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.
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 😅
@@DiscoverWithDeLo After reading this, my head-canon is now that Crashfish are somehow created by the plant (and thereby part of it) and not an individual life. They explode to protect the plant, which then spawns another Crashfish. The data entry for Crashfish says they're simply symbiotic, but I like my idea more.
@@DiscoverWithDeLo I always thought that the plant contains the nest of the crashfish, and so the threat of explosion kept the youth safe. But as press start to laugh said: "what evolutionary advantage does exploding solve?"
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)
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.
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.
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
@@DiscoverWithDeLo Same as CyberMiner. Didn't notice anything (probably because it doesn't exist in my language). Also very used to the whole variety of pronunciations coming from all the UA-camrs who don't speak English as their first language. Perfectly understandable content imo. Keep up the good work and keep diving!
@@DiscoverWithDeLoOnly bullies care about that, don’t worry about it. Your presentation and editing is great, you clearly have a passion for what you do and that’s what matters.
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.
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
A marine biologist's take on "insert video game or movie here" would be a series I would definitely watch. I think it's a niche you could definitely fill.
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.
Holy shit im ALSO a Marine Biologist (BS in biomathematics, MS in progress in Conservation Technology) who streamed this game and I am SO excited to hear someone else talk specifically about the reaper and its mandibles, bc that ALWAYS caught my attention as most of my research was in arthropods! Plus your notes on cladistics were so accurate, it was amazing to hear your thoughts too! AMAZING video! 10/10 :D
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.
I felt so happy when u said that you decide to be a marine biologist because of Subnautica. I am studying to a be a Marine Engineer officer of Merchant Navy thanks to Subnautica too :))
If you’re interested in marine engineering, I would recommend checking out my most recent video, Full Ocean Depth! It’s the first episode in a 5 part series that will discuss the biology, physics, and history of how we conquered the oceans, and the remaining episodes will have a heavy emphasis on engineering.
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
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.
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)
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.
Something cool about the world is that 4546B is a planet with gravity that is a little lower than our planet, which makes it a little more believable for huge creatures to exist (still kind of unrealistic but aye, pair that with deep sea gigantism and y'know)
I wanted to bring up a really cool animal that pertains to the sea dragon! There's a neat snail that lives next to sea vents in the Indian ocean called the Scaly-foot gastropod that have iron supported shells and their exposted bodies coverd in scary iron-mineralised sclerites to protect it from other snails. It also has a symbiotic relationship with a bacteria in it's gut to which it gets it's nourishment from, possibly being their ONLY source of nourishment, and the bacteria is believed to play a role in how it's even able to incorperate the metal into their bodies in the first place. They're also the only known extant animal that incorperate iron sulfide into it's skeleton. So knowing that, the sea dragon doesn't feel as impossible, except for them spitting lava part. Still pretty crazy
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.
That is a very good point and one I don't think I've come across before! It makes a lot of sense to me if part of their reproductive cycle included a specific diet when it was time to hatch their eggs, and even if they weren't intelligent there's plenty of examples of animals taking care of what are essentially crops (damselfish tending to and defending patches of a delicate species of algae, for example)
Aren't there some species of sharks that can live in volcanoes, or in volcanic waters? Not only that, but The Scaly Foot Snail is known as the Volcano Snail and Finally, there is the Lava Cricket, which we haven't really studied that much because they pretty much only go near volcanoes, and leave when vegetation starts to grow. This is all to say, Justice for Sea Dragons.
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!
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!
As soon as I saw the title I remembered my ex getting mad at me for streaming this with her saying "what does any knowledge of earth's oceans have to do with a video game on an alien planet?" She thankfully never became a Marine Biologist and returned to the streets.
I absolutely love your voice. Cool video, not really in the mood, but I wanted to help you out in the algorithm because this genuinely seems really interesting, and you have a really cool voice so.
