DiscoverWithDeLo In lore most of life just extinct, could be another stalker ,like orca, that extinct so we just cant see him. Its come from polar region and adapted to this ecosystem (stalker what we all know and love)
hey i'm on my second year of oceanography right now, this was an extremely cool recomendation from youtube, never really stopped to have a look back in the game with the knowledge i gained during the past 2 years
Oh yeah this was a blast for me too. Keep going with oceanography, it only gets cooler the more you learn!
There is actually an in-universe explanation for the evolution of the variance in eye numbers!
Biters and Blighters are both related to the fossil of Specimen Theta in one of the Lost River precursor labs, which has four eyes. Specimen Theta also has armor plating, giving a connection to Sand Sharks that also possess four eyes, and Bonesharks which must have broken off earlier in the evolutionary tree as they only possess two eyes. Following the Sand Shark connection we can find that Specimen Theta is a VERY distant relative of Rockgrubs, as the PDA notes in the Rockgrub's entry that it is likely a distant relative of the Sand Shark. While this doesn't give an exact reason for why the number of eyes varies so much, there is at least a clear evolutional progression shown here.
Additionally, if counting Below Zero, the Glow Whales have a pair of 'pseudoeyes' behind their main ones that seem to provide a connection to this family as well.
Came for subnautica stayed for the knowledge
There’s going to be a lot more of it in the near future!
One explanation to the lack of links in the Genetic Tree could be the Kharaa Bacterium wiping out most of the present animal's relatives. It's explained in at least a couple logs or entries that the biodiversity is preculiar.
Underrated channel, get this guy to 1k subs
201st sub
Underrated creator, congratulations, DeLo, this video was amazing, I really liked it, maybe other videos with deeper analysis would make a great series? Regardless, keep up the good work.
Thanks! While I don’t necessarily have plans for more subnautica videos until the sequel, I do intend on making videos regarding tales of our own seas and humans pioneering the depths
@DiscoverWithDeLo Nice to know, thanks for the work, we appreciate it🫡
thank you for this video, it's really fascinating to hear a biologist's perspective on this!
regarding the gigantism of the leviathans, planet 4546B is smaller than earth and because of that it's gravity force must be weaker than earth's, maybe that's why they were able to evolve to be so giant? you know, their bones are less dense than ours, maybe it does affect their size as well? (im not a scientist, just a space nerd, so apologies if im spitting nonsense 😭)
Not nonsense at all; Earth’s gravity does indeed limit the size of animals here because if they got too big, their organs would crush themselves. 4546B being smaller (and lower gravity) means things can grow bigger than on Earth.
When I saw this video on my page and watched it, I thought about checking out the comment section, then I realized how underrated you are. It’s the first time I saw Your video and thought you had at least 50 thousand subscribers. I love the way you describe these things and would love to see more, especially more subnautica but also more games! Love your work, I hope you get recognized more because you deserve it, good luck!
Great Work DeLo! I've loved Subnautica for ages and kinda wondered if its ecosystem was at all viable and yeah, the leviathans kinda ruin the Ecosystem balance.
The one thing about the ghost leviathans that i always felt was that their territory was more of a residence in the abyss with a mate and don't want contending ghost leviathans to be in the area. Given that ghost leviathans are the only thing that willingly enters the abyss probably leads to a case of mistaken identity where the ghost leviathans mistake the player for a newborn Ghost Leviathan and given the already scarce food the pre-existing Ghosts don't want intruders using up their resources. Reaper leviathans are way too abundant for their lifestyle tho.
[With mistaken identity i assume that ghost leviathans have deteriorated eyesight from their habitat and are thus using some sort of vibrational or electric field detection like sharks have, leading to judge based on size more than physical appearance]
But that's just the ramblings of someone with 9-10th grade biology experience, lmk what you think.
Thanks! Also very interesting hypothesis
Here's another sub. Good vid. ( :
Great video, keep up the good work man, would love to see a longer series going through each fish and such
I love these kinds of videos that relate fictional biology/technology/geology/politics/etc to actual feasible real life counterparts and possibilities...
