Middle Earth Ecology : The wargs and fell beasts of The Lord of the Rings
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- Опубликовано: 11 сен 2024
- The wargs and fell beasts set upon the the fellowship proved a lethal menace to the heroes of middle earth, just as the wargs did 60 years prior to Bilbo. But how does a warg pack operate, how does a fell beast fly, and how much would they both cost in meat for any evil overlord? Let's look to our own natural world to find out!
Also includes some minor battlefield analysis for the two species so hopefully Skallagrim or Shadiversity won't stamp me out if they ever see it...
![Chlöe - Shake (Feat. Jeremih) [Official Visualizer]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/aDs_1ufpfv8/mqdefault.jpg)
Another thing to keep in mind is that literal magic exists in Middle-Earth. It's more subtle than in other fantasy works, but it's there. It wouldn't surprise me if it was what allowed some of the creatures to bend the rules of physics to various degrees. The great eagles, oliphaunts, giant spiders and dragons are all *far* larger than should be physically possible, but in Arda, they exist anyway. So by comparison, a dog-ish predator the size of a horse is small po-tay-toes.
This is very true, it'd be quiet hard to explain something like Ancalagon after all.
You're also forgetting that by merely existing, Shelob disproves the idea that LotRs has the Square Cub Law
Yeah if we track the lineage of spiders back to Shelob, and further back to it's primordial mother, it's pretty safe to say that primordial acenstors of the lands were inherently magic in some way which had huge effects on their descendents. Only way to explain how such fantastical creatures evolved in the same setting humans and similar humanoids.
Very true. I wonder whether magic could explain what and how these creatures eat/are fed. I shudder at the thought of the ecological impact of a herd of browsing mumakil.
@@unnaturalhistorychannel please do “mumakils” next.
I just wanna say just like Shadiversity explores weapons of fantasy and how effective they would be with expert reasoning and putting work in on serious speculation instead of shooting things down outright.
Your analysis of monsters and the realism that entails within their own world, is also one hell of a contribution.
Its like I can design my own "battle beasts" without as much fear or doubt
Thank you! I've seen a lot of Shad's stuff too and enjoy it, esp his MH stuff of course.
@@unnaturalhistorychannel Yeah I especially liked how he brought up how bone usually makes bad weapons material compared to metal in history, but mh's weapons being made of monster bones are an in universe factor that fixes that.
I’d caution though as someone from the HEMA community (medieval fencers) that he’s not the most reliable when it comes to the application of weapons
Keep in mind that in the lore, Sauron & others that follow the path of evil cannot create. They can only corrupt. So all the creatures in his forces are corrupted monsters of previous existing creatures. The orcs for example were created from corrupted elves.
This is a great point I forgot. May explain why some refer to wargs as wolves then, maybe they're just corrupted wolves, especially as sauron liked their form enough to change into them.
@@unnaturalhistorychannel Wargs are basically just wolves, there is actually very little in the text to imply they are distinct from regular Canis lupus. The only difference I can think of off the top of my head is the fact that wargs seem to be sapient--but considering the talking ravens, and the talking thrust and the thinking fox, and the evil mountain and the evil tree, it seems that sapience is a rather common trait in Middle-Earth, even for creatures without Fear. Werewolves, but contrast, seem far more fell and supernatural; Draugluin and Carcharoth and Sauron's wolf-shape are much larger than the wargs of Rhovanion, which are basically just the size of regular wolves. It is important to remember that the wargs in the books are not horse-sized because they do not need to be when the orcs in the books are rarely larger than chimpanzees with the notable exception of the Uruk-Hai bred by Sauron and later Saruman to be larger and fiercer than Morgoth's orginal perversions.
@@jackodonail1980 its sort of implied that wargs are the vestiges of werewolves. Tolkien explained werewolves as "evil spirits put in to the body and shape of a wolf", this tracks with Melkor/Morgoth taking creatures and warping them in various ways. This also sort of explains the higher intelligence and cunning of werewolves compared to wargs- werewolves literally had demonic spirits, while wargs are most likely their feral descendants. Also worth note is that Morgoth was explicitly known for "pouring his will and essence" into the world and its inhabitants, this sort of lingered after his banishment but might explain why wargs lost some of that potency and sort of devolved, but remain distinct from natural creatures still.
