Hey guys! Hope you enjoyed the video! Sorry for the quiet audio, background static, and inconsistent sound levels... new mic and new recording studio. Sometimes it’s hard to tell the problems while editing. Will fix next time. Also Avatar came out in 2009, not 2012... man am I old.
Trey, u've doomed yourself, becuz avatar has a confirmed sequel, which will more than likely show new creatures, and u will have to update the entire ecosystem.
Being a moon, could Pandora have spent significant amounts of time in darkness (in the shadow of the main planet), resulting in the bioluminescence present in the creatures?
this is actually canon, yes! pandora spends approximately half its time in a dusk-like light, and (even though it has never been completely truly dark i believe?) this has resulted in the bioluminescence of much of the flora and fauna alike!
@The Martial Lord of Loyalty the lights could scare off predators as a warning of toxins or something like a dart frog. Also flowers on earth have pretty colors too because they need animals to notice them to reproduce
Night Of Wishes Absolutely, the effects in this film still put modern films to shame. I just hope that there will truly be another film and James Cameron hasn’t been toying with us for 11 years..
Andres V. Don’t know if that’s how they’re planning to film, but they’re definitely being expeditious with their filming process. They certainly have more movies planned to follow, and from what I’ve heard, will be released within two years of one another.
The sequels are exploring the ocean areas of Pandora. A Na'vi tribe that specializes in diving will be introduced. Edit: I've just looked up the Avatar film series on Wikipedia. Sources are provided. Kate Winslet is gonna have a role as a tribemember of the diving Na'vi. The films are taking awhile because of the staggered shoots/production and how to motion capture water movements.
I was hoping he would’ve mentioned the weird hair tentacle things most of the animals have that allow the Na’vi to connect to them. Kinda seems like an evolutionary symbiosis that would super interesting to discuss
@@SquishyTheVampire that parts just magic nothing like that would occur naturally. Diffent species wont just have some random physical connection to each other
@@queenrutabaga it doesn't seem impossible... I mean there's constantly energy flowing through everything living thing. Still feel like it should at least be addressed 🤷
@@SquishyTheVampire The extension of the nervous system is also seen with the banshees, direhorses, and leonopteryx indicating that these animals evolved from a common ancestor. The real question I'm thinking about is whether the hair for their braid is grown from the spinal cord thing, or if it is woven around the cord from the top of their head.
The flora and fauna on Pandora developed bioluminescence because Pandora enters extended periods of complete darkness during it's orbit around Polyphemus.
@@myewzek2913 not if everything else is glowing, too... in fact, if they *didn't * glow they would be spotted easier since they'd be a giant, colorless black patch in a cascade of glowing, bright flora.
@@myewzek2913 do you know how camoflauge works? you could say the same thing about any earth animal with camo. if earth animals are too stupid to tell the difference between swaying grass and a striped tiger, i think pandoran animals function the same way.
@@duckietheduck pfft have you seen tiger camouflage dude? Even humans couldn’t notice that, it’s not a question of IQ lol. Tigers have great camouflage that allows them to blend into the grass as if they are grass. The dogs in the movie don’t have flower-shaped camouflage, they wouldn’t be mistaken for flowers like a tiger is mistaken for grass.
Did you notice that the Na'vi had four fingers instead of five? The main protagonist has five becuase to make the body they fused human DNA with that of the native.
I’m sort of surprised that both planets use the same DNA and cell structures making avatars possible it seems to me that both planets life must have begun in the same place, panspermia perhaps ?
I feel that the Na'vi, when they became hunters and gatherers, their limbs fused to strengthen as a single arm..and since they no longer rely on climbing such as the Lemerus..instead began to use running, putting more energy into only 2 single arms and leg muscles, my opinion.
or it could be vestigial rather then fused. As the Na'vi developed tool use and left the tree's they used their second set of arm's less and less leading them to shrink in size, Much like we see with the forelimbs in tyrannosaurs. Only the na'vi have lost them completely and now there's just a tiny second set of shoulder bones in their torso.
Tldr; yes the navi have fused limbs 4 as hand and 2 as legs. I remember reading this somewhere on the internet. A back take of the movie Avatar of some sort i think. James Cameron actually want the Navi to have six limbs to made them look like those hindu deity hence the name Avatar. But animating those extra 2 limbs human skeleton on an actor is a nightmare to mame and its look too fake and unatural due to technology is still not good enough at that time, the marketing also wanted the Navi to have 4 limbs too because 6 limbs cat-human-alien would be too bizzare for a normal audience. But James Cameron is really upset about that because this is his masterpiece and he wanted it perfect. Having 4 limbs while all other creature have 6 will ruin the immersion of a possible "real world" so he consult that guy who design all these creature and they compromise it by explainung that the Navi have fused limbs, 4 limbs fused together and make a hand that look like human and the other 2 is their legs. As for those banshee(ikran) i dont remember they were mention in this article so i dont know sorry.
@@oneklump I can only imagine they fused together, as a good portion of the discussion on this video showcased the image of the lemur whose arms are literally half way fused. Like, they're fused all the way to the elbow.
@@oneklump Well, if it offered an evolutionary advantage, it can occur. Mutations do happen where limb fusions are the by-product. Also there is a close example in seal tails where this can occur. The monkeys shown have half of their arms fused, so perhaps their relatives the Na'vi had their arms fused further, aiding in the development of better grip and capacity to throw, resulting in more food gain and the raise of intelligence.
10:05 preditors usually look forward at their prey so their eyes are usually mounted towards the front of the skull. Herbivores need to have a wider range of vision so they can see predators coming, so their eyes are usually set towards the side of the head so that they can see more coming from the sides. Makes sense that the preditors are losing the eyes on the sides of their heads, its wasted energy.
@@jdtv50 look at wolves and big cats none have the need to check their blind spots cuz they are the alpha predator of their biome. No one to check for if your the badest around
@@waltrz not so, carnivores have eyes always set towards the front and focus on one object for the kill. herbivores need extra eyes to cover more areas to look out for carnivores.
sadly due to the game being well...a game, it's got a biosphere as well developed as a blank polaroid. Below Zero is expanding on it but....eh...I hold no hope that it will give more than a puddle's worth of depth to it.
Dont worry. Alternate universe you has one and you’re basically living the same life but the other you prob has had his tail stepped on a lot so to him it gets annoying 😂
There may very well be worlds out there that are even more fantastical and beautiful, if that makes you feel any better. Maybe we'll never see them with our own eyes, maybe we will. That would sort of depend on how the next few centuries of human history plays out.
@@zefft.f4010 I mean there's a chance that we could see inter galatic colonisation within decades if the correct scientific breaks throughs happen. First rule of science we know nothing we just guess from what we can see
@@conormulligan7966 I don't know about colonisation, but exploration with probes within the next decades could very well be possible. I mean, even if we find worlds that support life, that doesn't mean they can support human life. Humans are fragile. Interplanetary colonisation would be a *huge* and incredibly dangerous undertaking.
@@zefft.f4010 if some form of worm hole that allowed travel within the universe as a whole (entirely pseudo science but still theoretically possible) and we where to find a planet in the goldie locks zone we could send probes and military personal along with scientist to set foundation and confirm safety, will we live to see empire built in different galaxies? Probably not but nothing is impossible
@@conormulligan7966 Even if the planet is in the goldielocks zone and has native "animal" life doesn't mean it can support life from Earth. There are so many other things that need to be just right.
@@federalbureauofinvestigati3128 Yet they have alot of cat-like features such as a nose that looks very sensitive (which is backed up by a scene in which Jake sniffs briefly to pick up a faint scent), sharp fangs, pointy and very movable ears, eyes with EXTREMELY adjustable retinas suggesting they can see in very low light conditions and of course a tail, which is even seen flailing desperately to stabilize Jake's first moments on his feet after he first links with his avatar. And while I'm not exactly a fan of the term "cat people" either I do see why people tend to call them that.
I support the bone fusion hypothesis. One can see the lemur creature has been fused just below the elbow. Second the Na’vi have for fingers, two from each limb fused.
@@_MaZTeR_ Not necessarily. Bones can fuse (this happens in animal development as well), or they can disappear over time (see the vestigial limbs of animals like whales or snakes).
I never noticed this before but the space Monkeys have vestigial wing flaps. They might have branched off from the Flyer family and became arboreal. Then some fused their forelimbs to create a vastly stronger pair of arms.
But what if they're not fused? I mean, the point where their arms split is at the wrist (count the joints) and everything after that is just fingers. Seems like an odd point to fuse to me o:
The main thing that keeps me from accepting the navi as invading aliens is they've adapted a direct brain connector that joins with the antenna of the rest of the creatures.
Yeah, the fact that ALL creatures still have the antennae leads me to think that Pandora has been guided through evolution by Eywa. I think sentience evolved from the "Zooplantae" (its a thing on pandora) and Eywa went on to guide the evolution of the planet from that point on.
@@MRCOLOURfilld eywa is kind of a natural AI so there's no telling what it's possible of doing. I really am fascinated by the entire concept of a planet wide neural network that is essentially a nature created version of the internet. I would rather the movie be about the humans trying to steal that on top of whatever other resources they could take from pandora. I would think there's a lot besides just one dumbly named metal.
No need to imagine soon! The sequels will explore the oceans of Pandora and there’s a video game coming out called Frontiers of Pandora which will take place on the Great Plains.
in a way the navi do have "antena" in the form of that ponytail, braid, tendril thing. although yes, in comparison to the other fauna of pandora they seem to have misplaced noses and a missing pair of limbs
LoreFreak I think that the limbs have conjoined due to having to hunt bipedal wise and the nose? I would say that the nose is used to be for display but then they were used to smell and eventually breathe in fact you can see a little bit of a split inbetween both of the limbs on the arms
Rexy Burke that might also explain the four digit hand, you can see the human Navi hybrid having a five digit hand. So it makes sense that it would fuse.
The prolemuris appear to have some kind of nasal opening tho, even if they possess operculum. I don't really see how a nasal opening could have developed (and even taken over completely in the Na'vi) when operculums appear to be quite superior from the start xD. Oh well, evolution is the master of spontanious randomness that sometimes just creates things without a purpose.
@@mellwie the operculums while allowing superior airflow would not be a very good filter allowing debris in the air directly into the lungs. Although they may have adapted a better way of tolerating foreign particles in the air than us,and exhaling right out of the lungs instead of a larynx may have enough force to exspell any particles anyway. It is likely they have no sense of smell, unless they have modified bronchi specialized for that porpose. So in that idea it is possible Navi devoloped their humanoid nose if at some point in their evolution having a sense of smell became important.
"it's probably wrong somewhere if not entirely" i know it's a really small thing, but i just love how honest you are about that and how much you reinforce the fact that this is purely speculative.
Was waiting for you to mention that the monkey dudes literally have partially fused limbs. You can see it right there in the picture. Could be the beginning of a process that continued in the Na'vi.
Further evidence supporting the limb fusing theory: The prolemuris seems to have three sets of limbs, but only four 'shoulders'. It looks like the prolemuris is part-way through its own limb fusing, now with the upper two sets of limbs being connected at the elbow. As a side note, the prolemeris seems to have facial nostrils too, so perhaps it is also losing its operculum in favor of a nose like the Na'vi.
