Why Are Marine Mammals So Big?
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- Опубліковано 7 вер 2024
- Marine mammals are famously large, but why is that? And is there a polar bear-sized sea otter in our future?
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“It might not be quite that simple” - the words inscribed over every science lab and research facility.
That's why scientists created sig figs; just approximate everything and screw the rest. Any discrepancies are for later generations to work out.
Sometimes, laziness is a bit ingenious. Which I just realized is another form of the word "ingenuity", the word I wanted to use. Wow. They have somewhat different connotations, I never would have guessed.
The words inscribed over our labs were:
"If you break it, you've got to pay it"
Sea otters the size of polar bears would be terrifyingly cute!
Through convergent evolution they all came to be about 500kg? Nah, I don't believe that! They did it on porpoise. Otter than the otter, of course.
The punnery, its too much
Ikr
They did it by convenient evolution. How convergent is that.
Master Therion is that a man of letters logo
Get thee to a punnery!
An asterism shaped like a gigantic sirenian would be
a stellar sea cow.
I knew it. I bet there really is a cthulu styled lobster at the bottom of the ocean in order to conserve warmth and maintain its size.
Doesn't it get colder as we descend down the ocean?
Lobsters are cold blooded so one the size of a 747 would be *stuck* at the bottom of the sea because it'd be too cold to move much less lug around tons of shell armor.
Maybe a 10,000 pound starfish or something.
d a r k n e s s The theory of him being unfunny? I got that theory too!
Actually there are crustaceans in the deep sea larger than humans. Google deep sea lice or Japanese spider crabs. Happy nightmares.
2:18 to get in the argument: sea otters don‘t need to get that huge to stay warm. Just look at the picture!! They have fur, that forms an barrier of air between them and the wate. So they don‘t lose heat as fast as whales etc. !!
Good point!
I agree, it's the same reason marine birds (e.g. penguins) don't need to be huge
You're dead wrong...
Giant sea otter would be the cutest thing ever!
Seeing as they're carnivores, I don't think so
They may be cute, but they can still kill! Dead wrong is right.
Deadly cute. Just like polar bears
cat intensifies I KNOW RIGHT is what to tame one or get them domesticated. That is if they could get tamed/domesticated
Who cares if they can kill, whales, dauphin and penguins are all cute and they are all carnivorous. wolfs are also carnivorous and they are cute and they evolve into dogs
I have a ferret and the thought of a 500kg one is terrifying- he would stalk you and rip your head off for fun, when you feed him
This is why I love SciShow. Saw the thumbnail and thought "probably because of buoyancy" only to watch the video and see there's more factors than I thought. Love learning more--keep it up guys!
I have read that Otters have a different strategy to keep them warm when compared to other marine mamnals, instead of geting rid of fur and using blubber to insulate themselfs from cold waters, they actually grow a lot of fur, the thickest of all mamnals. It allows them to trap small pockets of air who keep their skin dry despite and insulated.
She knows the violence sea otters are capable of, that’s why she knows polar bear sized otters would be terrifying.
I knew the seals are sea puppies
During the giant otter bit, you missed a golden opportunity for "otterly terrifying"
I really like how she styles her hair and balances the look out with a bigger earring on the opposite side of her hair.
FYI, mammals have slipped back into the water at least eight times in the last 66.5 million years (and considering that mammals as a whole have been around for at least 180 million years, and placental mammals at least 120 million years, it is not unreasonable to imagine that it may have occurred more times than just eight)
Mammal lineages with members we know for a fact have returned to a mostly or entirely aquatic lifestyle include:
● hippos
● manatees
● *marine sloths
● otters
● platypy/platypuses
● seals
● *semi-aquatic rhinos
● whales
* = lineages that have since gone extinct
Her earring don’t matter and that bugs people. I find that funny.
500Kg Sea Otters would be BOTH ridiculously cute AND utterly terrifying. Just like Polar Bears.
This video made my day
Because none of my other channels I watch have uploaded today thanks scishow I am so glad you upload every day( seriously Sunday is the worst day of the week because no one uploads) the only thing I can be happy about is that I have school tomorrow and I get to see my friends.
@02:37 You missed a perfect opportunity for a pun. "Otterly terrifying." Hah!
I enthusiastically accept the "otters are only just getting started growing" hypothesis!
I think 500kg sea otters would be BOTH utterly terrifying and utterly adorable. They are not mutually exclusive responses.
With otters, it might be that their fur is better at heat-retention; it's renowned as the thickest among mammals - so they might've stumbled on an alternative to the 500kg "optimal size". They also do spend some time on land - not a whole lot, but it gives them a bit of flexibility in avoiding orcas and the like.
hang on. Don't sea otters live in shallower water where it's warmer and kelp is more accessible. Maybe they don't need to grow cause it's not as cold.