That actually sounds like a pretty good stand-in for domestication: profound physical and behavioral changes caused by artificial influence. Sauron and Saruman can't conjure creatures out of thin air, any more than we can. However, they can "domesticate" wolves into wargs (though I presume it's a much faster process for them than it was when our ancestors domesticated the wolf).
I don’t wanna sound stupid but when you say Sauron can’t create only corrupt are you saying it in a metaphorical sense or an actual sense?
I'm fairly certain that in the Hobbit book, it's explicitly stated that the Globlins and Wargs have some kind of agreement/had some negotiation to hunt and be evil together.
Indeed it is stated as such.
Ye, they only attacked the dwarves because they were near the place the goblins and wargs were meeting to decide the best way to be evil. If I'm remembering correctly
“The Wargs and goblins often helped one another in wicked deeds. […] in those days [goblins] used to go on raids, especially to get food or slaves to work for them. Then they often got the Wargs to help and shared the plunder with them. Sometimes they rode on wolves like men do on horses.”
_The Hobbit; ch. VI: Out of the Frying Pan and Into the Fire,_ pg. 94 according to HarperCollins 2007 leatherback based on HC’s 1995 publication
A nice video on one of the greatest fantasy stories ever!
As for what you said about “Dragon element” I think it’s a chemical adapted by monsters to paralyze elemental abilities, which is why it removes a hunter’s buffs. This also makes sense for why it’s in elder dragon blood, as that could allow it to nullify the effects of their elemental abilities on the dragon itself, like how Khezu has an insulating hide to protect against its electricity
Thank you!
And more on dragon element this evening...
Ok this was cool, really loved the designs of the fell beast and even the Wargs from lord of the rings. Very unique and gnarly creature concepts brought to life. The Wargs from lotr looked like a mix of hyena and Pitbull, underrated design in my opinion. And the fell beasts were really awesome and great designs for sure, it was cool to know that the fell beasts morphological features such as the wing length and shape are more so in line with reality somewhat, pretty cool, honestly never thought about the biomechanics of the fell beasts flying capabilities and wing shape, so it was cool to see it explored. Also makes me wonder what other megafauna exist in middle earth.
Agree, I like how in the early 2000's under Peter Jackson the Weta Workshop made so many 'realistically ugly' designs for their beasts. I too quite like the hyena wargs, and love the fell beasts. And yeah, especially as Tolkien seems to imply there was a prehistoric point of Middle Earth once.
It's unfortunate that we didn't see more of Harad (not only in the films; Tolkien himself is quite uninterested in this vast southern region). Having seen the spectacular mumakil, I can only imagine what other great beasts share that realm with the Haradrim, and which ones they have likewise tamed for their purposes. I've always wondered about the rhino-like beasts that pulled the battering ram Grond. Did Sauron import them from Harad, or perhaps from Rhun?
The fell beast had a very unsettling aspect to them... very evil looking
Yup, the Weta Workshop did a fantastic job!
I don't blame The Hobbit's redesign of the wargs, the LoTR wargs have a face only a matriach could love.
I don't either, but I was also one of the few who never disliked the LotR wargs too.
....I had simply accepted them as different breeds, for example a pitbull and a German shepherd bear little enough resemblance to each other
I kinda like the dot eyes, they look like adorable goobers ☺️♥️
It's important to know that wargs are a sapient race in LOTR, they don't serve, they're brothers in arms with the goblins and orcs.
This is a fact which is forgotten far too often.
The LOTR films certainly didn't make that clear; I've read that it's explored more in The Hobbit (as yet unseen by me). I know that Spiders such as Shelob are also supposed to be sapient beings (possibly even variations of the Maia). I guess that sort of explains my only real pet peeve regarding Shelob: she growls and screeches. I think she'd have been a more terrifying arthropod foe if she didn't have any vocalizations; that's part of what makes those creatures seem so alien and eerie to my chordate's sensibility. However, it makes more sense if the lore has it that she's not really a spider, but the daughter of an ancient evil spirit who merely takes the form of a spider. And the Eagles are sapient, too! I guess the only major non-sapient "creature" in the series is the mumak.