Subnautica is one of those experiences I wish I could stash my memories of it somewhere, and play it "first time" again. The two weeks I was going to sleep at 3am and waking up to work the next day were just amazing, despite the sleep deficit. The feeling of swimming underwater, the freedom to go anywhere, the feeling of exploration, the sad ending to the story. And the music fits so well, light and happy tunes in the shallow areas, switching to more dramatic melodies when going deeper. The times when I went through the chasms from 200-300 meters to 500+ and "Lava castle" was playing, will forever stay in my memory. Also, so far it's the only game, where I was so focused on the monitor, my wireless headset decided to go to sleep because my head didn't move at all. At first I thought the game was bugging out, like having it running for too long, but during later cases I noticed the sound came back when I put the headset down.
I love these kinds of videos that relate fictional biology/technology/geology/politics/etc to actual feasible real life counterparts and possibilities...
Hi, wanted to say that it was a great video to watch and would like to see more of you! Its always nice to see videos like that, where X-expert aplies their knowledge of the field to various games, and you are not an exception. Would definitely watch more videos with you discussing other "water-themed" games. Also you can make vids where you focus on some specifics, like taking a certain creatures, leviathans for example, and discussing their design, "how" "why" and "is it a good design" stuff, offering ideas on how to improve it
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
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
Thanks, I had that suit and tie sitting around and thought it would make for a goofy outfit so I took a bunch of pictures in different poses, and that’s what you’re seeing lol
Love love love! The amount of research these developers surely did is impressive!! I love scanning everything possible and reading their excerpts. These aren't marine biologists making a game, these are game developers with an interest in marine biology. They put in amazing work so we can suspend disbelief and enjoy the game for its ecosystem and gameplay. You have some great points here and I'm glad you're totally obsessed with this game too!!
Hearing how subnautica inspired you to get into Marine biology put a smile on my face. I too was inspired to study a field of science based on a cideo game. For me it was materials science because of Oxygen Not Included. Granted I am unable to achoeve said dreams but it makes me happy knowing how inspring games can be for others too.
loved this video and i have some lore to add on that might explain some things (i am not in any way a scientist so take everything I say with a drill-arm sized deposit of salt). When you arrive on 4546b the kharaa has been decimating the ecosystem for a very long time. I think somewhere in the disease research facility there’s a databank entry that explains that this caused a massive extinction event and everything you see in game are just the survivors. Maybe this could explain why so many of the fish are so different; they didn’t evolve like that, it’s just that most of them died. this logic could also be applied to the point of there being too many large species to sustain themselves. We know that leviathans like the sea dragon and emperor especially produce enzyme 42, making them more resistant to the bacteria. maybe there were more small creatures compared to the leviathans, but the kharaa hit the small creatures so much harder. Subnautica and below zero are may favorite games of all time, i’m trying to stay away from subnautica content to avoid spoiler filled thumbnails from filling my feed when 2 starts being in early access, but i’m glad I watched this one.