Also, by the looks of it, the secondary hands have only 2 digits, didn't see the primary hands, but im assuming it has either 2-3 digits...... the Navi have 5 digit hands. The lung openings seem less pronounced and possibly entirely closed up, the Prolemuris has the beginings of a similar nose structure as the Navi, so it is possible it is either in transition to mouth breathing or already does. I doubt having the lung openings on the lower neck/collarbone area would be that useful for a tree dweller, having thier arms always up above thier heads, it would restrict breathing considerably.
@@cubiusblockus3973 Na'vi actually have 4 digits. But on most pictures the hands of Avatars are seen, which actually are scientifically constructed hybrids with human DNA, which causes them to have 5 digits like our hands.
Sonny N. Me too. Lions are social pride animals. Whereas the other big cats are mainly solitary except for breeding, raising young or temporary team ups for hunting bigger prey or protection.
Probably actually more like a lion or tiger. Both animals specialize in killing prey larger than themselves. Jaguars are not specialized in the same way.
hey since your a biologist, i need help. im a freshman in highschool, and i want to do something in biology for my future, maybe a paleontologist, or evolutionary biologist. Do you know any realistic jobs in that area?
@@yomamaballsinmyw don't go into paleontology if you want to have a secure future. I myself had to double down on my master in microbiology with another master in bioinformatics. There are infinite jobs if you know how to code. So yeah, the most secure way would be bioinformatics where you can do evolutionary analysis on a genetic level. But coding ain't for everybody. There are countless roads to happiness. Allways follow your heart.
@@hase2703But human hair most likely derived from the fur of apes, whereas other creatures have no hair or fur in the world of avatar. So it might be a weird mutation that lived on too.
@@harusakurai4722 Well going off what we know here on earth hair on the head primarily serves a role in heat insulation and cooling. We also know that fur is primarily about heat insulation. Perhaps the Navi migrated from a colder area of pandora?
The Na'vi bones are often stated to be incredibly strong, I think in the movie they're compared with maybe titanium. Is it possible limb fusing could cause reinforced or denser bones?
@@lochness5524 Not exactly. They are reinforced with naturally occuring carbon fiber, according to Quaritch. Just as Reinforced Concrete has iron bars in it
I would not think the --fusing-- of limbs would alter the density of the bones inside. At least not in terran biology. Bone density can be altered as a reaction of change of preferred lifestyle. So both fusing and bone density growth can be caused by the same but would not be caused by the other.
3:03 - Earth's sun is actually strongest in the green part of the spectrum (which makes green leaves pretty inefficient). A different theory for why plants are green is that a different branch of microorganisms than the one that ended up in plants was purple, so the light reflected from those was easily absorbed by green organisms: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purple_Earth_hypothesis If this is true then it's a bit of a historical accident that the largest photosynthesizing organisms on Earth are green (given our sun's spectrum), so even a planet with the same kind of star as Earth might end up with plant-like lifeforms that are a different color.
Pretty sure it's because chlorophyll is both easiest to make and most resilient. Nothing to do with purple earth, but it's a nice idea like the aquatic ape theory. It's not very efficient, they've managed to improve on it in the lab but the changes wouldn't have been practical in nature. Hard to find elements and etc, plants are doin the best they can with what they got. That's all. It's the perfect combination of efficient energy production and easy to create/maintain proteins/structures/metabolites.
Since our solar spectrum peaks at green, photosynthesizing organisms seek to avoid the peaks, capturing all other light instead. This ensures a stable, constant source of energy.
Interestingly James Cameron originally wanted the Na’vi to have 6 limbs (4 arms) like most of the fauna of Pandora, but the animators just couldn’t make it look good/natural so they scraped the idea.
Funnily enough, that John Carter film had 4-armed creatures who moved quite naturally. I'll always remeber how the Willem Defoe martian used two of his hands as platforms and a third one as a human figure to comunicate John's leaps.
Perhaps a route similar to the District 9 aliens might have been feasible? Those have two small vestigial arms sort of sunken into the sides of their thorax. I always found that cool, but maybe it would've looked ridiculous on Na'vi. I also think that the way they mix human and Na'vi DNA to create the Avatars in the story, that might have created issues with the operators' nervous systems (but then again the Avatars have functional tails - but arms and hands and fingers are a lot more complex structures for a brain to control)
@Tim Versteeg They crashed on the moon in hibernation state, without water they'll simply remain in hibernation. Plus, they're not extremophiles, they don't thrive, just resist.
My personal theory about the Na'vis' distinctivness is that the Na'vi are part of a lost branch of the Pandora tree of life like Humans are for Hominids. It's possible that many similar species once existed but where wiped out.
@@someguy7723 whilst I can’t deny the BTS explanation for why there so human like, I also have to acknowledge that Jacob here has a very valid point. There are dozens of species alive today that look very different from anything us, but through genetic analysis and the fossil record, can be linked to other living species. Jacobs example is a good one. We look very different from Chimps and Bonobos, but we know we evolved from apes like them not only through genetics, but thanks to the fossil evidence of extinct members of the Homo genus and the various Australopithecines and their relatives. And then there’s the Non-Avian Dinos, who are basically transitional from more reptilian Archosaurs like crocs to Avian Dinos (Birds), and Indohyus, a hooved deer like animal that was closely related to the ancestors of Hippos, but was also the ancestor to Whales and Dolphins. In Pandoras case, the fossil record should provide species that help explain where the Navi fit in the Pandoras family tree, and how they transitioned into their more human like body plan. But we don’t just need the fossil record, cuz we already have a living species that can provide more clues as to how they transitioned, the Prolemuris. They have nostrils on their heads, single qeue (the organ the Navi use to bond with their mounts) and no extra set of eyes, just like the Navi, but they they have limbs transitioning from 6 limbed to 4 limbed, with their first pair of limbs fusing into the single pair we see in the Navi. They already provide part of the evolutionary story that led to the Navi, but the fossil record will provide even more, or we may see other species of primate like animals that will bridge the gap between the Navi and other Pandoras wildlife
@@someguy7723 or no. The logic is dumb because he’s using six beasts to determine the Navis biology like pandora isn’t a whole planet with millions of life forms.
"Hope you sleep well tonight knowing this could probably be done on a human if we wanted to." Tiny brain: "can our designer babies be tall and smart?" Galaxy brain: "can our designer babies have a second face on their extra arms?"
@DraKaleel 18 I would argue it eventually wouldn’t be perfection but preference. Perfection would only come once we can change our own genetics whenever we wish as human brains constantly change and tastes change, but babies would be restricted by the knowledge and preference of parents.
@DraKaleel 18 Yeah baby altering is questionable at best, though if you throw morals out the window it wouldn’t be much different than altering a chimpanzee and maybe more ethical than many other things we do. Not that it is ethical .
It's interesting but I'm slightly disapointed that so little attention went to Eywa and the tree of souls. The idea that the native life forms could link together in some way is something that never happened on earth and would be an intresting biological aspect to really delve into.
@@isoinic4575 More like a global consciousness kind of connection. The trees on pandora are all connected through the root systems, and they conduct electrical impulses like neurons in your brain. It's basically a global nervous system that other animals can directly connect to to access memories stored in this global "brain". It's like the idea of mother earth if she was a real, physical, measurable thing. Such a cool concept and I really hope they explore it more in the future
@@moisttowlette1247 Presumably, because it's placement makes it difficult, if not impossible, to resurface properly for multiple breaths. You may even be forced to float on your back, thus exposing yourself, just to take a proper breath. Actually, this could potentially explain why they lost the third set of limbs; it would be more drag and oxygen expenditure. Perhaps, due to their size, they're early ancestors lived primarily in trees (to avoid the much larger predators), but also free diving to find good sources of protein (as many of the herbivores are far too massive to bring down with more advanced tools). 6 limbs requires more energy and oxygen, and adds additional weight, none of which is advantageous to a creature who would need to reach great heights in trees, with relative speed; and rely of free diving for better quality/quantity protein.
Oliver Yarrow my theory is that the two antenna fused into one since it wasn’t needed for touch identification like seen with the horse like creatures and to keep it out of the way of the reduced eyes
Their "humerus" bones of their arms also already appear to be fused. They originate from a single joint. They also appear to have small secondary nostrils, or the beginnings of them, coupled with the reduced "operculum" size. Given that the Prolemuris is tree dwelling where the arms are a major part of locomotion and the Na'vi are bipedal and less specialized, it's not that shocking to think selection pressure would act against a redundant arm when it's not essential. Idk, all fun to think about.
9:34 Thanator probably lost it's second pair of eyes because it has no natural predators and the viperwolf retained them because even though they are predators and rare as it may be they probably are still preyed upon by the aforementioned Thanator and though small they would probably still detect movement well enough or even possibly help them keep track of their group when hunting since they are pack animals and also probably hunt herd animals. Thought the Thanator strangelly seem to have it's eyes located facing the sides as opposed to a better front facing binocular vision of most predators, even the viperwolf has better front facing eyes. Banshees lost their back pair of limbs probably because they don't use them for feeding like Leonopteryx probably do to hunt them(like eagles use their talons) and at the same time this makes them much more light and maneuverable to avoid Leonopteryx and probably hunt small agile prey like bats or dragonflies hunt insects. Fanlizards are probably carnivorous since the don't seem to have a big gut necessary to digest plant matter which would also make they heavier hindering their unique spinning evasion behavior. Personally it makes no sense that one of their pair of limbs did not evolve to produce their spiral davincilike fan, though i guess it could be a structure similar to the sails on some prehistoric animals, using their spine but not likely. Now my personal opinion about the efficiency of having 3 pairs of limbs is they they probably would not help terrestrial animal as much as arboreal ones but they would certainly be useful in for flying and swimming organisms and possibly would also help small animals (most arthropods body design can't be wrong), it' all has to do with the way locomotion in different body plans behave in fluids like air and water at different speeds and scales.
@@TrajGreekFire Probably in an open field but Thanator seems like it prefers the jungle where there is a lot of tree cover and even if it did hunt in the jungle, it's massive wing spawn would give it trouble, the trees in Pandora are really tall and Thanator does not seem very arboreal so it probably hunts more often on the floor out of reach of Toruk, even Harpy eagles that are specialized for hunting between tree branches don't normally hunt ground dwelling prey like peccaries and their diet consists primarily of canopy animals like sloths and monkeys with the occasional bird like toucans, another thing to point out is that Toruk doesn't have very big talons proportional to body size like eagles which would hinder it when plucking prey from the canopy on the fly so i don't think it prefer that hunting style, but it would be suited for eating carrion since talons really don't matter for that though it's head crest would get in the way.
The new one that is releasing looks awsome. Check it out on Avatar's official youtube channel. Some seriously awesome designs in that game unseen in the movie, only from the trailer.
You should check out Zoe Kravitz BTS footage of her acting. It’s clear that the animation of the time just wasn’t advanced enough to capture her performance. Which is truly heart breaking
Or at least be able to leap tall buildings in a single bound 😉. Actually, though, their bones and muscles would weaken over time, just like astronauts' do in microgravity. Maybe that's why Superman's powers are now attributed to the light spectrum of our sun, rather than to Earth's gravity.
Don't try to apply science to Comics, it will just give you a headache. If you think Superman is OP, then you probably don't know much about comics; Superman is really only a mid-level character in his universe. There are lots of characters in both DC and marvel who completely spit in the face of science.
The navis arms did fuse. Just look at the lemurs fingers, they only have two fingers on each hand. The Navi have 4 fingers on each hand. Fuse two arms together that have 2 fingers on each hand you get 4 fingers. Love your videos, they're always very interesting!