@@colinbaldwin313 True. The movies should have done better.
@@gourdlord3064 Well, I do think they all work very well in the film, and I'm not aware of their contradicting the lore (though I could be wrong).
I'd love to see something like this from the Monsterverse, like how hypervores such as Skullcrawlers "emerge"
I think I'll likely do a Monsterverse video at somepoint indeed, would be a fitting topic!
@@unnaturalhistorychannel They're hypevolved mosasaurids that developed into hypervores due to be in inhospitable section of the hallow earth .
With the whole "from a past time of middle earth" it might be a reference to the time before the sun and moon were made in the Silmarillion. Morgoth (Sauron's boss) came down and just started corrupting animals into monsters to fill the world with some horror before elves came along and he got some orcish inspiration.
With creatures like the thing that attack the fellowship outside of Moria, I think it likely these creatures outside of Sauron's control are remnants of monstrous species from Morgoth's monster making. He made dragons, so the fell beasts could have been a flying creature prototype that got scrapped once the actual winged drakes were made.
I can't speak for the Gundabad Wargs, but if I recall the LotR Wargs were primarily fed dead and dying Orcs when not raiding. The forces of Mordor were not ones to mourn the loss of soldiers, they were just meat to be used to feed the army's beasts.
Saruman and Sauron also probably had no shortage of orcs to feed them too.
Especially given the scene in Two Towers where an orc in the party that captured Merry and Pippin had his head cut off for trying to eat them. It's very likely it was standard practice to feed orcs that step out of line to the wargs as well.
We certainly know that even the Orcs have no qualms about eating one another when necessary. Anything to keep meat on the menu.
What even most "fans" don't really get is that Evil Beings in lord of the rings are Created by Melkor mostly during his early period of evil and during his wars, and preparations for great wars. He corrupted animals first, then spirits and stranded elves, he might even have created human-equivalents to orcs (Variags?) and even noble beasts, like wolves, and even eagles, he mutated. This is not like orcs or evil/rough men slowly breed some animals into monstrous war-beasts. In the first ages, Melkor turned innocent and wild animals, elves, and even his own Maia into evil mutants, freaks, and weapons. He also created Dragons and robot-like minions, perhaps as complicated war engines or simple armor-automatons.
I like your theory that the hyena-wargs come from Harad. I'm told that Middle-Earth's geography is meant to somewhat parallel Europe and its neighboring regions. The southern land of Harad corresponds with North Africa, both in its geographic location and (more questionably) in the culture and physical appearance of the Haradrim. I find it cool to contemplate that Harad may contain bigger, badder counterparts to African megafauna. We already know of the elephantine mumakil. If the hyena-wargs come from Harad, then they may be Middle-Earth's version of Crocuta crocuta. Maybe Harad was also Sauron's source for the rhino-like "great beasts" that pulled Grond.
I admit to assuming that the wargs in Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit were just different breeds. For example compare a German shepherd to a bull mastiff. Same basic species, but markedly different looking.
Yeah. The Hobbit wargs look so much more like wolves, so they're probably closer to the natural state. The Rings wargs probably look so different because they've been selectively bred to be bigger and huskier. Perhaps their closest analogue is actually a pit bull, not a hyena.
Great analysis! I like comparing fictional biology to real-life examples. I think a little more attention should have been given to the fell beasts. For example, how would their portrayal of social activity compare to birds or pterosaurs? They are portrayed as pretty solitary in the books and in the movies (with the exception of the fight against the great eagles), so it would have been interesting to see the current thinking on pterosaur social activity compared to the fell beast.
Quick note: The timeline of Arda (Tolkien's world in its entirety) is a good deal longer than it would first appear. The three Ages of the Sun (the three Ages mentioned in the books and movies) were in fact proceeded by a creation period lasting 5,000 years; the Ages of the Lamps (lasting 5,000 more years) and the Ages of the Trees (aka the Ages of Darkness and Stars in Middle-Earth), which in total lasted 30,000 years. Sorry for the intense nerding out, but I thought some extra info would help clear up how much time the Fell Beasts had to develop.