This is something I have wanted to see ever since I finished Subnautica years ago! I am currently studying to be a biologist and I absolutely adore Subnautica's world building and especially it's biology. It's one of my favorite games because it captures the same feeling I get when doing research or when in class. The ghost leviathan was always my biggest pet peeve. It has this tiny little mouth despite being a massive planktovore and I never liked that it would try to bite the player. It would've been cooler to see it evolve something like a gulper eel's huge mouth. Maybe, instead of making it territorial, they could've made it defensive to an extreme extent due to certain parasites it has. If parasites the size of the player regularly prey upon the ghost leviathans, and they have potentially poor eyesight from a dark environment, that combination could lend more believability to why they would attack the player. It could also explain them living in groups in the dead zone. Perhaps they evolved this trait to pick parasites off of one another While I love the sea dragon leviathan it felt very unbelievable compared to everything else. Not only does it breathe fire, but they also don't seem to have much, if any, prey large enough for them to stay alive, but that ties in to your comment about the biomass. I would've loved to see something like giant tube worms in the lava zone, since the area feels very bland and rocky. It could be interesting if dragons primarily ate these tube worms and were territorial over the lava zone where they live because they cultivate them, kind of like how ants cultivate certain plants and fungus. I do love the sea dragons for their faces though. They're adorably dorky looking and their eyes seem very gentle. The reaper leviathan is by far my favorite leviathan, and maybe even my favorite creature in the game. It's design feels very grounded and realistic. I love that it uses echolocation, explaining the huge roars. The flat face actually kinda makes sense with the mandibles. A lot of predatory animals evolve long faces or mouths to better hold onto prey, but the reaper's flat face makes sense with the huge mandibles it would use instead. Maybe the mandibles could've also evolved as "feelers" or sorts, initially helping it navigate close spaces in the dark or in heavily disturbed water. Over time, it began to rely on echolocation and the mandibles, with them eventually turning into a hunting and feeding tool as well. Perhaps it's eyes are vestigial, or serve some purpose no longer related to sight. I would love to see a longer video diving into the biology of the game and maybe some more detailed critique or concepts you'd like to see yourself. I've always wanted to see this game discussed from a marine biology perspective in depth, since the biology and ecology of subnautica is something I've adored ever since I started playing. Thank you for sharing and I hope to see more from you! ^-^
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)
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
This was an awesome video! I appreciated that you enjoyed the game and praised it where deserved, but didn't let it off the hook (pun intended) for things that it got wrong. I would love to see a series of videos breaking apart the different pieces of Subnautica's eco systems and marine biology in more detail with the knowledge you possess being applied to the video.
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.
9:05 Not all leviathans are too big to exist if taken out of the context of the small area of the game. Sea Treaders with their size of 20 meters are well within the range of plausible creatures - several whale species are larger, and even some landbound creatures on Earth have been bigger (primarily certain Sauropods). The 2X2 kilometer size of the crater is a problem though. If the Treaders had real space like a vast continental shelf they would make sense and could exist. Many creatures being one-offs could be explained by the game's story - don't forget that the planet is just going through a massive mass extinction event that is occuring in an extremely short time frame and is at least on the same levelas The Great Dying here on Earth if not worse.
Great video! Using examples Subnautica to showcase real marine biology side by side would be a cool way to teach people more about both. Just an idea. Love this game so much that even though I'm terrified of deep water I still played through the majority of it before I tapped out.
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!
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
My biggest dream is honestly a Subnautica where you use a BIG submarine to explore the big ocean abysses. Like an undersea monster hunter. The leviathans are crazy interesting and seeing how even the game says "leviathan" isn't a taxonomical category, I'd love to see more leviathan class beasties with increasingly massive bodies and unbelievable abilities. To me the tiny crater is like Hawaii or Aotearoa, a biodiversity hotspot that's completely different from the majority of the planet
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.
I love this video, it makes my heart happy. Now, in fairness to the difficulty in classifying these critters phylogenetically, this planet suffered a massive extinction event from the Kharaa bacterium, so having an absence of missing links between species can potentially be waved away by that. Additionally, the Reefbacks could have served as “food trucks”allowing the mingling of species that perhaps evolved on a completely separate seamount and thus share an extremely distant or nonexistent common ancestor with their new neighbors.
You should do an analysis on some of Subnautica: Below Zero's creatures, specifically some of the bigger and new ones since the smaller ones are going to be largely the same.
Incredible video! Im happy so many people have watched this because you deserve the support, do you think you will analyze Below Zero? Ive always felt it was less natural and unrealistic so I'm curious how you would feel with it
I’ve heard a theory that Aurora closed up an big exit of all cave systems with all the giants inside, that would otherwise roam freely in open waters, and they are basically stuck and going to die from starvation. And the reason why leviathans are in the caves is its nesting or breeding grounds, which also explains aggressive behaviour
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
One note about the crashfish: looking at how they're only ever encountered in their plant-like nests, one could assume it's some sort symbiotic relationship between them, perhaps the adults spread their eggs along with the plant's seeds by blowing up?