It's really fascinating how beautifully you came up with these theories, especially the Na'avi one. One small request is to keep the sound of the quirks in tandem with the volume of the narration. My eardrums have bled out completely, which I think, is an evolutionary process for humans.
Honestly, I find it interesting that the hunted animals all have fully developed pairs of eyes at their sides, as if it was evolutionarily advantageous to determine the distance of a thread *cough cough* while the secondary hunter species has a smaller secondary eye at it's side indicating it was still somewhat on the look out but primarily focusing on prey in front of it, while the primary hunter only has one pair of eyes, disregarding sideview completely. What is weird is that the only hunter that is mentioned to be truly singular (and flying) still has four eyes, as if it had to watch out for beasts dive-bombing it outta the sky... Probably retainer from it's youth?
i know this is two years old but considering the geology of Pandora (floating islands, lots of dense fog), i imagine keeping the 4 eyes as an avian would still be pretty vital
And then again, if your biggest threat while flying were other flying reptiles, it'd make sense for you to keep two eyes at each side to get full depth perception at any angle
The animals on Pandora look so casual, they don't look like a bunch of strange monsters, but rather "real animals", they are so believable that i could imagine them here on Earth
I think the limb fusion is the most accurate hypotheses on how the na'vi are functional tetrapods. In prolemurus they have a total of 4 digits on each "double arm" which would eventually evolve into one functional limb with opposable thumbs. Has for the nose its possible that the operculum were moved to the mouth to better determine what fruits were ripest and/or distinguish toxic plants from edible ones in prolemurus like ancestors and the callor nostrils were lost in the upright na'vi due to the fact that having huge openings that lead directly to your respiratory system that face upwards would likely cause you to drown everytime it rained. So respiration was eventually handeled solely by the "nose"
Something to consider is that we see an incredibly small region of the planet, its possible that there was some sort of na’avi diaspora. We might not be able to see anything that looks like them because they’re just not native to that region.
Some Guy homo sapien ‘James Charles’ is a hermaphroditic subspecies of homo sapien that is capable of not only breeding with two sexes but also seeks the main line homo sapien sapien, scientists still don’t know why the creature evolved to prefer heterosexual human males however
I love it when people work hard to incorporate biology in their shows and games, because when they truly work hard, it makes sense and it's fun. I love watching videos on biology, and the ones with Roanoke about The Last Of Us and Dead Space.
There’s a movie called “Astro Kid” where all of the aliens are clearly inspired by oceanic life, complete with hexapodal structure. Give it a look and you’d be able to do this exact same thought exercise!
Another Theory regarding the blue sexy cat people could be that they evolved not on another planet, but am isolated part of Pandorra. In this case, terrestial life could have convergently evolved twice on the same planet, once from a group of lifeforms with 6 limbs, but also from a group which was either isolated for long enough to evolutionary loose 2 limbs, or not even develop them at all. Since the Na Vi kind of resemble us humans in terms of body structure and intelligence, it is likely that once their species became succesful, it spread over the whole planet by surpassing the isolating factor of their original habitat.
The Navi are pretty contrived but another possibility is that like humans, they evolved on a different continent of pandora (where all of their close evolutionary cousins still reside) and crossed over via canoes or a land-bridge to where the film is set. Still, I think giving them four arms, four eyes, and maybe those chest air canals in addition to noses would have been an easy way to make them fit into the ecosystem a bit more without making the romance weird
Perhaps pigment was developed* for better camouflage in the darkness of the jungle? The thana has a very lithe build compared to the herbivorous prey it would hunt, so stealth attacks are probably its best bet. We see this in the scan where the thana sneaks up on the protagonist (I havent watched this movie in a long time, sorry). Anyway, bright, big, white long fangs would stand out in the darkness of the jungle, so it would be advantageous for them to be harder to see. That's my theory anyway. *Im not sure what the color is for the other carnivores and thus whether it is developed or ancestral
It may be a structural adaptation so the carnivores teen can withstand pulling and tearing forces associated with a predatory lifestyle, similar to how many species of birds have darkened edges on their primary feathers, a common place of stress. It’s likely that the cause of pigmentation isn’t necessarily a ‘pigment’, more a specialized layer of protein or enamel that just happens to be coloured.
Alisa AKA Smallociraptor. Our teeth are made of calcium which is also the base matter of our bones. In the movie, the avatarian creature’s bones are made of carbon fiber which is black as the other carbon compounds except diamond. I think that the teeth are made of the same material with their bones just like us. Hence, the teeth are black.
They mention that animals on this planet have natural carbon fiber bones in the movie. So it's likely it could be concentrated there to make their teeth resilient enough to eat creatures
I can watch this film over and over simply because of the world. The world is absolutely amazing. Also I thought Pandora was in the Alpha Centauri system.
@@umbrellabirb2959 Neteri, Sutay, Dr. Grace, Quatrich and Jake Sulley. I suspect that the people who actively hate on the film, to the extant that they will comment on forums their disdain, are subconsciously or consciously offended by the politics of the film. It can't be because the story is common because story drama critics have commented for hundreds of years on the small set of of popular narratives. I mean Star Wars is the most blatant example of derivative storytelling I can think of but it doesn't get the type of hate Avatar gets. Oh well, remember, there may be one or two 'good' ones but fuck the sky devils! :)
Part 2 about Pandoran neurobiology and the interconnectedness of the planetary ecosystem through trees and biochemistry such as natural carbon fiber in na'vi skeletal structure
a follow up about how the psychic pony tails might work would be really cool- what if banshee and navi are part of their own totally separate tetrapodal psychic tree
Ey'wa is the electromagnetic connection the entire planet shares, the same connections Na'vi have in their braids which allows them to sync with the trees/animals/each other. Ey'wa is pandora.
Crusadetheist YT so basically its like the giant fungis networks on Earth except that it is spread moon wide and is basically become sentient of sorts?
@@byronee similar to the fungus networks on Earth: yes. Sentient: no. So the electromagnetic connections that can be accessed by the Na'vi on the spirit trees are sort of like access points for uploading/downloading data. That's why when Jake hooks up to one you can hear laughing, talking etc. Nothing about Ey'wa is sentient...as I'm writing this I remember the ending of the movie :| Pandora may be sentient. Edit: I have no explanation for the rush of beasts that assisted the Na'vi other than a sentient planet. I'm freaking out. So assuming that Pandora/Ey'wa is sentient in some way, it must have deliberately sent electromagnetic signals to every beast within several hundred kilometers to help them out, maybe god. Ok assuming Ey'wa is just data like I said, could she be the amalgamation of every Na'vi's consciousness? Like when they hook up to the sex trees does their consciousness get fused into a sort of intraplanetary hivemind?
Crusadetheist YT I think the planet itself(including flora but excluding fauna) is best explained more like one giant brain, rather than it being compared to a computer. The way information travels across it is similar to the nervous system(the flora possibly acting as nerve endings) and it's not only the na'vi who are able to access this nervous system, it's the fauna. All fauna possessing a kind of antenna(the na'vi's existing in their braid, though it's more obvious in "tamable" fauna) Anything able to access this nervous system externally rather than internally was seen coming to save the day, and it's said before in that montage of Jake learning to be Na'Vi/Omaticaya, that Neytiri had been explaining to him that *everything* is connected, through the water, the trees, what they eat, is all connected through Eywa(the nervous system of the planet-moon). idk is just a theory
@@geeky9609 That's a really good theory, and the reason I compared it to a computer is ripped straight out of the movie. Still, can't wait to see how James Cameron expands on this world in the next movie.
I always thought of the Thanator as more reminiscent of a Jaguar, rather than a lion, as it is an agile, powerful and cat-like jungle predator; as opposed to the less mobile and stockier lion which hunts in mainly in the open savannah
Marcus O he made that comparison in reference to its niche, not hunting strategy, also Tigers hunt primarily in jungles, but the point he wanted to make was its the apex predator of its territory, very few things could even come close to challenging it
I think more leopard like, I think the only reason it's compared to a lion or tiger is because of it's muscular body as well as it's spiny frill that makes it look lionesque. Leopards are known to be almost impossible to stop in the wild and masters of stealth, as the thanator evolvon to have sleek, black skin would help it stalk unnoticed in a jungle, espeacially at night, though I think it's crepuscular, I haven't been able to look too closely at it's pupils :p
CollegeWiFi Their ability to also go almost entirely unnoticable as well is what I was talking about? They're also well known for being very hard to spot. I know the Thanator can't climb, I was relating it's ability to be stealthy to a leopard, not it's ability to climb, nor it's habitat.
One thing to note is also the lack of antennae in Xenoprimates, or rather... the different from the antenna takes. The Na'vi do possess antennae, but they seem quite different than those of other life forms. It's the strands of brain matter they weave braids around and lets them "connect" to the other animals and also access the neural network of Pandora (something I was surprised you didn't touch on tbh) And speaking of the neural network it could also have played a part in the evolution. We know that the network can be accessed by all animals using the antennae and that there is an intelligence inside it (which the Na'Vi have deified into what they call Eywa), and Eywa is able to command creatures to do certain things. It wouldn't be out of the realm of possibility for said intelligence to compel some animals to selectively breed with each other in such a way that certain characteristics would arise, and the fact that the Na'Vi antenna is the only one that looks like it can connect to other animals makes me think that perhaps it bred Xenoprimates selectively to create an intelligent species of its own design of sorts. Granted, unlike Earth which seems to have no such intelligence, the Pandoran Neural Network is a factor that could make it possible, even if it does sound sort of creationist. The real reason is still probably "We want these aliens to be humanoid and attractive to our primate brains, and also we want them to be one with nature and the moon so we can do the environmentalist bit", but I feel like even by starting with this wish and working backwards, that could be a plausible in-universe explanation. As to why Eywa decided that spiracles, second pair of eyes and a secondary pair of arms weren't evolutionary advantageous... that's most likely a product from the working backwards bit. Let's just say that "it happened"
Wayyy back when, at least 2 or 3 years before the movie came out, I was watching an old tech demo where the developers of the avatar game were describing the setting of the new world they were working with, an alien planet where humans could not survive, but could live there via proxy by streaming their consciousness into "Avatars," man made creations of human and alien dna that could thrive in the hostile conditions. While not exactly cannon at that point, I always believed that the navi were simply escaped early versions of these human/alien hybrids that were able to flourish during the long gaps between ships arriving from earth. Based on the timeline of the iphone version of the game, which was cannon and based 75 years prior, and the rapid spread of horses into north america or dingos in australia, as well as the assumption that one of the first ships to pandora, shortly after 2084, had the technology to achieve a cloned alien human hybrid similar to the one in the film, as well as a much more grand assumption of perhaps relativistically faster time dilation on pandora compared to earth, its not impossible that in the 60-ish earth years, multiple generations of human created navi could have colonised pandora, intentionally or unintentionally. So basically I think that navi look so human because they were basically failed attempts at a way to allow humans to live on another planet, and the story was changed a bit in the latter portion of those 10 years of development to showcase new filming tech with a more digestible movie and a tried and true underdog native story.
Do you see the possibility of revisiting this theory with the new information we get from the new film? This is one of my favourite videos related to Avatar and I would love to see more!
Remember the antenna that's on all the other creatures has evolved to the long ponytail thing show on the Na'vi, that's why it can react to all the other creatures, so it didn't disappear like you stated it probably just changed to that overtime
I'd just like to point out an error at ~ 2:40 , the spectrum of the sun is actually strongest in green light. The reason why plants use green pigment is not because that blue and red is stronger. Purple photosynthetic protists also exist on Earth, but for some reason green is more abundant. There must be some other factors other than just which wavelength the sun produces the most of.