This content it too high-quality for 400 subs! You deserve more subs dude!
the reason the sea dragon "breathes" fire, is that it swallows the molten rock, which it can do because its body is a certain percent made up of inanimate materials from eating said molten rock, this means it is just spitting out molten rock it has eaten at you. as a bonus it is also immune the the effects of your thermal knife, seeing as it live in an active volcano. this fire immunity is a part of all the creatures in the lava zone, from the magma rays and lava larva, to the lava lizards, they all evolved to has heat resistance due to the fact that they live in an active volcano. they have such strong immunity that the aforementioned lava lizards can burrow into magma to give themselves amour and they can shoot magma similar to the sea dragon. another note is that deep sea gigantism exists so that creatures that live deep underwater grow to be massive to conserve energy due to cold conditions and many other reasons. the electrical charge of the ampeel and crabsquid seems to be a relatively common gene, seeing as multiple creatures have it, example is the lava larva and how it saps your power on your PRAWN suit or cyclops. the ghost leviathans aren't just filter feeders, they will eat anything they they can find, they are highly territorial because of they lives living in the crater. the giant skull you find in the lost river is called the gargantuan leviathan and literally could keep growing forever, they only lived in the void during adulthood as they grew to be over 1.5km long. the skeleton you find in the lost river is only 1 third of its size and the caves likely formed around the skeleton, its dead body literally influenced the planets geography,
1: not even deep sea gigantism can explain the sizes of most of the leviathans, and certain ones like the reaper and reefback live in relatively shallow waters
2: like they said in the video, realistically ghost leviathans cannot be territorial because theyre so massive that they need to constantly be searching for more plankton instead of wasting valuable energy on other things
3: the gargantuan leviathan does not keep growing forever, that is *never* stated in game. check the skeletons pda entry on the wiki
@@R4N5OM I have read through the garg PDA and it even though it isn't explicitly says they don't stop growing, it is heavily hinted at that and the devs have mentioned it. either early in growth while they are still young or starve as adults because they don't have a good enough food source due to their size. as for the territorial nature of the ghost leviathan, they are trying to eat anything that will fit in their mouth, that might look like it being territorial to us and our PDA where they are really attacking anything that moves. as for reapers living in shallow waters, the only relatively shallow place we find the in is the crash zone, and they most likely migrated there because of the sound of the ship crashing, we otherwise find reapers in 300m depth areas like the mountains and dunes. as for reefbacks, they are in 150m-200m deep waters and probably hatch even deeper than that.
@bobbycarnie2993 1: how is it heavily hinted at and when did the devs mention it
2: the thing is, the ghost leviathan hunting anything whatsoever costs much more energy than if it just continued swimming around and eating plankton
3: that is why i said "relatively" deep, and there are many more creatures that are deeper and nowhere near as big
sorry if i seem like im taking this all too seriously btw im just interested in spec evo
also i personally dislike how so many people believe things about the garg leviathan that straight up arent true because of confusion (probably mainly caused by the non-canon mod even though it IS cool just not realistic whatsoever)
@@R4N5OM if the mod your talking about is the return of the ancients, then I'm sorry to say, but almost everything they added was either cut content or canonically in the game lorewise
@@R4N5OM also i watch subnautica youtuber who have inside information from devs that they share on their channel. people like the last bacon, aci, and Anthomnia. their videos are the main source of my evidence and they are pretty credible as they get a lot of their info by reading through every PDA log and actually asking developers
LOVE your content! A humble idea, you could make a mini series talking about all the life forms and how marine biology and science “apply” or act etc, pleaseeee
My man, I do not know where you have been during all the other internet content, but BY FAR, you are the best creator for genuine, wholesome connection and communication, I love the way you present and would love to see more!
Thank you! More is on the way!
The sand shark, bone shark, blighter, biter and the fossilized fish in the precursor lab all seem to be related in some way in my opinion, general body structure, the ribcages and armours seem to be similar for sand sharks, vone sharks and the fossil
They probably look so different because of the kara virus causing rapid evolution as creatures die very quickly meaning they have to adapt a lot faster
the PDA does say that, and also that the rockgrub is also part of that line
I love videos about this kind of stuff, definitely subscribing!
This was such a cool analysis on a game I also love so much! ❤
All my support for this kind of video. Loved it
loved this, very high quality content from such a small channel, defintely earned a subscriber, maybe consider doing a video like this for below zero? would love to see that
you gained a subscriber, your content is pretty good! hope you do more like these
adding some thoughts to this comment, i wonder if one should also account for the lack of variation of many of the species(like the ej that only the peeper and boomerang have a variant) because of the Kharaa bacterium, it was said in one of the entries that it killed off a lot of biodiversity before we came here if i remember correctly, the ecosystem didnt collapse thanks to the enzyme infused peepers, but it still took a hit. so that could be a reason(besides normal game limitations)
Your comments on the environment are very interesting! It got me wondering if there’s a possible explanation for it, and there’s actually a really good explanation: the sea emperor life cycle.