Otterly cute
If otters the size of polar bears still break shellfish open on their tummies they'll still be adorable. If they end up breaking open other mammals on their tummies they will be terrifying.
Otters also have other methods for heat conservation that might reduce the need for large body size. They have fur that traps bubbles of air for insulation. They constantly groom this fur to make sure its stays as efficient as possible at keeping them warm, and have special oil glands that help with grooming.
Sea Otters the size of Polar Bears would be OTTERLY terrifying you mean!
I read somewhere that Sea Otters fur traps air bubbles to help keep them warm and buoyant. Might explain why they are still small, and will probably stay small.
So, I take it that, as well as evolving into great, big creatures, sea otters will also evolve to get big seashell horns on their heads and sharp seashells on their arms they can use as katanas? :D
I love Biology!!!
Get bigger!
Whales just thought "What's this 500kg stuff? Dude, I have a crazy idea: let's just try out some new dentures and become professional eaters, then we can just keep getting bigger! That'll sure scare the heck out of anything that thinks they can eat us!"
Micah Philson I was thinking of starting eating soup and then spit the liquid on it with my lips open but my teeth closed, and in some million years it will help me with my diet.
Sadly they didn’t manage to scare humans and still ended up getting killed.
Micah Philson and then megalodon happened
Otters' super dense fur might be a hack like filter feeding is a hack for whales. So their relative small size may not be "that" surprising.
River otters are terrifying, so bear sized would likely be frightening.
I think sea otters are small because they followed a different evolutionary path. Whales, seals, and manatees have no fur and instead depend on their blubber to keep warm and have the cold water in contact with their skin. Otters on the other hand have some of the thickest fur of any mammal which traps a lot of air and keeps their skin from getting wet. Unless there is some process that puts pressure on them to lose that fur I don't think they'll grow a whole lot larger
Not being 500kg could be an advantage to the sea otter’s successful lifestyle (fur trade hunting aside). Unlike the other seagoing mammals they don’t have blubber, instead they have the outright densest mammalian fur which needs constant cleaning to trap an insulating air layer underwater. Extra energy expenditure & time for fur cleaning may preclude the extra hunting needed (25% of bodyweight per day) for a larger body size.
why are my muscles so big!
why is this joke instantly old and annoying and yet it lives on
I'm here for Muscle Hank
Hurray for tren!
Yeah stop taking steroids.
photoshop
1 think that isn't addressed in this video is: large whales with teeth because of predatory reasons.
Sperm Whales and Orcas are huge yet they don't filter feed and require to hunt fast, smart and agile prey.
I would assume in the case of otters that they lucked out and evolved from something that already had good insulating fur so they don't have to balance volume to surface area ratio as the surface area they do have is less thermally conductive
Olivia rocks my socks!
... The South American Giant River Otter gets up to 71 pounds, and the extinct Siamogale metliluta supposedly got up to 110 pounds and was a wolf analogue.
The giant river otters of the Amazon are already terrifying, and they are not bear size yet.
Francois Lacombe , yeah, but arapaima are also frickin' terrifying, and if I shared the water with them, I'd wanna out-grow them.
I'm surprised they went without mentioning this one.
Any weasel-y animal is cute. But is entirely possible to be TERRIFYINGLY CUTE.
There are giant river otters in South America, Pteronura brasiliensis. They can be up to almost two meters long. They're terrifying. Don't google them if you want to think that otters are still cute.
This seems to simply have a lot to do with Bergmann and Allen rules, but with the water heat conduction factor added.
Sea otters in the Amazon rivers are already HUGE.
Polar bear sized weasels would be otterly terrifying
Sea otters the size of bears would be "otterly terrifying", Olivia. Come on
Giant sea otter would be cutefying, cute until it´s too late flee than they become terrifying.
gimme a 500kg otter now!
Finance me a breeding project and I will (in several decades)
i'll come back to you, gotta gage the market for 500 kg otters first :D
Frank Schneider Please dont do that but today you can see giant Brazilian otters at least. I'm not sure if they are cuter actually.
That would be .... OTTERLY terrifying. They missed a very good opportunity
Sea Otters have fur. The thickest of any mammal. They didn't get big because they are kept warm enough by that fur that they don't need to have a tiny surface area to volume ratio to avoid loosing all their heat too quickly. They won't get bigger unless there's evolutionary pressure to do so.
Polar bear sized sea otters: terrifyingly cute.
Olivia for president of space
So, this is a weird comment for SciShow, but the way you did your hair in this video with the earring looks very good!
can't wait to see those sea otters grows to the size of a polar bear. Fluffy otter
Yamo go for "Otterly cute" - from a distance, that is...
I for one welcome our 500 lb sea otter overlords.
I'd throw water pressure into the equation too, but I suspect the biologists know enough to account for that.