@@mrd1703 I love PBS EONs! I've already watched thatone lol. I was just referring to how Trey said that, "plants on Earth are only this green colour due to it being the most efficient pigment to absorb the wavelengths of sun light that reaches the Earth's surface, typically strongest in the red and blue wavelengths." A more accurate time stamp would be 2:55 I guess. I also find it interesting how, many plants and algae also produce other pigments too such as carotenoids which absorb some green light. Photosynthesis is just such a complex topic, which I am definitely not an expert in.
Actually, plants are green because when chlorophyll first came to existance, the purple pigment alrady existed. Billions of years ago it was purple bacteria that dominated the oceans, creating layer that absorbed green light and reflected purple light (hence the name of the bacteria, 'cause they look purple). The chlorophyll-using bacteria evolved later, in slightly deeper part of the ocean (under the layer of purple bacteria), so they adapted to wavelenghts they had available. Chlorophyll-based photosynthesis resulted in oxygen as a byproduct, which changed the environment in the ocean resulting in massive decline of purple bacteria. Photosynthetic mechanisms tend to change very little over course of evolution, and thus after colonazing land plant life still stick with chlorophyll, despite the fact that they no longer have to deal with purple bacteria blocking other wavelengths of light. The source for my information is Polish ecology textbook "Life and evolution of biosphere" by January Weiner (higly recommend it if it was ever translated into English, although unfortunately I highly doubt it). Edit: of course that's a leading theory, not a 100% fact; it makes a lot of sense tho and I believe it is widely accepted by biologists.
I was able to read a book detailing the work that was put into designing each creature. What i found really interesting was that the concept artists wanted to convey that the banshees evolved directly from a native creature similar to our flying fish, growing powerful wing-like fins and claws for grasping the side of cliffs.
Q Anon God I used to love that thing. I had every single species learnt off lol, now I keep thinking of that one weird plant called bladder polyp Good times, good times.
After each Avatar movie, please do this again. I loved it so much that I want you to update the Pandoran Evolutionary Tree as new information and animals are released.
The opercula at the bases of the neck of each of the creatures seems like a evolutionary flaw to me when it comes to land creatures. Unless they can hold their breath for minutes or still breathe through their mouths, they can't cross deep rivers and such. Also, Terran predators kill their prey often by suffoocating it through biting their throat. If Pandoran creatures only breathe through their opercula I wonder how predators kill their prey. Edit: I hope that we'll find some hints to answer questions about the evolutionary ancestor of the Na'vi. Maybe a different type of Pandoran primate.
Here’s my tree with the what I will call peregrines gigas aemulor With them splitting up 10 million-ish years when they had the barebone structure of small limbs which lead to it eventually becoming human looking this is a guess
Hey guys! Hope you enjoyed the video!
Sorry for the quiet audio, background static, and inconsistent sound levels... new mic and new recording studio. Sometimes it’s hard to tell the problems while editing. Will fix next time.
Also Avatar came out in 2009, not 2012... man am I old.
We all are
Trey, u've doomed yourself, becuz avatar has a confirmed sequel, which will more than likely show new creatures, and u will have to update the entire ecosystem.
Amazing Charizard _yes_
TREY the Explainer fun fact for wings flies actually often do appear in nature and they’re actually better flyers in there too win and counterpart
Summa cum laude pro scientia speculativa! Very well done!
Being a moon, could Pandora have spent significant amounts of time in darkness (in the shadow of the main planet), resulting in the bioluminescence present in the creatures?
Makes Sense
also thick jungle cover causing the floor to be very dark, reason for 4 eyes?
Yes I agree
this is actually canon, yes! pandora spends approximately half its time in a dusk-like light, and (even though it has never been completely truly dark i believe?) this has resulted in the bioluminescence of much of the flora and fauna alike!
@The Martial Lord of Loyalty the lights could scare off predators as a warning of toxins or something like a dart frog. Also flowers on earth have pretty colors too because they need animals to notice them to reproduce
The film was actually released in 2009, which makes the effects of the film all the more impressive to me.
Yeah, it was VERY ahead of it's time. I say it'll still be impressive if it were to come out now.
Night Of Wishes Absolutely, the effects in this film still put modern films to shame. I just hope that there will truly be another film and James Cameron hasn’t been toying with us for 11 years..
@@SpudEater the sequel is in the works with even higher standards, as far as I know
@Ben Graham wtf no? he wrote the scripts but it would be dumb as hell to film 4 high production movies at the same time wtf
Andres V. Don’t know if that’s how they’re planning to film, but they’re definitely being expeditious with their filming process. They certainly have more movies planned to follow, and from what I’ve heard, will be released within two years of one another.
Can’t even imagine what lives in the cave systems and oceans of the planet
The sequels are exploring the ocean areas of Pandora. A Na'vi tribe that specializes in diving will be introduced.
Edit: I've just looked up the Avatar film series on Wikipedia. Sources are provided. Kate Winslet is gonna have a role as a tribemember of the diving Na'vi.
The films are taking awhile because of the staggered shoots/production and how to motion capture water movements.
C P how do you know this
@@excesssivelyboot6495 James Cameron confirmed it.
@@ekc9922 when and where
@@Weeklyice look at their page and also they officially released concept art teasing it. He's said it himself lmao
I was hoping he would’ve mentioned the weird hair tentacle things most of the animals have that allow the Na’vi to connect to them. Kinda seems like an evolutionary symbiosis that would super interesting to discuss
Exactly! I feel like that's a super important part that throws out the Na'vi being non native to the world.
@@SquishyTheVampire that parts just magic nothing like that would occur naturally. Diffent species wont just have some random physical connection to each other
@@queenrutabaga it doesn't seem impossible... I mean there's constantly energy flowing through everything living thing. Still feel like it should at least be addressed 🤷
@@SquishyTheVampire The extension of the nervous system is also seen with the banshees, direhorses, and leonopteryx indicating that these animals evolved from a common ancestor. The real question I'm thinking about is whether the hair for their braid is grown from the spinal cord thing, or if it is woven around the cord from the top of their head.
@@charliemedema86 I think the hair is a part of the spinal cord. I feel like it would hurt them to cut it, or they would feel it at the very least.
The flora and fauna on Pandora developed bioluminescence because Pandora enters extended periods of complete darkness during it's orbit around Polyphemus.
Why would glowing help them if not for reproduction of plants, herbivores would just get hunted easier and the carnivores would get seen easier
@@myewzek2913 not if everything else is glowing, too... in fact, if they *didn't * glow they would be spotted easier since they'd be a giant, colorless black patch in a cascade of glowing, bright flora.
@@duckietheduck but if they glowed then you would be able to see the glowing spots in the vague shape of a giant dog moving around, don’t you think?
@@myewzek2913 do you know how camoflauge works? you could say the same thing about any earth animal with camo. if earth animals are too stupid to tell the difference between swaying grass and a striped tiger, i think pandoran animals function the same way.
@@duckietheduck pfft have you seen tiger camouflage dude? Even humans couldn’t notice that, it’s not a question of IQ lol. Tigers have great camouflage that allows them to blend into the grass as if they are grass. The dogs in the movie don’t have flower-shaped camouflage, they wouldn’t be mistaken for flowers like a tiger is mistaken for grass.
Did you notice that the Na'vi had four fingers instead of five? The main protagonist has five becuase to make the body they fused human DNA with that of the native.
i did! and ithought it was a pretty cool detail,
The prolemuris also has two fingers, so the theory that the na’vi arms are fused forelimbs makes even more sense now
I’m sort of surprised that both planets use the same DNA and cell structures making avatars possible it seems to me that both planets life must have begun in the same place, panspermia perhaps ?
@@blocks1198 yeah thats what i thought
Yes
I feel that the Na'vi, when they became hunters and gatherers, their limbs fused to strengthen as a single arm..and since they no longer rely on climbing such as the Lemerus..instead began to use running, putting more energy into only 2 single arms and leg muscles, my opinion.
or it could be vestigial rather then fused. As the Na'vi developed tool use and left the tree's they used their second set of arm's less and less leading them to shrink in size, Much like we see with the forelimbs in tyrannosaurs. Only the na'vi have lost them completely and now there's just a tiny second set of shoulder bones in their torso.
Tldr; yes the navi have fused limbs
4 as hand and 2 as legs.
I remember reading this somewhere on the internet. A back take of the movie Avatar of some sort i think. James Cameron actually want the Navi to have six limbs to made them look like those hindu deity hence the name Avatar. But animating those extra 2 limbs human skeleton on an actor is a nightmare to mame and its look too fake and unatural due to technology is still not good enough at that time,
the marketing also wanted the Navi to have 4 limbs too because 6 limbs cat-human-alien would be too bizzare for a normal audience.
But James Cameron is really upset about that because this is his masterpiece and he wanted it perfect. Having 4 limbs while all other creature have 6 will ruin the immersion of a possible "real world"
so he consult that guy who design all these creature and they compromise it by explainung that the Navi have fused limbs, 4 limbs fused together and make a hand that look like human and the other 2 is their legs. As for those banshee(ikran) i dont remember they were mention in this article so i dont know sorry.
@@schmushschroom3873 except that's not how evolution works. Limbs do not fuse together, one set grows larger and the secondary set become vestigial.
@@oneklump I can only imagine they fused together, as a good portion of the discussion on this video showcased the image of the lemur whose arms are literally half way fused. Like, they're fused all the way to the elbow.
@@oneklump Well, if it offered an evolutionary advantage, it can occur. Mutations do happen where limb fusions are the by-product. Also there is a close example in seal tails where this can occur. The monkeys shown have half of their arms fused, so perhaps their relatives the Na'vi had their arms fused further, aiding in the development of better grip and capacity to throw, resulting in more food gain and the raise of intelligence.
10:05 preditors usually look forward at their prey so their eyes are usually mounted towards the front of the skull. Herbivores need to have a wider range of vision so they can see predators coming, so their eyes are usually set towards the side of the head so that they can see more coming from the sides. Makes sense that the preditors are losing the eyes on the sides of their heads, its wasted energy.
If anything I believe it takes over the role of eliminating the predators blind spots
@@jdtv50 look at wolves and big cats none have the need to check their blind spots cuz they are the alpha predator of their biome. No one to check for if your the badest around
SpartanGaming yea and none of them have another pair of eyes that could only go 2 immediate ways after it’s use gets well.. used up
Yeah, but two extra eyes would only make them better predators. It’s bizarre to think that such a benefit would be evolved away.
@@waltrz not so, carnivores have eyes always set towards the front and focus on one object for the kill. herbivores need extra eyes to cover more areas to look out for carnivores.
I absolutely agree that Pandora's biology is the most interesting part of the movie!! Avatar is one of my favorite films, just for this reason!!
Avatar and aliens are like no other
I got the book because of this reason. Is so cool
me too.
The worldbuilding is so good, but sadly the movie itself is mediocre.
@@wasserruebenvergilbungsvirus yeah I always say that it's really cliche but also not at the same time. Still love the film though.
Imagine the kinds of fossils found on Pandora.
I have some ideas
Pandorasaurus rex
Eonavias xenosapien
Sturmaceretops collosis
@@user-mp8wy8lp4y ideas?
@@Mark-Wilson yeah
Would it be possible that pandora never had any massive extinctions? Some new creatures look like dinosaurs instead of modern animals
Maybe the fossils of a Jesussource Rex 🤔
TREY, my man. If you like speculative/alien biology you have got to check out Subnautica, its got a ton of that stuff.