Eggs on 4545B are unique in that they’re largely dormant until desirable hatching conditions develop in the local environment. Sea emperor eggs, most uniquely, require an enzyme developed from five unique flora distributed across five unique biomes.
Since we know the sea emperors are intelligent, I think it no small stretch to suggest that the crater was cultivated, by sea emperors, to be an ideal breeding ground.
Bro, you are so underrated! New subscriber!!
One of my favorite games. I have hundreds of hours in Subnautica, and still pick it up again every few months. Thanks for this educated take on the realism factor of the biological aspects!
Chilean here, nice vid! I'll keep watching what you'll upload in the future
Thanks! I have some exciting ocean themed vids in the works now
This guy deserves way more subs, great video!
Keep up the videos bro!
At a first look i thought you have,like,10k subs at least,but 300?
damn.
like,this isnt much less quality than most people with 10k,and even 100k-1m have.
great video,earned a sub.
Thank you so much!
The ghost leviathan being not territorrial I think is probably ok. 1/2 of the ghost leviathan body is lightweight translucent tissue, so it wouldn't be as heavy as you would think. And as for food, I when it chases something, it would be moving more than it normally would, getting even more plankton; and since the void is of low population, ghost leviathans most likely want to be one of the only creatures there. The reason for protecting the void is most likely to prevent parasites traveling in from other creatures and reproducing there, because they could be very vulnerable to parasites due to their large size. Another thing to consider is maybe the ghost leviathans don't want competition for food. as too many other filter feeders may need to lack of microbial reproduction, as groups are being depleted.
This isn't to change your veiw, just a curious speculation on how Subnautica may be more accurate than you think :D
Great Video Bud keep going
Super nice video, I had the same thought process!
I studied Biology and I also thought that there isn't enough biomass (food) around to sustain so many leviathan class predators. 😉😊
As that one comment said. I would 100% watch that 4 hour video
Bro the pressure is really on 😅 I love the enthusiasm by everyone but I gotta make something like that manageable lol
why must you do me like this? 5:45
Nice, subbed.
The coolest and most scary thing about the biology trivia on this game is that the Reaper Leviathan has echolocation.
If you can hear him, he knows exactly where you are. Now sum this up with how terrifying his encounters are.
That's unnerving but doesn't make much sense, as he only goes after you if you enter his AI space enclosure, and he gives up really quick on eating you, if you get out of his reach. Also his size, he's too large to only care about a few hundred cubic meters of territory, litterally. There are mods which remove that completely, and if you hear him he WILL follow you throughout the whole map, which essentially breaks the game, and the experience, but it's what would be "realistic", for him.
Yeah if the game was that accurate it would be over before you even regain consciousness lol
For some reason it helps me suspend my disbelief with things like the numerous and distinct biomes when the game itself acknowledges that it's kind of weird. I guess because that's like the creators are saying they _know_ it's weird and are knowingly making an artistic and/or fun choice, rather than just wondering whether it was a goof?
Although on the topic of the biome density, I believe the databank entry underestimates the diameter and it's closer to 3-4km. So the number of biomes is definitely still kind of ridiculous, but not _quite_ as ridiculous as the PDA would have you believe.
I will say though, if 4546B does have tectonic plates, a kilometer long super ship crashing into it would probably initiate its tectonic activity.
also, while it's not believable life would survive with such a top-heavy food chain, 1: the apex predators, specifically the sea dragons, are starting to die out, and 2: when the bacteria first broke out, a large amount of the ecosystem died out and went extinct.
and for the eye discrepancy, reread the specimen theta entry, and re-speculate. it probably won't change your opinion, but it is helpful.
The Sea Dragon is able to breathe fire as the PDA says it consumes molten rock, and it fires that at things. Technically not breathing fire.