2:16 Sea otters may be the "odd-balls" because of that fur. The vast majority of marine mammals have little to no fur. They rely on their blubber and size to keep them warm in the chilly water. Sea otters went a different route -- they have literally the densest fur in the animal kingdom, at 150,000 strands per centimeter square, or 1 million strands per square inch. In comparison, chinchillas, with the densest fur of any terrestrial mammal (so dense that fleas and ticks can't penetrate it!) have "only" a third of that -- 50,000 per cm2. Sea otter fur is so thick that, even after spending hours and hours eating and playing and grooming and sleeping in the water, their skin stays completely dry. So they don't need the massive amounts of blubber and fat to keep them warm. Ergo, a marine mammal that's "trim", as the video put it.
But a sea otter has extremely dense fur that protects it from being waterlogged and keeps it well insulated... wouldn't that mean that they've found a way around the 500kg heat-conservation body goal?
Oh come on! Imagine a giant sea otter cracking open handfuls of seashells... so cute! What’s terrifying about it?
Cuteness and terror are not mutually exclusive. Example: jungle cats, cute, also terrifying.
0:15 The prewhaling idea! 😂😂
A giant sea otter would be otterly cute!!
I'll see myself out...
Unlike all those other marine mammal groups otters rely on fur for insulation. I believe fur is a better insulator than blubber and otter fur is ridiculously dense. That might be why they haven't got so big.
A sea otter the size of a polar bear- but round like a balloon animal
2:41 Yes! They would indeed be otterly terrifying!
Someplace out there is an epic squid with a filter feeder and uses ships to clean its fibers.
South Park already addressed the sea otter thing. "Kill the table eaters, in the name of almighty science."
Otters are the skinny legends of the sea
Surely the otter is small because it's covered in fur? So it can stay warmer if it fluffs up especially when they all snuggle together
Sea otters the size of polar bears would still be ridiculously cute. fite me.
Hey, polar bears are cute *and* terrifying. Sea otters that size would be as well.
Otters. Have. Fur. If the theory was about keeping warm, Otters do not need to be as large to saty warm because they have thick watertight fur.
Polar bear is the 5th example of mammal returning to the sea 🌊
I'd wager it's because they're warm blooded, so they need more energy to power their bodies, so they need larger bodies to be able to eat and digest large volumes of food.
Oh hey I was almost right
Sea otters the size of polar bears? Still adorable!
Really big weasel. There’s a terrifying thought.
Weasels are just really small weasels.
Massimo O'Kissed Small Otter*
The word “marine” gives them super powers.
I Didn't know Amy Farrah Fouwler works on this channel, nice!
“Sea otters are basically just really big weasels.”
Cute or terrifying? Both! "Aw, it's adorable... and it's going to kill me."
Adorable and terrifying aren't necessarily mutually exclusive.
Missed opportunity to say "otterly terrifying" lmfao
Another sign that otters might still be in the early stages of evolving is their coats. The other aquatic mammals have lost their coats, presumably because they increase drag in water and do little in the way of insulation. But otters still have theirs.
"Buoyancy." It sounds funny when she says it. In a nice way.
Blue Whale maybe not the biggest Animal ever :)
Not sure, if this is gonna be confirmed, but it seems due to estimation, that the Blue Whale might being challenged by an Ichtyosaur to be the biggest Vertebrate ever in the Oceans. This still unnamed thing is compared to the known Shonisaurus, scaling the few bones, reaching a guessed length up to 26m. Blue Whale is about 25m.
Beside the fact of being efficient, filter-feeding is also the best way to skip competition over prey. You just circumvent the whole food-chain and get directly to the first Row on the Buffet, eating small Krill (and maybe some PhytoPlankton as well?).
I am in the "Cute Camp" with giant otters. :)
Aww. All of these are animals adorable. I love it.
There’s some evidence from a new ichthyosaur jaw bone that the blue whale was not the largest, heaviest animal ever. I can’t post the link here because UA-cam will remove my comment, but it’s pretty interesting, worth looking up.
So isnt it just like bergmanns rule? As the region gets colder the body size of the same species will grow because its easier to conserve energy (volume to surface ratio)
Otters are terrifying *now.*
interesting. Mabbeh Amuricans will turn into Marina Mammels too
So SEALS are the real sea-dogs... what good boys.
I low-key love your monotone voice
So the fur of the otter has nothing to do with their ability to stay thinner, yet warm?
Another reason why whales are so big is so they can have the energy reserves to cross large distances without feeding during migration.
Very educational. Thank you.
I imagine sea otters aee limited by there much faster metabolism, compared to the slower metabolism of slow growing cetaceans and pinnepeds
havent watched the video yet, but i'd bet it has a lot to do with their watery homes having a much more stable climate than their land dwelling peers.