This does indeed help and saves me having to read the Silmarillion again!
@@unnaturalhistorychannel Always happy to help!
Orks are also very high in number and often get in fights, even amongst themselves. Who's to say that they don't take advantage of thier own dead and those who become unable to fight and feed them to the wargs. Thus essentially recycling thier weak or fallen troops
I'm certain that they partake in such a practice. After all, there's the famous, meme-worthy moment in the Two Towers, wherein an Uruk-hai commander alleviates a shortage of fresh meat by lopping off the head of an insubordinate Orc and then feeding that guy to his troops. Every individual Orc is total cannon fodder, both to his evil Lord and to his fellow Orcs.
11:59
Legit got a laugh outta me, love it when people can weave a meme/joke into a notation
Fascinating video ! I didn't expected that upkeep of this these beasts would be so relatively cheap.
Relatively it's not too bad!
Something to consider is that months upon months pass during the two journeys taken to deal with the one ring. The next thing is that everything building up to the first journey took an indeterminate amount of time somewhere between thousands and hundreds of thousands of years. This said there was an accelerated kind of evolution going on in the world because of "reasons" that only Tolkien really knew and was never properly explained.
this channel is so underrated, great video 👍
Lord of the rings conquest. Now THATS a flashback
Amazing video !
Thank you for your work,
i really like the idea of applying scientific reasonning to fictionnal settings
It would be cool if you did a video series on the future is wild time zone
Wildlife of the future will definitely come in later episodes!
I'm excited to see what the wargs of the Second Age would like in Amazon Prime's Rings of Power series and what the Third age wargs during Helm Hammerhead's time would look like in the War of the Rohhirim anime movie.
Love it! Can you do more on Middle Earth Ecology in the future?
Nice LoTR video dude! I’m never really watched anything from it fully, but people always talk about the wargs & fellbeasts most often for any spec evo prompts and such. Also didn’t expect a shoutout for myself lmao, and I completely understand why you wouldn’t delve into cladistics within MH due to how variable it really can be and also messy & murky when you have no idea on geologic timeframes & most of the recent history of the world being talked about. But I think. I didn’t really indeed for you to make a video about that topic anyways, *especially* when you make it as accurate to the given lore...
And for more topics to explore, I think you should do one about the evolution of flight in creatures of various worlds with their differing configurations on staying in the air. Examples could include the Great Leonopteryx, Rodan, any flying wyvern from MH would do, most dragons in media like Smaug, Ghidorah, GoT, or Reign of Fire. Honestly there’s so much you can do when discussing volant organisms in media and cinema!
Thanks man! I'm hoping regardless of franchise these videos will prove useful for the various spec-evo / world builders too. And yeah for the most part I'm going to conveniently pretend cladistics doesn't exist...
@@unnaturalhistorychannel Oh yeah, that got a bunch of people I know thinking and I kinda gonna use them as proper references alongside the artbook, whatever we see in the games, etc. Especially now with Rise.
......We cannot escape the fate of Wulgs being saurischian dinosaurs.....if only Capcom never tried....
@@CosmicCaribbean Yes indeed the World of MH, where the wyverns are wyverns, the theropods are wyverns, and even the clear mammals are wyverns.
I only just saw your message about other ideas, and I plan to partially look into pterosaur evolution with kut ku + garuga. A origin of flying in birds would also be cool. Avatar is a good suggestion overall, and I want to do a dragon vid overall at somepoint too. Reign of Fire probably has the best dragons, and rank pretty highly in the 'best designed flying monsters' too in that they actually have a patagium.
After considering it, I don't think Mordor was getting horse meat from Rohan except in the sense that injured and dead animals would be fed to whatever would eat them.