Just slightly believable.
the pinnacarid in below zero interests me.
btw the gargantuan leviathan went extinct thousands of years ago, likely due to its food going extinct
also this mass extinction event is likely why a phylogenetic tree is so hard to make
10:35 wasn't there a extinction event in the game, love your video by the way
Yes there was, I kinda forgot about that while making the video
"there are many benefits to being a marine biologist"
Me: depressed after watching the video realizing that 4546B will never be real
As with most video games, I imagine that in-universe the area represented by the map is actually much larger, and simply shrunk down for the sake of playability; this would explain the proximity of the different bioregions to each other, and would be more in-line with what we see from space
Oh yeah I mean the GTA V map is only like 30 square km but it’s very clearly meant to represent a much larger world. This video was just me entering my 🤓🤓🤓 arc
I also went into marine biology , amongst other reasons aswell , because of subnautica
Good luck on exams!
You mentioned the body plan similarities between the Sea Dragon, Sea Emperor, and Cuddlefish… but did you notice the Reefbacks also belong to that group?
They have vestigial "paddles" on their undersides, resembling those of the Sea Emperor. The Sea Emperors also cultivate a special symbiotic ecosystem around themselves like the Reefbacks do, and both species have forms of long-distance social communication. If I had to guess, I would say the Sea Emperors are more closely related to Reefbacks than they are to Sea Dragon Leviathans.
I was actually thinking about that just yesterday, and thought I should’ve mentioned it. I’m glad someone else was able to draw similar conclusions!
I have no idea how sea dragons go so fast despite having frog hands and squid tentacles (but no squid jets???)
also I love how depth and pressure doesn't affect the player at all haha
Funny you should mention that, I’m actually working on a 5 part series right now about depth and pressure irl and how we got to challenger deep! The first episode will (ideally) go live on Saturday morning
My biggest nitpick is the Sea Dragon leviathan. And not even due to its size or fire breath. Its breast stroke swimming just looks too humanoid for my sense of spec evo. Still the best spec evo ecosystem in any game I've played besides maybe Monster Hunter.
Subbed in the first Minute. W video
I mean a big reason the creatures seem like one offs could be because the bacteria tanked the larger biodiversity of the area and the reason that there are so many big creatures without the proper things to keep them alive could be from this same reason, same with the ghost leviathan, it's aggression could be because of a creature that just didn't survive the bacteria and they had no reason to lose that trait. I mean these are all just thoughts and what if's about it. Love the video and god I love this game.
I love this video, I do have to say a lot of the time their explanation for why some creatures are weird unrelared one-offs is because they're adapted to a weird relatively newly opened niche, sincw the game is set after a relatively recent extinction event. It's not an explanation that makes a lot of sense but I appreciate that it's there. I also appreciate that a lot of the species ARE related and although sometimes the relations again makes no sense and is purely morphological, it's there and is often explained, like how rhe jellyshroom cave allegedly got separated for a period of time which is what lead to pink peepers (oculi)
Another thing is, i agree the gargantuan leviathan didnt exist in this ecosystem, the lost river ecosystem formed around its corpse, kinda like a whale fall but of a creature so large that it formed an entire ecosystem. Now whether that ecosystem could survive 3 million years + an extinction event is more questionable, but yeah rhw lost river as far as im aware should be rhe oldest ecosystem in the game.
if you want to go all marine biologist "sea&me" here on youtube is another marine biologist that loves the game and working with her might give suggestions more weight. I'd suggest reaching out to her.
Please do more! Love to hear more, biology is so interesting
The island to Atoll part got me like so shook. I’m playing the game and getting too much close calls with Leviathans 😭 I got chased by like two crabsquids
How would you find a logical explanation to the void considering irl stuff, like realistically there’s no way the entirety of the planet can be that deep without life and stuff? Right?
Here on Earth, the average depth of the ocean is about 2 miles (more than 3000 m!), so most of the planet being extremely deep is very realistic. As for only supporting planktonic and leviathan class life, I chalk that one up to the PDA having a limited data set, as we are only on the edge of the crater and not able to examine the entire ocean of 4546B.
I love the video, and perspective. I do have to mention a covieat though.
You can't just talk about the biolife without going into the lore. Mostly because Subnautica cimbines the two wonderfully. As others mentioned to you.
The kharar mass extinction event is on going event spanning for who knows how long. We just know that it has gone on for so long that like our worlds mass extinction events. Life has nearly gone out. Its a close representation to what we see in actual fossil records. The difference is that, kharar is very clearly much more recent and old, because it is foreign to the world. The previous people on the planet were not from there either. They brought it with them to study it. The disease would eventually kill them all. With a the most recent ruins from them. Being the gun that would shoot spacecraft out of the sky. The planet used to have so much more life. It literally is a dying a world at first.