That'd be awesome
One of the most terrifying games I've ever played. I don't like the open ocean. This a great game nonetheless.
sadly due to the game being well...a game, it's got a biosphere as well developed as a blank polaroid. Below Zero is expanding on it but....eh...I hold no hope that it will give more than a puddle's worth of depth to it.
Also monster hunter
That would be so fun
Trey: talks about limb fusion and limb loss
Me: "I'm still salty that human evolution threw out the tail :| "
Dont worry. Alternate universe you has one and you’re basically living the same life but the other you prob has had his tail stepped on a lot so to him it gets annoying 😂
Meh it probably wouldn't be prehensile so it would just be one more thing to worry about
okay furry
What about having only 2 hands instead of 4?
How else would you sit?
Pandora is such a beautiful world, it almost makes me sad it's fictional
There may very well be worlds out there that are even more fantastical and beautiful, if that makes you feel any better. Maybe we'll never see them with our own eyes, maybe we will. That would sort of depend on how the next few centuries of human history plays out.
@@zefft.f4010 I mean there's a chance that we could see inter galatic colonisation within decades if the correct scientific breaks throughs happen. First rule of science we know nothing we just guess from what we can see
@@conormulligan7966 I don't know about colonisation, but exploration with probes within the next decades could very well be possible. I mean, even if we find worlds that support life, that doesn't mean they can support human life. Humans are fragile. Interplanetary colonisation would be a *huge* and incredibly dangerous undertaking.
@@zefft.f4010 if some form of worm hole that allowed travel within the universe as a whole (entirely pseudo science but still theoretically possible) and we where to find a planet in the goldie locks zone we could send probes and military personal along with scientist to set foundation and confirm safety, will we live to see empire built in different galaxies? Probably not but nothing is impossible
@@conormulligan7966 Even if the planet is in the goldielocks zone and has native "animal" life doesn't mean it can support life from Earth. There are so many other things that need to be just right.
"The sexy blue cat people"
Honestly, they do look pretty damn lit tho
They re not cats
@@federalbureauofinvestigati3128 Yet they have alot of cat-like features such as a nose that looks very sensitive (which is backed up by a scene in which Jake sniffs briefly to pick up a faint scent), sharp fangs, pointy and very movable ears, eyes with EXTREMELY adjustable retinas suggesting they can see in very low light conditions and of course a tail, which is even seen flailing desperately to stabilize Jake's first moments on his feet after he first links with his avatar.
And while I'm not exactly a fan of the term "cat people" either I do see why people tend to call them that.
@@DualDesertEagle also there tendency to hiss
@@xenodrone3367 True.
No its, it's Cosplay.
I support the bone fusion hypothesis.
One can see the lemur creature has been fused just below the elbow.
Second the Na’vi have for fingers, two from each limb fused.
If that's the case, they should have twice the amount of bones in each arm
@@_MaZTeR_ Not necessarily. Bones can fuse (this happens in animal development as well), or they can disappear over time (see the vestigial limbs of animals like whales or snakes).
I like to think the same, but if thats true they should have only 3 toes.
I never noticed this before but the space Monkeys have vestigial wing flaps. They might have branched off from the Flyer family and became arboreal. Then some fused their forelimbs to create a vastly stronger pair of arms.
But what if they're not fused? I mean, the point where their arms split is at the wrist (count the joints) and everything after that is just fingers. Seems like an odd point to fuse to me o:
THIS SHOULD BE REVISITED!!! I’m so excited to see if you’d look at analyzing the newest movie to add onto these theories
Waiting for the update!!
Yes I love all the plesiosaurus and placoderms inspired sealife
Yep
@@Ulta_Nagenki Its out now!!
great news!
The designer did initially try to make the Navi with fused limbs, but scrapped the idea after all they said in film test footage was "General Kenobi"
ChoccyMilk but will his light saber make a fine addition to the Na’Vi collection?
you are a bold one to assume that they wouldnt say it
More like General Grevious
Dennis Adams a famous quote by general grevious being "General Kenobi", hence the joke
i wonder what a sith na'vi would look like
me, indeed, wondering: pictures a red na'vi slaying some na'vi kids
Instead of Cryptozoology, is this Fictozoology?
Called speculative zoology
Aliens with a fanzier name
It's what Roanoke does for games
Speculative fictio-xenozoology
Speculative xenozoology
The main thing that keeps me from accepting the navi as invading aliens is they've adapted a direct brain connector that joins with the antenna of the rest of the creatures.
That's what I was thinking honestly
Yeah, the fact that ALL creatures still have the antennae leads me to think that Pandora has been guided through evolution by Eywa. I think sentience evolved from the "Zooplantae" (its a thing on pandora) and Eywa went on to guide the evolution of the planet from that point on.
@@MRCOLOURfilld eywa is kind of a natural AI so there's no telling what it's possible of doing. I really am fascinated by the entire concept of a planet wide neural network that is essentially a nature created version of the internet. I would rather the movie be about the humans trying to steal that on top of whatever other resources they could take from pandora. I would think there's a lot besides just one dumbly named metal.
@@urahara64360 in planet eart we have micorhizas (hope i didn't ruin that) that do just that. You shoud check it!
@@andreeiras2735
Are you talking about the wood wide web?
Imagine what could be living in the Deserts, Oceans, Great Plains, Coniferous Forests, or even the Polar Regions
There are no Desserts in Pandora. Went to Disney and had REALLY detailed data about the moon
No need to imagine soon! The sequels will explore the oceans of Pandora and there’s a video game coming out called Frontiers of Pandora which will take place on the Great Plains.
@@kevinmccall3041 didn't they also show a temperate forest in the trailer as well?
@@Teag_Brohman15 you should go to biblaridion's channel to see stuff like that but in his own kind of alien planet
I really hope they get to show that in the sequels. The beautifully thought out wildlife and nature is the heart of avatar.
“The common ancestor on Pandora looked a bit like this”; *ad with human singing loudly.*
The common ansestor of Pandora looked a bit like this: "When I make loops, I want them to sound like me!"
"The common ancestor on Pandora looked a bit like this:" *Bearded man appears on screen and begins telling me about soap*
The common ancestors of Pandora looked like this: Get’s an add where people keeps getting viruses on their computers while they panic.
"The common ancestor of Pandora looked abit like this" *woman telling me that they're fixing a drug addiction problem in communities or something*
@@puffedrice4624 thats actually a good commercial
Yeti soap or something for men? Lol
in a way the navi do have "antena" in the form of that ponytail, braid, tendril thing. although yes, in comparison to the other fauna of pandora they seem to have misplaced noses and a missing pair of limbs
LoreFreak I think that the limbs have conjoined due to having to hunt bipedal wise and the nose? I would say that the nose is used to be for display but then they were used to smell and eventually breathe in fact you can see a little bit of a split inbetween both of the limbs on the arms
Rexy Burke that might also explain the four digit hand, you can see the human Navi hybrid having a five digit hand. So it makes sense that it would fuse.
That’s what I was thinking too
The prolemuris appear to have some kind of nasal opening tho, even if they possess operculum. I don't really see how a nasal opening could have developed (and even taken over completely in the Na'vi) when operculums appear to be quite superior from the start xD. Oh well, evolution is the master of spontanious randomness that sometimes just creates things without a purpose.
@@mellwie the operculums while allowing superior airflow would not be a very good filter allowing debris in the air directly into the lungs. Although they may have adapted a better way of tolerating foreign particles in the air than us,and exhaling right out of the lungs instead of a larynx may have enough force to exspell any particles anyway.
It is likely they have no sense of smell, unless they have modified bronchi specialized for that porpose. So in that idea it is possible Navi devoloped their humanoid nose if at some point in their evolution having a sense of smell became important.
"it's probably wrong somewhere if not entirely"
i know it's a really small thing, but i just love how honest you are about that and how much you reinforce the fact that this is purely speculative.
i really like trey. he is definitely one of the best youtubers out there.
Was waiting for you to mention that the monkey dudes literally have partially fused limbs. You can see it right there in the picture. Could be the beginning of a process that continued in the Na'vi.
The lemurs dont appear to have tails tho wonder where that could have come from
and also the four finger's in stead of the monkey's two! (the main protagonist has five because he's a mix of the gene's of human's and na'vi)
@@asiakai9955 You can pretty easily see that it does have a tail
@@kylerBD turns out i am blind
@@asiakai9955 haha happens to the best of us
Did the quirk count scare the hell out of anyone else?
Lol 😂
yea it was crazy loud
Yeeeeeaaaaaaas
Yup :/
Yeah that was awful 😂
Further evidence supporting the limb fusing theory: The prolemuris seems to have three sets of limbs, but only four 'shoulders'. It looks like the prolemuris is part-way through its own limb fusing, now with the upper two sets of limbs being connected at the elbow.
As a side note, the prolemeris seems to have facial nostrils too, so perhaps it is also losing its operculum in favor of a nose like the Na'vi.
And neither does it have antennae.another evidence supporting the theory of a common ancestor between them and the Na'vi.
Also, by the looks of it, the secondary hands have only 2 digits, didn't see the primary hands, but im assuming it has either 2-3 digits...... the Navi have 5 digit hands.
The lung openings seem less pronounced and possibly entirely closed up, the Prolemuris has the beginings of a similar nose structure as the Navi, so it is possible it is either in transition to mouth breathing or already does. I doubt having the lung openings on the lower neck/collarbone area would be that useful for a tree dweller, having thier arms always up above thier heads, it would restrict breathing considerably.
@@cubiusblockus3973 Na'vi actually have 4 digits. But on most pictures the hands of Avatars are seen, which actually are scientifically constructed hybrids with human DNA, which causes them to have 5 digits like our hands.
Prolemuris also have only one pair of eyes.
I always thought of thanator more as a jaguar than a lion or tiger.
Sonny N. Me too. Lions are social pride animals. Whereas the other big cats are mainly solitary except for breeding, raising young or temporary team ups for hunting bigger prey or protection.
I thought panther
@@derpyfox1014 Panthers are jaguars with melanism
I think he is trying to say that the thanator is an apex predator with a big cat-build such as lions or tigers
Probably actually more like a lion or tiger. Both animals specialize in killing prey larger than themselves. Jaguars are not specialized in the same way.
Talking: *quiet*
Me: *turns sound up*
Bell sound: "allow me to introduce myself"
I ruined it I put the likes to 70 evil laugh
@@jamesmtob1562 you... monster... how are we supposed to get the NICE now
@@jamesmtob1562 nooooooooo
Being a biologist myself I have to say: Good job! Technically absolutely accurate.
hey since your a biologist, i need help. im a freshman in highschool, and i want to do something in biology for my future, maybe a paleontologist, or evolutionary biologist. Do you know any realistic jobs in that area?
@@yomamaballsinmyw don't go into paleontology if you want to have a secure future. I myself had to double down on my master in microbiology with another master in bioinformatics. There are infinite jobs if you know how to code. So yeah, the most secure way would be bioinformatics where you can do evolutionary analysis on a genetic level. But coding ain't for everybody. There are countless roads to happiness. Allways follow your heart.
Hair seems specific to the navi species. I haven't seen it anywhere else
It may be because of adaptation throughout evolutions. Like how human hairs differs to animal hairs.
@@hase2703But human hair most likely derived from the fur of apes, whereas other creatures have no hair or fur in the world of avatar. So it might be a weird mutation that lived on too.