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 game does actually comment quite a bit on the evolutionary relationships between the various species. Mostly the different species of rays, but also quite a few others. I don't remember all the details but the databank contains an astounding amount of information. That is one thing new players often struggle with, because there is so much stuff to read, and the game actually expects you to read it all. Many entries are just lore/background info, but a lot of them also contain important clues, and as a new player you have no way of knowing which is which. Add to that the odd design choice that for many items/creatures scanning it and picking it up will unlock two different databank entries.
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
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
The relative abundance of Enzyme 42 in the Crater's immediate vicinity may well have *forced* the Ghosts to become territorial in their habits, because the ones that leave the area to traverse the open ocean end up dying of Kharaa. Only a lucky handful - maybe even just *one* genetically-anomalous individual, if they're self-fertilizing - retained their juvenile tendency to guard a territory into adulthood, stuck around the Crater's edge rather than migrated elsewhere, and therefore survived the initial outbreak a thousand years ago. The ones that patrol the Void in Ryley's day are their/its descendants.
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.
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. 😉😊
I wish I could play this again for the first time, that was so amazing, I was in awe, still am. Soma has this mind bending affect on me as well. I love it when a game makes you think.
I would LOVE if you covered the Gargantuan Leviathan. We only ever see bones of juveniles in game of it (the skull you showed in the lost river) but lorewise they go to the Dead Zone once they become adults and only go back to the shallower regions to lay their eggs. Since we can't really explore the Dead Zone I don't think we ever see an adult in game but the informations all there regardless
I'd love to see someone try to make a cladogram of the animals in this game and hypothesizing about what other large groups of animals the ones we see in game are related to that might have gone extinct, possibly taking into account below zero's animals too.
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.
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.
The Ghost Leviathans kinda make sense in my mind because they only really exist in the dead zone (outside of the one you find in that river zone) which apparently doesn't really have any life besides Plankton, Reefbacks, Gargantuan Leviathans, and the Ghost Levithans
Fellow marine scientist! Thank you for letting me know Sub 2 is going to exist! I had no idea!! One thing I really loved about this game was the prevalence of bio-luminescence. Absolutely everything has some form! Especially with the (somewhat) recent research being done into luminescence here on Earth! Also, I totally agree with the points you brought up and I can also see where they said ah, gameplay. Like the ampeel, they need to have a visual indicator that you should not touch! See dragon breathing fire is just for the cool though. Also I didn't notice the swimming patterns! I was too busy running away XD Are you going to analyze Below Zero as well? I'd love to see your take on the cold weather biomes.
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
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.
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
You KNOW the game is good when the sequel trailer drops and everyone replays the decade old original
Some games are timeless
Still holds up 🎉
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 😅
@@DiscoverWithDeLo After reading this, my head-canon is now that Crashfish are somehow created by the plant (and thereby part of it) and not an individual life. They explode to protect the plant, which then spawns another Crashfish. The data entry for Crashfish says they're simply symbiotic, but I like my idea more.
@@DiscoverWithDeLo I always thought that the plant contains the nest of the crashfish, and so the threat of explosion kept the youth safe. But as press start to laugh said: "what evolutionary advantage does exploding solve?"
@@quagsire898 Doesn't exploding "solve" all evolutionary advantages at once though?
@@Eleyvie technically the truth
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)
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.
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!
Common ancestor and divergent evolution perhaps?
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
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!
@@DiscoverWithDeLo Same as CyberMiner. Didn't notice anything (probably because it doesn't exist in my language). Also very used to the whole variety of pronunciations coming from all the UA-camrs who don't speak English as their first language. Perfectly understandable content imo. Keep up the good work and keep diving!
@@DiscoverWithDeLoOnly bullies care about that, don’t worry about it. Your presentation and editing is great, you clearly have a passion for what you do and that’s what matters.
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.
i love when youtubers do cutouts of themselves its cute
reminds me of dialtown
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!
A marine biologist's take on "insert video game or movie here" would be a series I would definitely watch. I think it's a niche you could definitely fill.