Below Zero showed us that life still found some way, and the another?... I might be miss remembering that. But the kharar itself is an extremophile. I don't think that term serves it justice. Is there a word for a multi world ending space pathogen? What everything we deal with as the player is stressed to be the left overs. The damage was so extensive that the ecological dead zone is very much implied to very UNNATURAL.
That even assuming we will even ever have a chance to learn what is down there. Or if there is anything even left.
This is also an alien planet to us. The microscopic life outside of the kharar is basically unknown to us.
But I acknowledge your video is not a lore video. Its a perspective and analysis video. Entertainment Writing too. And for that. It does its job wonderfully. The given knowledge on the subject can even help inspire new lifeforms in future Subnautica games if we get any.
Besides the lore reasons of explaining why some of the things seem weird. Which is something disconnecting from the analysis does a disservice to the games efforts. Two other issues exist.
Don't say something is completely impossible. Because you can stand on the grounds for being wrong. And the diversity we do see is... Actually smaller compared to real life.
Bio diversity in real life is explosively larger than what we see in the game. Im not holding this against you. Biology of any kind doesn't fully delve into ecology, and paleontology, or the rest of thw long list of other ologies (there is way to many to list, and this post is long enough.) I'm not saying your perspective isn't important. But its not the full picture. You are just one piece to a puzzle. I would like to see future videos of marine botanist, and marine ecologist would have say. And what would a paleontologist for plants and animals have to add. You have a potential real good series of videos to latch onto here.
Yeah I kinda made a big mistake by forgetting about the mass extinction event 😅 my last point is basically nonexistent because of that
@@DiscoverWithDeLo you can almost say it went... Extinct.....
Yeah I will see myself out. Great video still.
What amazes me is how much these leviathans are bigger than they look.
Like,the reaper is the same length as a cyclops submarine!
For Subnautica 2, I hope they take notes from how community management was done for Satisfactory. Jace changed the game
about the tectonic activity I see your point, but from the same shot (rocket launch) we could see oceanic ridge (lighter blue), which would suggest tectonic activity
hi charles
personally i think the reason the leviathans are all so big and territorial is they have some bizarre sci fi secondary method of gaining energy that simply doesn't exist in real life like the sea dragon somehow evolved a biological thermal reactor and the ghost leviathan somehow has biological solar panels or an alternative explanation is due to the simply obtuse rate at which the fish can reproduce and grow to maturity if you put them in a containment module you could argue that the leviathans can afford to be big and territorial since food replenishes itself so quickly we just dont get to see it
Very true; as this is an alien planet virtually anything is possible
At 6:08 you could’ve used the reefbacks again for a joke as they support plants.
Very true lol
Jotaro, you cant fool us with that face mask bro.
I wholeheartedly agree with the added colossal creatures. Having the Leviathan was enough, but they had to keep scaling up to add horror and challenge. Considering the Reaper Leviathans already have a large health pool, and aren’t easy to kill without cheesing methods, they should have remained the only largest creature, or add one more larger than them but far less numerous. Even the Ghost Leviathans was unnecessary. Wouldn’t reusing a Reaper have served the same purpose? They clearly want to keep introducing new designs, and up the stakes each time. It gets to a point, for me personally, that it becomes overwhelming to even bother another playthrough. Surely there are other ways they could have increased the challenge as you improved and acquires more equipment/vessels.
genuine question why couldnt anything survive in the lava zone when we have those sharks and fish that live in a volcanic crater on earth in acidic water?
Thank you for the question! The sharks and fish on Earth that are found around the volcanic crater (known as Kavachi) are only in there when the volcano is not actively erupting. While it is an active volcano, unlike hydrothermal vents it is not exuding superheated rock from deep within the Earth 100% of the time, allowing animals to exist inside during those times. There is currently research being done to learn how exactly the fish are able to detect when an eruption is going to occur and evacuate. The lava zone of Subnautica appears to have lava in constant contact with the water (another puzzling feature), and due to the assumed lack of water circulation with the surface (being in a several kilometer long underwater cave) the water within the lava zone should have boiled over millennia ago. Kavachi sits less than 100 feet from the ocean’s surface and can readily cycle through the water around it
And what about Subnautica bellow zero? You should try it too.