It might not be hair though, it has that weird connective power. Maybe some form of antenna?
@@harusakurai4722 Well going off what we know here on earth hair on the head primarily serves a role in heat insulation and cooling. We also know that fur is primarily about heat insulation. Perhaps the Navi migrated from a colder area of pandora?
Doesn't the deer like creature have hair on its back?
The Na'vi bones are often stated to be incredibly strong, I think in the movie they're compared with maybe titanium. Is it possible limb fusing could cause reinforced or denser bones?
Actually, their bones were made out of Carbon Fiber
@@lochness5524 Not exactly. They are reinforced with naturally occuring carbon fiber, according to Quaritch. Just as Reinforced Concrete has iron bars in it
I would not think the --fusing-- of limbs would alter the density of the bones inside. At least not in terran biology. Bone density can be altered as a reaction of change of preferred lifestyle. So both fusing and bone density growth can be caused by the same but would not be caused by the other.
3:03 - Earth's sun is actually strongest in the green part of the spectrum (which makes green leaves pretty inefficient). A different theory for why plants are green is that a different branch of microorganisms than the one that ended up in plants was purple, so the light reflected from those was easily absorbed by green organisms: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purple_Earth_hypothesis
If this is true then it's a bit of a historical accident that the largest photosynthesizing organisms on Earth are green (given our sun's spectrum), so even a planet with the same kind of star as Earth might end up with plant-like lifeforms that are a different color.
Pretty sure it's because chlorophyll is both easiest to make and most resilient.
Nothing to do with purple earth, but it's a nice idea like the aquatic ape theory.
It's not very efficient, they've managed to improve on it in the lab but the changes wouldn't have been practical in nature. Hard to find elements and etc, plants are doin the best they can with what they got. That's all.
It's the perfect combination of efficient energy production and easy to create/maintain proteins/structures/metabolites.
I mean there are some red algae on earth that take advantage of a different spectrum.
Since our solar spectrum peaks at green, photosynthesizing organisms seek to avoid the peaks, capturing all other light instead. This ensures a stable, constant source of energy.
@@Bakumatsu1 PBS Eons did a video on the Purple Earth hypothesis. You should check it out
I've never dropped everything I was doing so quickly.
Same
Yep same
Same I stopped everything so I could be the first one to comment
same
Wait you stopped crusading for this?
Interestingly James Cameron originally wanted the Na’vi to have 6 limbs (4 arms) like most of the fauna of Pandora, but the animators just couldn’t make it look good/natural so they scraped the idea.
Funnily enough, that John Carter film had 4-armed creatures who moved quite naturally. I'll always remeber how the Willem Defoe martian used two of his hands as platforms and a third one as a human figure to comunicate John's leaps.
Perhaps a route similar to the District 9 aliens might have been feasible? Those have two small vestigial arms sort of sunken into the sides of their thorax. I always found that cool, but maybe it would've looked ridiculous on Na'vi. I also think that the way they mix human and Na'vi DNA to create the Avatars in the story, that might have created issues with the operators' nervous systems (but then again the Avatars have functional tails - but arms and hands and fingers are a lot more complex structures for a brain to control)
Can you do a sequel to scientifically plausible aliens?
YES YES YES
YES YES
This is it, sort of
Tim Versteeg but there’s no liquid water.
@Tim Versteeg They crashed on the moon in hibernation state, without water they'll simply remain in hibernation. Plus, they're not extremophiles, they don't thrive, just resist.
YEs
My personal theory about the Na'vis' distinctivness is that the Na'vi are part of a lost branch of the Pandora tree of life like Humans are for Hominids. It's possible that many similar species once existed but where wiped out.
Or you know. They wanted to make them look like people so that you would cheer for them... its lazy and bad story telling
@@someguy7723 Yeah.
@@someguy7723 whilst I can’t deny the BTS explanation for why there so human like, I also have to acknowledge that Jacob here has a very valid point. There are dozens of species alive today that look very different from anything us, but through genetic analysis and the fossil record, can be linked to other living species. Jacobs example is a good one. We look very different from Chimps and Bonobos, but we know we evolved from apes like them not only through genetics, but thanks to the fossil evidence of extinct members of the Homo genus and the various Australopithecines and their relatives.
And then there’s the Non-Avian Dinos, who are basically transitional from more reptilian Archosaurs like crocs to Avian Dinos (Birds), and Indohyus, a hooved deer like animal that was closely related to the ancestors of Hippos, but was also the ancestor to Whales and Dolphins.
In Pandoras case, the fossil record should provide species that help explain where the Navi fit in the Pandoras family tree, and how they transitioned into their more human like body plan.
But we don’t just need the fossil record, cuz we already have a living species that can provide more clues as to how they transitioned, the Prolemuris. They have nostrils on their heads, single qeue (the organ the Navi use to bond with their mounts) and no extra set of eyes, just like the Navi, but they they have limbs transitioning from 6 limbed to 4 limbed, with their first pair of limbs fusing into the single pair we see in the Navi.
They already provide part of the evolutionary story that led to the Navi, but the fossil record will provide even more, or we may see other species of primate like animals that will bridge the gap between the Navi and other Pandoras wildlife
@@someguy7723 How is it lazy or a bad story telling, you think Avatar would be successful if they looked like monsters?
@@someguy7723 or no. The logic is dumb because he’s using six beasts to determine the Navis biology like pandora isn’t a whole planet with millions of life forms.
Now I want to draw an avatar with 4 eyes, 6 limbs and that breathing thing on their chest I forgot the name of
@L E Yea, an operculum is just a flap of skin, like we have in our throat or a slug has on its breathing hole
I wanna see that drawn 👀
Antenae. Don’t forget antenae
@@Ballin4Vengeance i forgot man, i did that ayear ago
"Hope you sleep well tonight knowing this could probably be done on a human if we wanted to."
Tiny brain: "can our designer babies be tall and smart?"
Galaxy brain: "can our designer babies have a second face on their extra arms?"
Must say i'm more hoping we learn to read this, so we can spot a deformed baby before it gets born into a life of suffering.
@DraKaleel 18 Why would you put perfectionism and dystopian together
Gattaca moment
@DraKaleel 18 I would argue it eventually wouldn’t be perfection but preference. Perfection would only come once we can change our own genetics whenever we wish as human brains constantly change and tastes change, but babies would be restricted by the knowledge and preference of parents.
@DraKaleel 18 Yeah baby altering is questionable at best, though if you throw morals out the window it wouldn’t be much different than altering a chimpanzee and maybe more ethical than many other things we do. Not that it is ethical .
It's interesting but I'm slightly disapointed that so little attention went to Eywa and the tree of souls. The idea that the native life forms could link together in some way is something that never happened on earth and would be an intresting biological aspect to really delve into.
What do you mean it doesn't happening on earth? We are literally connected via microorganisms
@@isoinic4575 We are talking about completely different things here.
@@isoinic4575 More like a global consciousness kind of connection. The trees on pandora are all connected through the root systems, and they conduct electrical impulses like neurons in your brain. It's basically a global nervous system that other animals can directly connect to to access memories stored in this global "brain". It's like the idea of mother earth if she was a real, physical, measurable thing. Such a cool concept and I really hope they explore it more in the future
They get into even more in the 2nd movie
The quest of Eywa coming soon
The Navi probably lost the oppercullum to allow themselves to swim longer to be able to hunt.
But the oppercullum are capable of closing, why not just take in s large breath of 'air', close the Oppercullum, and go under?
@@moisttowlette1247 Presumably, because it's placement makes it difficult, if not impossible, to resurface properly for multiple breaths. You may even be forced to float on your back, thus exposing yourself, just to take a proper breath.
Actually, this could potentially explain why they lost the third set of limbs; it would be more drag and oxygen expenditure. Perhaps, due to their size, they're early ancestors lived primarily in trees (to avoid the much larger predators), but also free diving to find good sources of protein (as many of the herbivores are far too massive to bring down with more advanced tools). 6 limbs requires more energy and oxygen, and adds additional weight, none of which is advantageous to a creature who would need to reach great heights in trees, with relative speed; and rely of free diving for better quality/quantity protein.
@@MortyKaiShalom Ah, sorry for the other reply, I thought you were about a different arguement and I got confused, you have valid points.
@@MortyKaiShalom Also the opercullum can also move to the back, like with whales have their nostrils on their foreheads; Blowholes.
@@moisttowlette1247 That's true, but I think you'd have to spend a considerable amount of your life, in the water, to facilitate that, however.
Another point is that the prolemuris has one central antenna, type thing, like the navi. This means they are probably closely related.
Oliver Yarrow my theory is that the two antenna fused into one since it wasn’t needed for touch identification like seen with the horse like creatures and to keep it out of the way of the reduced eyes
It could also be to keep it from catching branches in its arboreal lifestyle. Since the na'vi are also semi arboreal it fits with them as well.
Their "humerus" bones of their arms also already appear to be fused. They originate from a single joint. They also appear to have small secondary nostrils, or the beginnings of them, coupled with the reduced "operculum" size. Given that the Prolemuris is tree dwelling where the arms are a major part of locomotion and the Na'vi are bipedal and less specialized, it's not that shocking to think selection pressure would act against a redundant arm when it's not essential.
Idk, all fun to think about.
"The sexy blue cat people"
Never noticed that they were cat people
Watched the movie 8 times ...
Their like a mix of lions and humans but blue
@@waspman7775 Blue humanoid cat lemurs.
😂😂 same
They're furrys
I notice them looking like cats all the time 😂 I just end up saying Kitty planet instead of Pandora.
Avatar has always been my favorite movie, has honestly inspired me to create my own species and stuff like this
9:34 Thanator probably lost it's second pair of eyes because it has no natural predators and the viperwolf retained them because even though they are predators and rare as it may be they probably are still preyed upon by the aforementioned Thanator and though small they would probably still detect movement well enough or even possibly help them keep track of their group when hunting since they are pack animals and also probably hunt herd animals.
Thought the Thanator strangelly seem to have it's eyes located facing the sides as opposed to a better front facing binocular vision of most predators, even the viperwolf has better front facing eyes.
Banshees lost their back pair of limbs probably because they don't use them for feeding like Leonopteryx probably do to hunt them(like eagles use their talons) and at the same time this makes them much more light and maneuverable to avoid Leonopteryx and probably hunt small agile prey like bats or dragonflies hunt insects.
Fanlizards are probably carnivorous since the don't seem to have a big gut necessary to digest plant matter which would also make they heavier hindering their unique spinning evasion behavior. Personally it makes no sense that one of their pair of limbs did not evolve to produce their spiral davincilike fan, though i guess it could be a structure similar to the sails on some prehistoric animals, using their spine but not likely.
Now my personal opinion about the efficiency of having 3 pairs of limbs is they they probably would not help terrestrial animal as much as arboreal ones but they would certainly be useful in for flying and swimming organisms and possibly would also help small animals (most arthropods body design can't be wrong), it' all has to do with the way locomotion in different body plans behave in fluids like air and water at different speeds and scales.
Do you think Toruk can kill a Thanator?
@@TrajGreekFire Probably in an open field but Thanator seems like it prefers the jungle where there is a lot of tree cover and even if it did hunt in the jungle, it's massive wing spawn would give it trouble, the trees in Pandora are really tall and Thanator does not seem very arboreal so it probably hunts more often on the floor out of reach of Toruk, even Harpy eagles that are specialized for hunting between tree branches don't normally hunt ground dwelling prey like peccaries and their diet consists primarily of canopy animals like sloths and monkeys with the occasional bird like toucans, another thing to point out is that Toruk doesn't have very big talons proportional to body size like eagles which would hinder it when plucking prey from the canopy on the fly so i don't think it prefer that hunting style, but it would be suited for eating carrion since talons really don't matter for that though it's head crest would get in the way.