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
Holy shit im ALSO a Marine Biologist (BS in biomathematics, MS in progress in Conservation Technology) who streamed this game and I am SO excited to hear someone else talk specifically about the reaper and its mandibles, bc that ALWAYS caught my attention as most of my research was in arthropods! Plus your notes on cladistics were so accurate, it was amazing to hear your thoughts too!
AMAZING video! 10/10 :D
Came for subnautica stayed for the knowledge
There’s going to be a lot more of it in the near future!
i am BEGGING you to make a video analyzing every single species and environment in subnautica. i'd also like to see you talk about below zero!
Came to say the same! Though below zero is more land oriented, it would be so interesting to see your takes on how life evolved for that one.
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.
I felt so happy when u said that you decide to be a marine biologist because of Subnautica. I am studying to a be a Marine Engineer officer of Merchant Navy thanks to Subnautica too :))
If you’re interested in marine engineering, I would recommend checking out my most recent video, Full Ocean Depth! It’s the first episode in a 5 part series that will discuss the biology, physics, and history of how we conquered the oceans, and the remaining episodes will have a heavy emphasis on engineering.
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🫡
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
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)
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.
Something cool about the world is that 4546B is a planet with gravity that is a little lower than our planet, which makes it a little more believable for huge creatures to exist (still kind of unrealistic but aye, pair that with deep sea gigantism and y'know)
I wanted to bring up a really cool animal that pertains to the sea dragon!
There's a neat snail that lives next to sea vents in the Indian ocean called the Scaly-foot gastropod that have iron supported shells and their exposted bodies coverd in scary iron-mineralised sclerites to protect it from other snails.
It also has a symbiotic relationship with a bacteria in it's gut to which it gets it's nourishment from, possibly being their ONLY source of nourishment, and the bacteria is believed to play a role in how it's even able to incorperate the metal into their bodies in the first place.
They're also the only known extant animal that incorperate iron sulfide into it's skeleton.
So knowing that, the sea dragon doesn't feel as impossible, except for them spitting lava part. Still pretty crazy
I’ve never heard of that animal until now, that’s so cool! I might make a video about them
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.
That is a very good point and one I don't think I've come across before! It makes a lot of sense to me if part of their reproductive cycle included a specific diet when it was time to hatch their eggs, and even if they weren't intelligent there's plenty of examples of animals taking care of what are essentially crops (damselfish tending to and defending patches of a delicate species of algae, for example)
Aren't there some species of sharks that can live in volcanoes, or in volcanic waters?
Not only that, but The Scaly Foot Snail is known as the Volcano Snail
and Finally, there is the Lava Cricket, which we haven't really studied that much because they pretty much only go near volcanoes, and leave when vegetation starts to grow.
This is all to say, Justice for Sea Dragons.
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!
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!
Underrated channel, get this guy to 1k subs
201st sub
I love both Subnautica and marine science ,this is an awesome vid
As soon as I saw the title I remembered my ex getting mad at me for streaming this with her saying "what does any knowledge of earth's oceans have to do with a video game on an alien planet?" She thankfully never became a Marine Biologist and returned to the streets.
Great video, keep up the good work man, would love to see a longer series going through each fish and such
The biology in this game is super impressive and interesting, makes you want to scan everything
I absolutely love your voice. Cool video, not really in the mood, but I wanted to help you out in the algorithm because this genuinely seems really interesting, and you have a really cool voice so.
Subnautica is one of those experiences I wish I could stash my memories of it somewhere, and play it "first time" again. The two weeks I was going to sleep at 3am and waking up to work the next day were just amazing, despite the sleep deficit. The feeling of swimming underwater, the freedom to go anywhere, the feeling of exploration, the sad ending to the story. And the music fits so well, light and happy tunes in the shallow areas, switching to more dramatic melodies when going deeper. The times when I went through the chasms from 200-300 meters to 500+ and "Lava castle" was playing, will forever stay in my memory.