10:26 but... tou could certainly try, dont you think ;)
I definitely could give it my best shot; evolutionary biology isn’t my area of expertise, but the main problem is that most of the animals that originally lived in the crater went extinct during a recent extinction event which I regrettably forgot about in the making of this video 😅
ohhh i didnt remember that info about subnautica, but you could sorta made up a common ancestor for most of the creatures
Speaking of the gargantuan leviathan…. Lore suggests it wasn’t native to the lost river but rather the skeleton was there before the lost river and the cavern simply closed in around it. So tectonic plates might still be present…
Yeah I mean the gargantuan leviathan still seems way too big to me simply because the weight of its own body would crush itself, as for the tectonic plates it could be that the garg died on top of the crater before it erupted again, sealing it in the river without the need of shifting plates
@ right and I’m not trying to say the garg is realistic. I’ve seen enough monsterverse movies to know something that big is impossible.
I cant believe this came out 10 years ago
Dude that reaper scared me😭😭
I couldn’t resist putting a jumpscare in there lol, it wouldn’t be a subnautica video without it
Bro I was sitting in my school cafeteria and I literally jumped⚰️
Rebranding as a marine biologist because your channel didn’t take of us crazy
Funny you should say that small animals can hide in crevises from reapers becouse my current strategy for crash zone looting is zipping around with my glider and hiding behind/under the rubble when i get attacked and it works like a charm
It think the bacteria killing off so much life may explain some of the hole in the genetic trees.
There are some drawbacks to being a marine biologist
Im pretty sure the sea dragon chews on molten rock and spits it out, also, great video!!
this is fire make them subnautica 2 gameplays vid ill watch em😈
Is it feasible that 4546b simply has much less active plate tectonics in comparison to Earth rather than completely lacking them? The presence of the giant mountains in Below Zero seems to suggest that at least *some* tectonic activity has taken place in the area
Love Subnautica. There's really nothing like it.
You also gotta remember that its an alien planet so some things in their biology might be completely different from ours
Oh I wonder how realistic a game that takes place in an Exoplanet with a SILICON BASED ECOSYSTEM is
For the really high biome concentration, could it be like New Caledonia in Pacific? With a great variation in soil composition making different area more or less agressive/toxic for some being forcing evolution on small spaces?
I'm not a profesionnal, I just have a licence in biology making me not specific, especially in marine ecology
It’s true that New Caledonia is considered a biodiversity hotspot, however those endemic species are on land, making it harder for the plants to spread than in the water. In the ocean, currents are able to carry organisms and substrate alike to make large areas more or less homogenous. It is a very interesting hypothesis however!
@@DiscoverWithDeLo I see thanks for anwsering. I did'nt had marine ecology in my cursus in college (I took science of life and biology spé human biology).
I have another question now: the substrate carried by currents would be only on a relative surface level? We don't see sedimentary layers/stones [excuse my poor english] but only lava activity (including some pillowlava) leading me to think the activity looks "recent" [geological ages speaking] so with maybe an high tectonic plate activity and low volcanic on this hotspot making the next island of this hotspot really far or closer but too deep underwater.
I forgot about sandstone deposites, there is sedimentary stone, I just completly forgot about it
About the crash fish, could it be a symbiose (i think its the term to say 2 species mutualy help each other) between it and the plant? Like the plant give the crash fish the nutriments to give birth to his babies in the plant but the crash fish sacrifice itself fo protect the plant also creating space for the mext generation to grow. Maybe the plant implants seeds in the fish so when it explode, it would spread the plant seeds! Between, sorry for my bad english, i literaly learned english by copy-pasting games wiki in google translate.
The sea dragon doesn’t actually breath fire, it eats and expels molten rocks which it of course has an abundance of due to the environment it resides in.
the peepers, reginald, eyeyes, and oculuses all share an ancestor actually, not just the peeper and occulus
You triggered me with the Leviathan jumpscare ;-;
When I first started playing Subnatica, I really struggled. Not because of the marine biology. The safe shallows look like any reef I have snorkeled. And having 45 seconds of air seemed reasonable too.
Where I struggled was with swimming very deep depths without being crushed. The idea that you can open the hatch on your sub and swim out over a kilometer down isn't realistic, and I struggled with this until I just accepted it. Recently while playing hard core and in the lava zone, my Prawn suit fell into a deep hole. At over 2 kilometers down and no end in site, I exited the suit to swim to the "surfaces", or actually my Cyclops which was at about 1200 meters.