@@CMZneu I can see a Thanathor in more mountain habitat
@@TrajGreekFire You mean floating mountains.
@@CMZneu actual mountains
Perhaps they migrated from a diffrent continent, just like early humans. This could (maybe) allow them to have a completely diffrent common ancestor.
You can actually see the fusing of the limbs in the lemurs with them being part connected...
The film is so beautiful. I don't care for the story or the acting, but the designs are so incredibly pretty.
The videogame was pretty neat too.
The new one that is releasing looks awsome. Check it out on Avatar's official youtube channel. Some seriously awesome designs in that game unseen in the movie, only from the trailer.
You should check out Zoe Kravitz BTS footage of her acting. It’s clear that the animation of the time just wasn’t advanced enough to capture her performance. Which is truly heart breaking
If the Pandora’s gravity is lesser than Earth’s then shouldn’t humans be stronger than Na’ vi s like Superman
Or at least be able to leap tall buildings in a single bound 😉.
Actually, though, their bones and muscles would weaken over time, just like astronauts' do in microgravity. Maybe that's why Superman's powers are now attributed to the light spectrum of our sun, rather than to Earth's gravity.
Waaaaampuuuunch
Superman is maniacally unrealistic even if his planet had Jupiter levels of gravity. Superman is just an overrated Mary Sue.
I mean comics habitually say fuck you to science
It’s Ultimately not trying to be realistic
(I can also name worse heroes)
Don't try to apply science to Comics, it will just give you a headache.
If you think Superman is OP, then you probably don't know much about comics; Superman is really only a mid-level character in his universe. There are lots of characters in both DC and marvel who completely spit in the face of science.
The non-hexapod Na'vi always bothered me. They are way, way, too human.
+Jessica P *CONVERGENT EVOLUTİON*
@@thedoruk6324 like sharks and orcas?
@@dinosaurusrex1482 more
@@thedoruk6324 the convergence is too uncanny though
@@dinosaurusrex1482 That's the reason its realistic; uncanny valley is the humanity's greatest fear
The navis arms did fuse. Just look at the lemurs fingers, they only have two fingers on each hand. The Navi have 4 fingers on each hand. Fuse two arms together that have 2 fingers on each hand you get 4 fingers.
Love your videos, they're always very interesting!
Good catch
It's really fascinating how beautifully you came up with these theories, especially the Na'avi one. One small request is to keep the sound of the quirks in tandem with the volume of the narration. My eardrums have bled out completely, which I think, is an evolutionary process for humans.
Honestly, I find it interesting that the hunted animals all have fully developed pairs of eyes at their sides, as if it was evolutionarily advantageous to determine the distance of a thread *cough cough* while the secondary hunter species has a smaller secondary eye at it's side indicating it was still somewhat on the look out but primarily focusing on prey in front of it, while the primary hunter only has one pair of eyes, disregarding sideview completely.
What is weird is that the only hunter that is mentioned to be truly singular (and flying) still has four eyes, as if it had to watch out for beasts dive-bombing it outta the sky... Probably retainer from it's youth?
i know this is two years old but considering the geology of Pandora (floating islands, lots of dense fog), i imagine keeping the 4 eyes as an avian would still be pretty vital
And then again, if your biggest threat while flying were other flying reptiles, it'd make sense for you to keep two eyes at each side to get full depth perception at any angle
The animals on Pandora look so casual, they don't look like a bunch of strange monsters, but rather "real animals", they are so believable that i could imagine them here on Earth
I think the limb fusion is the most accurate hypotheses on how the na'vi are functional tetrapods. In prolemurus they have a total of 4 digits on each "double arm" which would eventually evolve into one functional limb with opposable thumbs. Has for the nose its possible that the operculum were moved to the mouth to better determine what fruits were ripest and/or distinguish toxic plants from edible ones in prolemurus like ancestors and the callor nostrils were lost in the upright na'vi due to the fact that having huge openings that lead directly to your respiratory system that face upwards would likely cause you to drown everytime it rained. So respiration was eventually handeled solely by the "nose"
I never thought of that last point and I feel dumb now. It would be pretty damn stupid to breathe like that for a bipede indeed
Something to consider is that we see an incredibly small region of the planet, its possible that there was some sort of na’avi diaspora. We might not be able to see anything that looks like them because they’re just not native to that region.
"Did I ever tell you my favorite colour was blue?" - James Cameron, oh I mean Sutter Cane.
When I saw the notification it cut off after "The Biology of James C..." very glad it didn't turn out to be "The Biology of James Charles".
Or just a video on the biological functions of James Cameron.
that would be a strange yet interesting video
Some Guy homo sapien ‘James Charles’ is a hermaphroditic subspecies of homo sapien that is capable of not only breeding with two sexes but also seeks the main line homo sapien sapien, scientists still don’t know why the creature evolved to prefer heterosexual human males however
I wanna see the biology of bretman rock he a THICCY
Screaming
I love it when people work hard to incorporate biology in their shows and games, because when they truly work hard, it makes sense and it's fun. I love watching videos on biology, and the ones with Roanoke about The Last Of Us and Dead Space.
There’s a movie called “Astro Kid” where all of the aliens are clearly inspired by oceanic life, complete with hexapodal structure. Give it a look and you’d be able to do this exact same thought exercise!
You should do an evolutionary analysis on the Fauna of Skull island, from the 2005 movie.
Ooooh good call man 👍
The V Rexes are my spirit animal 😉
@@Tallacus no one talks about the insects and humanoid bat monsters.
@@craniumssuperburger7749 man those giant leech worm things were terrifying
@@SassyCassie89 they look like d*cks
"Let's randomly talk about _. You know, for science."
That's my catchphrase.
Science bitch
Another Theory regarding the blue sexy cat people could be that they evolved not on another planet, but am isolated part of Pandorra.
In this case, terrestial life could have convergently evolved twice on the same planet, once from a group of lifeforms with 6 limbs, but also from a group which was either isolated for long enough to evolutionary loose 2 limbs, or not even develop them at all.
Since the Na Vi kind of resemble us humans in terms of body structure and intelligence, it is likely that once their species became succesful, it spread over the whole planet by surpassing the isolating factor of their original habitat.
Not a fish doesn't explain how the Na'vi have queues/antennae like every other animal
The Navi are pretty contrived but another possibility is that like humans, they evolved on a different continent of pandora (where all of their close evolutionary cousins still reside) and crossed over via canoes or a land-bridge to where the film is set. Still, I think giving them four arms, four eyes, and maybe those chest air canals in addition to noses would have been an easy way to make them fit into the ecosystem a bit more without making the romance weird
Avatar (2009)
Avatar 2 (2018)
Avatar 3 (2020)
Avatar 4 (2022)
Avatar 5 (2023)
Yeah that's outdated now.
I hope we get ava'tar the second one in 3043 like Neil cic predicts
@@copac0707 It is
Ion Toader there’s no way it isn’t seeing how they’re already focusing on 3 and 4
Is only the inscription of the name
And after seeing what Star Wars and Marvel is becoming, I CAN'T WAIT!
I wanna know why the carnivores commonly have black teeth!
Could be made of a similar material as a spider’s fang, Which would make sense for viperwolves
Perhaps pigment was developed* for better camouflage in the darkness of the jungle? The thana has a very lithe build compared to the herbivorous prey it would hunt, so stealth attacks are probably its best bet. We see this in the scan where the thana sneaks up on the protagonist (I havent watched this movie in a long time, sorry). Anyway, bright, big, white long fangs would stand out in the darkness of the jungle, so it would be advantageous for them to be harder to see. That's my theory anyway.
*Im not sure what the color is for the other carnivores and thus whether it is developed or ancestral
It may be a structural adaptation so the carnivores teen can withstand pulling and tearing forces associated with a predatory lifestyle, similar to how many species of birds have darkened edges on their primary feathers, a common place of stress. It’s likely that the cause of pigmentation isn’t necessarily a ‘pigment’, more a specialized layer of protein or enamel that just happens to be coloured.
Alisa AKA Smallociraptor. Our teeth are made of calcium which is also the base matter of our bones. In the movie, the avatarian creature’s bones are made of carbon fiber which is black as the other carbon compounds except diamond. I think that the teeth are made of the same material with their bones just like us. Hence, the teeth are black.
They mention that animals on this planet have natural carbon fiber bones in the movie. So it's likely it could be concentrated there to make their teeth resilient enough to eat creatures
I can watch this film over and over simply because of the world. The world is absolutely amazing.
Also I thought Pandora was in the Alpha Centauri system.
It is in the Alpha Centauri system.
Are you one of the few that can name more than 1 character?
Lovecat Productions what’s Alpha Centauri I remember reading that off Invader Zim
@@umbrellabirb2959 Neteri, Sutay, Dr. Grace, Quatrich and Jake Sulley.
I suspect that the people who actively hate on the film, to the extant that they will comment on forums their disdain, are subconsciously or consciously offended by the politics of the film.
It can't be because the story is common because story drama critics have commented for hundreds of years on the small set of of popular narratives.
I mean Star Wars is the most blatant example of derivative storytelling I can think of but it doesn't get the type of hate Avatar gets.
Oh well, remember, there may be one or two 'good' ones but fuck the sky devils! :)
@@citronm1405were the politics about not destroying other people's Form of live for profit?
Loved the Tree of light connection. Much like how the Mycelium System among plants works.
Part 2 about Pandoran neurobiology and the interconnectedness of the planetary ecosystem through trees and biochemistry such as natural carbon fiber in na'vi skeletal structure
a follow up about how the psychic pony tails might work would be really cool- what if banshee and navi are part of their own totally separate tetrapodal psychic tree
Don’t they link tentacles with the direhorses too?
@@burneyarts yes
And they linked with the thanator
Seems like a great portion of animals on pandora are capable of linking, as seen in A2
I've learned more about Biology in this 20 minute video with a clear explanation than I've ever had going to school
I love these kind of videos! Fantasy films are so interesting when they put extra effort to make their biology and ecosystem interesting!
Can you do a video theorizing what eywa is cuz to this day I still don’t know what that weird jelly fish tree is.
Ey'wa is the electromagnetic connection the entire planet shares, the same connections Na'vi have in their braids which allows them to sync with the trees/animals/each other. Ey'wa is pandora.
Crusadetheist YT so basically its like the giant fungis networks on Earth except that it is spread moon wide and is basically become sentient of sorts?
@@byronee similar to the fungus networks on Earth: yes. Sentient: no. So the electromagnetic connections that can be accessed by the Na'vi on the spirit trees are sort of like access points for uploading/downloading data. That's why when Jake hooks up to one you can hear laughing, talking etc. Nothing about Ey'wa is sentient...as I'm writing this I remember the ending of the movie :| Pandora may be sentient.
Edit: I have no explanation for the rush of beasts that assisted the Na'vi other than a sentient planet. I'm freaking out.
So assuming that Pandora/Ey'wa is sentient in some way, it must have deliberately sent electromagnetic signals to every beast within several hundred kilometers to help them out, maybe god. Ok assuming Ey'wa is just data like I said, could she be the amalgamation of every Na'vi's consciousness? Like when they hook up to the sex trees does their consciousness get fused into a sort of intraplanetary hivemind?