Also, so far it's the only game, where I was so focused on the monitor, my wireless headset decided to go to sleep because my head didn't move at all. At first I thought the game was bugging out, like having it running for too long, but during later cases I noticed the sound came back when I put the headset down.
why must you do me like this? 5:45
I was farming around the Aurora while listening to the video, almost died irl lol
I Also got scared As hell
If one day I'm at the beach swimming and someone plays the Reaper's roar on some loud speakers I will only stop running when I get home.😅
I love these kinds of videos that relate fictional biology/technology/geology/politics/etc to actual feasible real life counterparts and possibilities...
Hi, wanted to say that it was a great video to watch and would like to see more of you!
Its always nice to see videos like that, where X-expert aplies their knowledge of the field to various games, and you are not an exception. Would definitely watch more videos with you discussing other "water-themed" games. Also you can make vids where you focus on some specifics, like taking a certain creatures, leviathans for example, and discussing their design, "how" "why" and "is it a good design" stuff, offering ideas on how to improve it
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
Just wait until subnautica 2 comes out
I’m so excited for it!
@@DiscoverWithDeLo Same, Subnautica:Below Zero was a disappointing follow up, imo
I love Reefbacks, they're so fun to paint with water colors.
You just added so much depth to the Subnautica lore!
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
I love your png-type look, it looks like something like Spotto's g-mod-esque shorts for some reason, probably the clothing style
Thanks, I had that suit and tie sitting around and thought it would make for a goofy outfit so I took a bunch of pictures in different poses, and that’s what you’re seeing lol
@DiscoverWithDeLo Goofy indeed, I like it dude
Love love love!
The amount of research these developers surely did is impressive!! I love scanning everything possible and reading their excerpts. These aren't marine biologists making a game, these are game developers with an interest in marine biology. They put in amazing work so we can suspend disbelief and enjoy the game for its ecosystem and gameplay. You have some great points here and I'm glad you're totally obsessed with this game too!!
Hearing how subnautica inspired you to get into Marine biology put a smile on my face.
I too was inspired to study a field of science based on a cideo game. For me it was materials science because of Oxygen Not Included. Granted I am unable to achoeve said dreams but it makes me happy knowing how inspring games can be for others too.
This content it too high-quality for 400 subs! You deserve more subs dude!
loved this video and i have some lore to add on that might explain some things (i am not in any way a scientist so take everything I say with a drill-arm sized deposit of salt). When you arrive on 4546b the kharaa has been decimating the ecosystem for a very long time. I think somewhere in the disease research facility there’s a databank entry that explains that this caused a massive extinction event and everything you see in game are just the survivors. Maybe this could explain why so many of the fish are so different; they didn’t evolve like that, it’s just that most of them died. this logic could also be applied to the point of there being too many large species to sustain themselves. We know that leviathans like the sea dragon and emperor especially produce enzyme 42, making them more resistant to the bacteria. maybe there were more small creatures compared to the leviathans, but the kharaa hit the small creatures so much harder. Subnautica and below zero are may favorite games of all time, i’m trying to stay away from subnautica content to avoid spoiler filled thumbnails from filling my feed when 2 starts being in early access, but i’m glad I watched this one.
This is something I have wanted to see ever since I finished Subnautica years ago!
I am currently studying to be a biologist and I absolutely adore Subnautica's world building and especially it's biology. It's one of my favorite games because it captures the same feeling I get when doing research or when in class.
The ghost leviathan was always my biggest pet peeve. It has this tiny little mouth despite being a massive planktovore and I never liked that it would try to bite the player. It would've been cooler to see it evolve something like a gulper eel's huge mouth. Maybe, instead of making it territorial, they could've made it defensive to an extreme extent due to certain parasites it has. If parasites the size of the player regularly prey upon the ghost leviathans, and they have potentially poor eyesight from a dark environment, that combination could lend more believability to why they would attack the player. It could also explain them living in groups in the dead zone. Perhaps they evolved this trait to pick parasites off of one another
While I love the sea dragon leviathan it felt very unbelievable compared to everything else. Not only does it breathe fire, but they also don't seem to have much, if any, prey large enough for them to stay alive, but that ties in to your comment about the biomass. I would've loved to see something like giant tube worms in the lava zone, since the area feels very bland and rocky. It could be interesting if dragons primarily ate these tube worms and were territorial over the lava zone where they live because they cultivate them, kind of like how ants cultivate certain plants and fungus. I do love the sea dragons for their faces though. They're adorably dorky looking and their eyes seem very gentle.