Sauron was raiding instead of trading because Rohan had refused to sell any horses to him. We also know that he didn't have much in the way of cavalry and the horses he did have weren't much good. The Rohirrim were seriously pissed, both about the thefts and the rumour that they were actually sales, so they weren't people to mess with. Why go to all that trouble to get decent horses only to butcher them? It'd be like capturing your enemy's battleships and burning them for fuel instead of using them to build up your own navy.
i love you injecting many of the famous Lord of the rings quotes into your talks, feels charming.
I absolutely love the hyena shaped warg, and having grown up with the movies my mind refuses any other shape for middle-earth bad doggos
damn, i forgot that lotr is pretty low fantasy
Yeah, all the properly fantastical stuff happened in the Silmarillion really.
I am a fan of the design of the movie Fell Beasts, for some reason the old Pteranodon-esque art of them looked way too goofy to elicit any feeling of fear or dread.
I wondered why the wargs were barely in the Battle of the Pelennor Fields or the Battle of the Five Armies. This video basically explains why: they were simply too costly to maintain enough for large cavalry formations.
Very happy I found this channel.
I'm very happy you decided to watch, the feedback from these videos really helps in a slow pandemic.
@@unnaturalhistorychannel I hope someday to make a piece of science fiction with creatures you can make videos about.
@@The_PokeSaurus I look forward to reading or watching it!
Re: Warg feeding requirements. While yes, as horse sized predators they would require quite a lot on a year to year basis, by no means do they need a pure meat diet. Dog food, depending on what the animal's lifestyle calls for, can be anywhere from 80% to 40% protein. So I'm betting that even in the less "developed" societies up north, when not out on a mission or the like they're being fed a mix of meat, potatoes, and wheat. Probably in a mash.
Just a minor correction I didn't see posted. Middle Earth has 3 Ages "Of the Sun" -- before that were the dual "Age of Trees"/'Age of Darkness", and the "Age of Lamps" -- both of which were much longer than the ages of the Sun. It is the Age of Lamps that the Fell Beasts hail from IIRC.
Im hoping you cover smaug and other dragons of the universe this was exquisite
Perhaps the 2 Wargs are distantly related at least and not at all at most. The people of Middle Earth probably aren't as knowledgeable on taxonomy as we(Given they seem to be in a middle age state) and as such jumped to wrong conclusion when combining the 2 Wargs into one genus as we have seen with Panda bears, Hyeanadons and the entirety of Carnosauria, but that's just me.
It's very possible, convergent evolution can still exist in fantasy!
Honestly, i most like the idea of sauron “prince of werewolves” shaping two different groups of beasts into shapes that resemble the werewolves he lost in the first age.
What if Middle Earth's Three Ages are just the three ages Human-like creatures have recorded?
Well, the elves were around WAY before the Three Ages. Like, they were around several millennia before the Sun was created.
@@jackodonail1980 Oh, so that could validate or discredit my claim.
@@The_PokeSaurus well, the elves have been keeping records since the Age of the Trees. Now, the Age of the Lamps DOES predate the awakening of the elves and those could be considered the prehistory of Middle-Earth. Indeed, Morgoth's creatures of "horn and ivory" could be interpreted as dinosaurs.
Came across this video today and have to say you did an awesome job!
Thank you!
Question: which of these three definitions would you use to describe the soul of a being?: Accumulation of experience over time, the emotions associated with memories, or the ability to rise above instinct?
The middle one I guess? If I had to pick from those
The larges beasts that pull the massive battering ram at minus tirith are called great siege beasts they look cool but also realistic and so I think a video on them would be nice as well as a video on the mumakil who seem tomjust be over the limit of a mammals size oh also both are more mammalian species .
The Lord of the ring wargs always reminded me of hellpigs
If you think a Fellbeast struggles to fly, maybe don't look at Cinematic Smaug being 130 meters long 🤔
In a (small) defense of Middle Earth's "3 Ages", there were additionally the Years of the Trees and the Years of the Lamps, which were counted differently than regular years in Ages 1-3; basically these were "Valian" years that could be anywhere from 10-144 solar years depending on what mood Tolkien was in. These two eras lasted over a thousand years each, though I don't remember how many thousand. It still doesn't account for yknow. Real evolutionary timeframes but it could if you consider ✨magic evolution ✨
Especially given the demonstrated ability of even bestial maiar to change their shape at time.