But at that depth, the pressure is 3,000 PSI. I know the reinforced diving suit is awesome, but 3,000 PSI?
Yeah the diving mechanics in the game are completely detached from real life, but if they made them realistic it would be a much less fun game lol. I actually plan to have a video out Saturday morning explaining pressure and diving mechanics, so if you’re interested in that, be sure to stick around!
Considering the mass extinction event due to the Kharaa, we're likely looking at a VERY broken life system here, where normally MUCH more would exist, likely even things to explain this stuff.
For example, why do Sea Dragon leviathans exist at the scale they do? Easy, there was a LOT more reaper leviathans back in the day, and there was a lot more food to sustain reaper leviathans back in the day in general.
Why do the Ampeels and Crabsquid have electrical abilities? Well, its not IMPOSSIBLE that a living battery could exist its just not on earth as there isn't any need nor any conditions weird enough to create life that can do that: aka No evolutionary pressure. Though yes, the ampeel should not be visibly electrical I imagine thats for gameplay sake.
Why do crashfish die? Well, this is harder but its likely that its a similar explanation to Creepers where they spread spores to reproduce, and the fish itself has kind of been assimilated. We know for an absolute fact the Kharaa is an infestation, which is a bio-technological(Technology that exists purely out of organic technology and nothing else) species that assimilates others into utilities. Its not impossible it merged two incompatible species at one point to make a weapon which the crashfish represents. Alternatively, Crashfish could have a funny diet that just so happens to make gunpowder and over long periods of time ended up producing eggs within the plant and coincidentally evolved a button that causes them to either cause a chemical reaction or just heat up their bodies when distressed that it just... worked? But yeah crash fish are bs, this is just me guessing.
And, the Gargantuan Leviathan makes sense only if you consider that it once had a HUUUGE Amount of food regarding leviathans which, Im pretty sure a PDA mentions outright. But, out of everything, the Gargantuan Leviathan makes less sense than the crash fish if you think too hard about it. But, It COULD have maybe existed as a beast that regularly goes on hibernation which only comes out when it needs more sustenance for a spree of slaughter that sustains it. There is also the possibility they're like some lobsters where as long as they remain successful, they survive. And with it so close to the lava zone, they very easily could have died while hibernating. And also that one we found could be an absolute freak who survived through being a complete and utter tyrant of the natural cycle by being too good at hunting that it only died of starvation.
And as for the three having arms? (Cutefish, Dragon, Emperor), those three all have notably higher intelligence than ALL of the rest of the entire ocean. Emperor Leviathans are literally sentient and arguably above human intelligence and known to be very very capable of understanding complex systems like using the peepers to feed the entire crater and possibly influence the peeper's evolutions... Sea Dragon Leviathans are capable of fire breath likely as a result of their ecosystem being a literal lava zone and having the ability to tolerate severe heat may allow them to do a funny equivelant of the dinosaurs where they eat rocks except unlike dinosaurs they are eating liquid rocks and showed signs of intelligence in knowing that destroying an entire fortress would avenge its children(this one is arguable) and the cutefish is literally a companion which indicates enough intelligence to be friendly and capable of learning tricks like high fives. All of this indicates that theres a few roads: The emperors guided their own evolution and a few others(Unlikely), they evolved from a landmass that favors hands(Likeliest if you look at sea dragon leviathans) and/or notice that the "arms" of the cutefish and emperor leviathan are just long and extended fins indicating that they probably evolved bigger fins to be able to exert more force when swimming to move less slowly or they come from common ancestors.
The one and only undeniable case of "They absolutely might be realistic" is that the Sea Emperor Leviathans are literally sentient and very likely would just be able to survive with how intelligent AND powerful they are. And you can see that not only do they control predatory animals near them but they likely are VERY long lived, so they could have influenced their own evolution. But that goes against the philosophy of the sea emperor we actually hear communicate with us.
I've never seen the Prawn Suit get grabbed.
It was a fatal mistake on the reaper’s part (it was its final error in life)
I really liked your video and its sad that you dont have more subscribers
But maybe if you do more subnautica stuff you could get more subs
Because many people would like to watch longer videos of you analyzing the biology of the diffrent fish in subnautica
And maybe even a video for subnautica Below zero
Anyways i really like to watch this video and im sure you will become a big youtuber one day ❤