The reaper leviathan is by far my favorite leviathan, and maybe even my favorite creature in the game. It's design feels very grounded and realistic. I love that it uses echolocation, explaining the huge roars. The flat face actually kinda makes sense with the mandibles. A lot of predatory animals evolve long faces or mouths to better hold onto prey, but the reaper's flat face makes sense with the huge mandibles it would use instead. Maybe the mandibles could've also evolved as "feelers" or sorts, initially helping it navigate close spaces in the dark or in heavily disturbed water. Over time, it began to rely on echolocation and the mandibles, with them eventually turning into a hunting and feeding tool as well. Perhaps it's eyes are vestigial, or serve some purpose no longer related to sight.
I would love to see a longer video diving into the biology of the game and maybe some more detailed critique or concepts you'd like to see yourself. I've always wanted to see this game discussed from a marine biology perspective in depth, since the biology and ecology of subnautica is something I've adored ever since I started playing. Thank you for sharing and I hope to see more from you! ^-^
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)
I would love a long form video of you explaining the species and everything! That would be awesome!
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
This was an awesome video! I appreciated that you enjoyed the game and praised it where deserved, but didn't let it off the hook (pun intended) for things that it got wrong. I would love to see a series of videos breaking apart the different pieces of Subnautica's eco systems and marine biology in more detail with the knowledge you possess being applied to the video.
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!
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
9:05 Not all leviathans are too big to exist if taken out of the context of the small area of the game. Sea Treaders with their size of 20 meters are well within the range of plausible creatures - several whale species are larger, and even some landbound creatures on Earth have been bigger (primarily certain Sauropods). The 2X2 kilometer size of the crater is a problem though. If the Treaders had real space like a vast continental shelf they would make sense and could exist.
Many creatures being one-offs could be explained by the game's story - don't forget that the planet is just going through a massive mass extinction event that is occuring in an extremely short time frame and is at least on the same levelas The Great Dying here on Earth if not worse.
This guy deserves way more subs, great video!
Great video! Using examples Subnautica to showcase real marine biology side by side would be a cool way to teach people more about both. Just an idea. Love this game so much that even though I'm terrified of deep water I still played through the majority of it before I tapped out.
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!
Im also a new biologist and man I wish i would have come up with an idea like this. Very solid work.
There’s plenty more to talk about! I only scratched the surface of this game and I’m sure you have lots you want to say too
Jotaro, you cant fool us with that face mask bro.
The giant fossil actually lives in the deep void (the edge) and it (probably) has a slow matabolism
I love videos about this kind of stuff, definitely subscribing!
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
Excellent video. I especially enjoyed the discussion of the game's geological features.
Here's another sub. Good vid. ( :
My biggest dream is honestly a Subnautica where you use a BIG submarine to explore the big ocean abysses. Like an undersea monster hunter. The leviathans are crazy interesting and seeing how even the game says "leviathan" isn't a taxonomical category, I'd love to see more leviathan class beasties with increasingly massive bodies and unbelievable abilities. To me the tiny crater is like Hawaii or Aotearoa, a biodiversity hotspot that's completely different from the majority of the planet
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
Bro, you are so underrated! New subscriber!!
I love this video, it makes my heart happy.
Now, in fairness to the difficulty in classifying these critters phylogenetically, this planet suffered a massive extinction event from the Kharaa bacterium, so having an absence of missing links between species can potentially be waved away by that. Additionally, the Reefbacks could have served as “food trucks”allowing the mingling of species that perhaps evolved on a completely separate seamount and thus share an extremely distant or nonexistent common ancestor with their new neighbors.