I've seen other people make the Warg- Creodont connection. I'd say some kind of Hyainailourid would fit the bill for the Wargs in the movies.
yoooooooo cant wait for you to cover steve.
as for what dragon element is exactly? the best way to put it is that dragon is some sort of "anti-element" in the way it interacts with other elements and how it always negates them, as to its very nature bannedlagi the mh lore guy mentiones that dragon maybe both hot and cold which i completely disagree with, from what's been shown of dragon element it creates light and leaves scorch marks on the ground were the red lightning part of the dragon element hits so at the very least we know that dragon element is heat based, but the one interesting thing about it that world introduced that flew over a lot of peoples head is elder seal, elder seal basically gives you the ability to temporarily negate the aura/abilities of elder dragons this is actually very huge and it pretty much explains how monsters that uses dragon element are usually found in very harsh environments like the volcanos and tundra's, so not only does dragon negate other elements but it also negates the temperature of the environment around it (presumably returning the temperature back to "normal" or make it more hospitable for the creature in question), i know this is not the video to discuss mh stuff on but hey.
Steve is up!
Yeah still trying to narrow down dragon. I'm not sure if it does actually burn, but it definitely 'blights' and creates light, yet some animals that are resistant to high temperatures can still be immune to it. Something I'm slanting toward is that it maybe either a form of 'radiation' or even a bacteria.
@@unnaturalhistorychannel radiation seems to be the most likely one given how in world if you approach savage jho's head while its in rage the dragon element will slowly sap you're health away similar to poison.
Honestly I’d love to see you do a follow up for something like the Mûmakil or even the beasts from the Monolith games (like the Caragor or Graug)
and see him talk about the Wargs in Rings of Power. I actually did see an interesting theory regarding the googly-eyed Warg in that show was a result of attempted (and probably botched) domestication of the Wargs.
@@tylerleach8796 I was thinking that too, it definitely screams of inbreeding
@@ItsButterBean1020 Plus the different apperance of the wargs later in the show would indicate that that one was a special case and not just a retconned design for them.
@@tylerleach8796 I’m pretty sure the things that jump the Harfoots are something else. They’re called wolves but idk what thy are
I’ve heard Entelodont thrown around to describe them but I honestly get Andrewsarchus vibes
@@ItsButterBean1020 yeah, I looked closer at a picture of the "wolves" from Ring of Power and...I think they have hooves. So yeah, I think entelodont and andrewsarchus are good comparisons.
I don’t care if they’re big killing machines and probably not even canines, Wargs are still close enough to dogs and I therefore wish to pet them.
Hyena wargs are still better than the ones in the LOTR
I always love snake dragons like Movie fellbeast. Skyrim’s dragonborn serpent dragon is bomb
This was very enjoyable!
No, middle earh had more than three ages, it's just the three we are familar with are the three ages under the sun. Time periods where the lamps or the trees of valinor lit the sky are not counted under that system.
Additionally the ages seem to have drastically dropped in duration as they went on so for all we know those very early ages could have lasted millions of years I'd think.
Anyone else here versed on tolkiens chronology? I'd love a correction if one exists.
For the difference I would go with breeding thesis like in dogs there are greyhounds bred for speed and mastiffs bred for power.
can you do some star wars creatures
In the future Star wars could definitely be looked at, especially some arena beasts and animals on Tatooine.
Can you make a video on the Mumakil or maybe even the dragons of middle earth?
i know i am late for the disscustion but if you domesticate animals over a long time their diet can change too.
Wolfs can't digest carbohydrates but dogs can.
it can help with upkeep if you can manufacture some sort of special food, maybe maggot pellets with breadcrumbs ^^
The "3rd age of Middle Earth" is not the 3rd age of the world itself, which is called Arda. The 3rd age is specifically the 3rd age where the Sun & Moon existed as well as the 3rd of Men. As the sun first rose into the sky (rising in the west at first, not the east) it was the very first sight beheld by the newly awakened first humans.