Crusadetheist YT I think the planet itself(including flora but excluding fauna) is best explained more like one giant brain, rather than it being compared to a computer. The way information travels across it is similar to the nervous system(the flora possibly acting as nerve endings) and it's not only the na'vi who are able to access this nervous system, it's the fauna. All fauna possessing a kind of antenna(the na'vi's existing in their braid, though it's more obvious in "tamable" fauna) Anything able to access this nervous system externally rather than internally was seen coming to save the day, and it's said before in that montage of Jake learning to be Na'Vi/Omaticaya, that Neytiri had been explaining to him that *everything* is connected, through the water, the trees, what they eat, is all connected through Eywa(the nervous system of the planet-moon). idk is just a theory
@@geeky9609 That's a really good theory, and the reason I compared it to a computer is ripped straight out of the movie. Still, can't wait to see how James Cameron expands on this world in the next movie.
I always thought of the Thanator as more reminiscent of a Jaguar, rather than a lion, as it is an agile, powerful and cat-like jungle predator; as opposed to the less mobile and stockier lion which hunts in mainly in the open savannah
Marcus O he made that comparison in reference to its niche, not hunting strategy, also Tigers hunt primarily in jungles, but the point he wanted to make was its the apex predator of its territory, very few things could even come close to challenging it
I think more leopard like, I think the only reason it's compared to a lion or tiger is because of it's muscular body as well as it's spiny frill that makes it look lionesque. Leopards are known to be almost impossible to stop in the wild and masters of stealth, as the thanator evolvon to have sleek, black skin would help it stalk unnoticed in a jungle, espeacially at night, though I think it's crepuscular, I haven't been able to look too closely at it's pupils :p
Geeky leopards are mostly grassland predators. Plus leopards defining characteristic is their ability to climb. The Thanator can't
CollegeWiFi Their ability to also go almost entirely unnoticable as well is what I was talking about? They're also well known for being very hard to spot. I know the Thanator can't climb, I was relating it's ability to be stealthy to a leopard, not it's ability to climb, nor it's habitat.
Oh my god please turn down the volume of that ping
RIP my eardrums
the speech is too quiet compared to other youtuber's videos
Yo dawg I was looking for this comment 💀💀
sameee it just happened to me and its 4:40 am, and i didnt have earphones. fU
I can't wait for all the rest of the Avatar movies to come out. This was one of the few movies I was willing to pay extra to see in 3D.
Are they making more?.. In Papyrus font?
@@rishi7629 they are supposedly going to do number 2 and 3 together and then I think they are going to do a 4th and 5th one also I am not positive.
@@moviegirl1100 It’s like Winds of Winter… you know it SHOULD come out in a few years and you knew that for the past decade
@@rishi7629 NO THEY ARE NOT
@@ANONYMOUS-tg2tq lmao u were wrong as fuck
"sexy blue cat people" so i guess that trey is into furries
He is one himself ... Maybe
so what if he is? :P
How else would you describe those things?
@@vaelophisnyx9873
If he is. Time to make way more kinds of fan art.
@@morinor1340 ...
Good question...
The Biology of Monster Hunter: World
That's gonna be very interesting
@SpamSardine
Seeing him talk about the Elder Dragons would be especially interesting!
Yes please
Legiana does seem to share convergent evolutionary stigmata with Ikran /banshees.
What about skull island?
Alberto Gonzalez yes odogaron biology would be especially interesting to me.
Tbh the movie is visually so cool the designs are so amazing and underrated, 10/10
One thing to note is also the lack of antennae in Xenoprimates, or rather... the different from the antenna takes.
The Na'vi do possess antennae, but they seem quite different than those of other life forms. It's the strands of brain matter they weave braids around and lets them "connect" to the other animals and also access the neural network of Pandora (something I was surprised you didn't touch on tbh)
And speaking of the neural network it could also have played a part in the evolution. We know that the network can be accessed by all animals using the antennae and that there is an intelligence inside it (which the Na'Vi have deified into what they call Eywa), and Eywa is able to command creatures to do certain things.
It wouldn't be out of the realm of possibility for said intelligence to compel some animals to selectively breed with each other in such a way that certain characteristics would arise, and the fact that the Na'Vi antenna is the only one that looks like it can connect to other animals makes me think that perhaps it bred Xenoprimates selectively to create an intelligent species of its own design of sorts.
Granted, unlike Earth which seems to have no such intelligence, the Pandoran Neural Network is a factor that could make it possible, even if it does sound sort of creationist.
The real reason is still probably "We want these aliens to be humanoid and attractive to our primate brains, and also we want them to be one with nature and the moon so we can do the environmentalist bit", but I feel like even by starting with this wish and working backwards, that could be a plausible in-universe explanation.
As to why Eywa decided that spiracles, second pair of eyes and a secondary pair of arms weren't evolutionary advantageous... that's most likely a product from the working backwards bit. Let's just say that "it happened"
Wayyy back when, at least 2 or 3 years before the movie came out, I was watching an old tech demo where the developers of the avatar game were describing the setting of the new world they were working with, an alien planet where humans could not survive, but could live there via proxy by streaming their consciousness into "Avatars," man made creations of human and alien dna that could thrive in the hostile conditions.
While not exactly cannon at that point, I always believed that the navi were simply escaped early versions of these human/alien hybrids that were able to flourish during the long gaps between ships arriving from earth. Based on the timeline of the iphone version of the game, which was cannon and based 75 years prior, and the rapid spread of horses into north america or dingos in australia, as well as the assumption that one of the first ships to pandora, shortly after 2084, had the technology to achieve a cloned alien human hybrid similar to the one in the film, as well as a much more grand assumption of perhaps relativistically faster time dilation on pandora compared to earth, its not impossible that in the 60-ish earth years, multiple generations of human created navi could have colonised pandora, intentionally or unintentionally.
So basically I think that navi look so human because they were basically failed attempts at a way to allow humans to live on another planet, and the story was changed a bit in the latter portion of those 10 years of development to showcase new filming tech with a more digestible movie and a tried and true underdog native story.
It's a miracle for my day because today sucked for me until this video showed up
Thank you trey
What happened
Hope your week gets better!
Fucking same dude I was legit crying before I got on youtube and saw my notifications
@@JakDakGriffin Thanks buddy
@@livilee6337 ikr. Junior year is horse shit
Is no one going to acknowledge that he said the 2012 scifi movie... 0:12
It came out in 2009
Yeah I instantly thought that as well.
I also caught that.
Lot of my friends think it came ot in 2012 too.... may be Mandela effect
@@magsML122 Its strange cause the movie 2012 also came out in 2009.
@@magsML122 No you and your friends just got a shit memory pal haha
Do you see the possibility of revisiting this theory with the new information we get from the new film? This is one of my favourite videos related to Avatar and I would love to see more!
Remember the antenna that's on all the other creatures has evolved to the long ponytail thing show on the Na'vi, that's why it can react to all the other creatures, so it didn't disappear like you stated it probably just changed to that overtime
That moment when Avatar did cat people better than Cats
I'd just like to point out an error at ~ 2:40 , the spectrum of the sun is actually strongest in green light. The reason why plants use green pigment is not because that blue and red is stronger. Purple photosynthetic protists also exist on Earth, but for some reason green is more abundant. There must be some other factors other than just which wavelength the sun produces the most of.
@@mrd1703 I love PBS EONs! I've already watched thatone lol. I was just referring to how Trey said that, "plants on Earth are only this green colour due to it being the most efficient pigment to absorb the wavelengths of sun light that reaches the Earth's surface, typically strongest in the red and blue wavelengths." A more accurate time stamp would be 2:55 I guess. I also find it interesting how, many plants and algae also produce other pigments too such as carotenoids which absorb some green light. Photosynthesis is just such a complex topic, which I am definitely not an expert in.
Actually, plants are green because when chlorophyll first came to existance, the purple pigment alrady existed. Billions of years ago it was purple bacteria that dominated the oceans, creating layer that absorbed green light and reflected purple light (hence the name of the bacteria, 'cause they look purple). The chlorophyll-using bacteria evolved later, in slightly deeper part of the ocean (under the layer of purple bacteria), so they adapted to wavelenghts they had available. Chlorophyll-based photosynthesis resulted in oxygen as a byproduct, which changed the environment in the ocean resulting in massive decline of purple bacteria. Photosynthetic mechanisms tend to change very little over course of evolution, and thus after colonazing land plant life still stick with chlorophyll, despite the fact that they no longer have to deal with purple bacteria blocking other wavelengths of light. The source for my information is Polish ecology textbook "Life and evolution of biosphere" by January Weiner (higly recommend it if it was ever translated into English, although unfortunately I highly doubt it).
Edit: of course that's a leading theory, not a 100% fact; it makes a lot of sense tho and I believe it is widely accepted by biologists.
@@nautilus2151 narly
I was able to read a book detailing the work that was put into designing each creature. What i found really interesting was that the concept artists wanted to convey that the banshees evolved directly from a native creature similar to our flying fish, growing powerful wing-like fins and claws for grasping the side of cliffs.
Haven’t even watched this but I know this’ll be a banger.
Illustrator Illusionist same
If you read James Cameron's Avatar:The Game's Pandorapedia, you will find more information.
Q Anon God I used to love that thing. I had every single species learnt off lol, now I keep thinking of that one weird plant called bladder polyp
Good times, good times.
I love it when you explain zoology of cryptids/other worldly creatures !!
I am a professor of zoology. What a brilliant presentation. You are a genius
After each Avatar movie, please do this again. I loved it so much that I want you to update the Pandoran Evolutionary Tree as new information and animals are released.
Here is a challenge:
Try Barsoom.
The evolutionary history of Barsoom is a headtrip in and of itself.
Levon Gevorgyan please just say Mars the name Barsoom may be one of the dumbest names for anything in film history ever.
@@byronee Its the name the AUTHOR gave it. Read A Princess of Mars. Or Gods of Mars.
barsoom.fandom.com/wiki/Barsoom
@@byronee It's better than MARS :4
That'd be a fun one.
When you said "As a person fascinated with Biology, Zoology, Paleontology and Evolution..." I immediately hit the subscribe button
The opercula at the bases of the neck of each of the creatures seems like a evolutionary flaw to me when it comes to land creatures. Unless they can hold their breath for minutes or still breathe through their mouths, they can't cross deep rivers and such. Also, Terran predators kill their prey often by suffoocating it through biting their throat. If Pandoran creatures only breathe through their opercula I wonder how predators kill their prey.
Edit: I hope that we'll find some hints to answer questions about the evolutionary ancestor of the Na'vi. Maybe a different type of Pandoran primate.
The na’vi could’ve split off VERY early on before the ancestor of the hexapods so they had MANY millions of years to evolve
Here’s my tree with the what I will call peregrines gigas aemulor
With them splitting up 10 million-ish years when they had the barebone structure of small limbs which lead to it eventually becoming human looking this is a guess
If this lineage is so successful.. why there is no other similar animal.
croco pix I would guess they killed off all their relatives, like sapiens did to the other members of the species Homo.
@@crocopix maybe treys theory about savana. We only see the forest of the film, who knows what lives in other biomes?
@@crocopix Migration, perhaps? Driven to extinction?
"Heads with legs" sounds like a cool band name.
Yes, it does indeed, Trey, but "legs on heads" is better
i love avatar, my favorite movie when it first came out i used to have dreams about it as a kid.
I would love to see more videos of this type. Different fantasy biology explained.