You should do an analysis on some of Subnautica: Below Zero's creatures, specifically some of the bigger and new ones since the smaller ones are going to be largely the same.
More ocean science content. I crave more. Please thank you.
More coming tomorrow morning!
Incredible video! Im happy so many people have watched this because you deserve the support, do you think you will analyze Below Zero? Ive always felt it was less natural and unrealistic so I'm curious how you would feel with it
This was such a cool analysis on a game I also love so much! ❤
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
Two, technically, with the aurora and it's radiation
All my support for this kind of video. Loved it
I’ve heard a theory that Aurora closed up an big exit of all cave systems with all the giants inside, that would otherwise roam freely in open waters, and they are basically stuck and going to die from starvation. And the reason why leviathans are in the caves is its nesting or breeding grounds, which also explains aggressive behaviour
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
One note about the crashfish: looking at how they're only ever encountered in their plant-like nests, one could assume it's some sort symbiotic relationship between them, perhaps the adults spread their eggs along with the plant's seeds by blowing up?
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
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 game does actually comment quite a bit on the evolutionary relationships between the various species. Mostly the different species of rays, but also quite a few others. I don't remember all the details but the databank contains an astounding amount of information. That is one thing new players often struggle with, because there is so much stuff to read, and the game actually expects you to read it all. Many entries are just lore/background info, but a lot of them also contain important clues, and as a new player you have no way of knowing which is which. Add to that the odd design choice that for many items/creatures scanning it and picking it up will unlock two different databank entries.
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
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
The relative abundance of Enzyme 42 in the Crater's immediate vicinity may well have *forced* the Ghosts to become territorial in their habits, because the ones that leave the area to traverse the open ocean end up dying of Kharaa. Only a lucky handful - maybe even just *one* genetically-anomalous individual, if they're self-fertilizing - retained their juvenile tendency to guard a territory into adulthood, stuck around the Crater's edge rather than migrated elsewhere, and therefore survived the initial outbreak a thousand years ago. The ones that patrol the Void in Ryley's day are their/its descendants.
Marine biology once again proving to be the superior science. Now name your favorite denovian or Cambrian sea creature
Truly one of the sciences of all time 😁 and I know it’s generic but Dunkleosteus for the Devonian and Anomalocaris for the Cambrian
@ good man. The only correct answers
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.
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. 😉😊
I wish I could play this again for the first time, that was so amazing, I was in awe, still am. Soma has this mind bending affect on me as well. I love it when a game makes you think.
9:05 this is due to them eating molten rocks to spit out, they don't biologically produce the fire
I would LOVE if you covered the Gargantuan Leviathan. We only ever see bones of juveniles in game of it (the skull you showed in the lost river) but lorewise they go to the Dead Zone once they become adults and only go back to the shallower regions to lay their eggs. Since we can't really explore the Dead Zone I don't think we ever see an adult in game but the informations all there regardless
I'd love to see someone try to make a cladogram of the animals in this game and hypothesizing about what other large groups of animals the ones we see in game are related to that might have gone extinct, possibly taking into account below zero's animals too.
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.
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.
Great Video Bud keep going
The Ghost Leviathans kinda make sense in my mind because they only really exist in the dead zone (outside of the one you find in that river zone) which apparently doesn't really have any life besides Plankton, Reefbacks, Gargantuan Leviathans, and the Ghost Levithans
Keep up the videos bro!
Fellow marine scientist! Thank you for letting me know Sub 2 is going to exist! I had no idea!! One thing I really loved about this game was the prevalence of bio-luminescence. Absolutely everything has some form! Especially with the (somewhat) recent research being done into luminescence here on Earth! Also, I totally agree with the points you brought up and I can also see where they said ah, gameplay. Like the ampeel, they need to have a visual indicator that you should not touch! See dragon breathing fire is just for the cool though. Also I didn't notice the swimming patterns! I was too busy running away XD Are you going to analyze Below Zero as well? I'd love to see your take on the cold weather biomes.