Middle Earth did have a primordial era. This era ended when an ancient cataclism deprive Arda of light, save that of the stars. Light only returned to Middle Earth with the first rising of the sun and moon many ages later.
Do you plan on doing video about the Mumakil?
the whole "different geological era" bit i feel refers to the fact many times the world of Arda was almost destroyed by Melkor, and that by the time Numenor fell, the entire world was flat until Eru stepped in to rearrange things and attempt to destroy Sauron, after Numenor sank an Valinor was made inaccessible to mortal men, the World became a sphere. crazy to think how many crazy things happened in Tolkien's works, truly one of if not the greatest authors to ever live.
also fuck amazon.
here's a little fun thing there was a time long ago eons before the beginning of the first age began as the ages themselves are an invention of mortals not the gods and also each age lasts several thousand years
Fun fact. Hyenas act like canines but are considered felines.
Sort of, they're definitely closer to cats but are their own Family.
>Wargs roughly weigh 500 kilograms
>Gimli bench pressed a fucking warg with an orc on top
JFK and they say Boromir was the strongest member of the fellowship? My ass
The first warg was actually played by Sloth from the Goonies.
You keep bringing up Middle-earth's "Three Ages," but that's not even the entire history of the continent of Middle-earth, let alone the prehistory of all of the planet Arda. This is gonna get long and wordy, so the TL;DR is that a Middle-earth Pliocene is both possible and sensible, because the continent of Middle-earth, and Arda as a whole, are way older than you seem to give credit for. But, for a more in-depth explanation:
The Three Ages most fans know of are ages of non-geologic definition, and are specifically only ages **in the Years of the Sun,** which just so happen to also be the ages in which the Race of Men awakens and starts writing things down. Before the creation of the Sun in Eä (the name for existence as a whole in Tolkien's work), there were the Years of the Trees, the Years of the Lamps before them, and the timespan of the creation of the planet of Arda (and the wider universe as a whole) before that. In this way, the Third Age of Middle-earth isn't so much the dating to the creation of reality, but more equivalent to a dating system with Year 1 of the First Age at the founding of the first civilisation in Mesopotamia (at least by my own, non-authoritative, interpretation and understanding).
We don't actually have a full timeline of Eä as a whole, but it is _unfathomably old_ by the timescales of living beings, and would quite likely be as old as our universe. We see the Valar enter Eä at the Begining of Time, and (to quote directly from the Silmarillion here), "So began their great labours in wastes unmeasured and unexplored, and in ages uncounted and forgotten, until in the Deeps of Time and in the midst of the vast halls of Eä there came to be that hour and that place where was made the habitation of the Children of Ilúvatar." This description of time, "ages uncounted and forgotten," is important to remember considering that the Maiar are *Maiar,* beings that are literal thoughtforms of capital-G God made manifest; for them to consider something as having taken so much time that they stopped counting, that is going to need to be a *loooooooong* timespan. 13.5 billion years seems about right in my personal opinion, although that comes with my own understanding to Tolkien's intent on making Arda a reflection of Earth, and thus Eä a reflection of the universe as it is.
There is a timeline given of the span of time in Arda prior to the First Age in the Years of the Sun (and the length of a year in these eras was dramatically longer than a solar year), but there are some inconsistencies due to Tolkien changing his mind regarding the exact length of a year in these times (first as 9.582 solar years, later as 144 solar years, a rather notable difference), as well as the flow of time being even more relative in Eä than it is in our world. However, even the lower bound of year length places the span of time here in the area of almost 50,000 years before the First Age, and even that is not quite everything. While these are the years of Arda's timeline, the exact wording used of the Ainulindalë is, "where was made the *habitation* of the Children of Ilúvatar." Being that the elves and men of Tolkien's work are _Homo sapiens_ (if not necessarily _Homo sapiens sapiens_ itself), the mere creation of a planet would be insufficient for the habitation of human life; the formation of suitable geology, the fullness of a stable biosphere, the creation of a self-maintaining climatic cycle, all of this would need to be done long in advance of the world being ready for anything that could be called humanity, and would take time, even for the Valar. As such, I find it quite justifiable for there to have been prior geological _eons_ on Arda, to say nothing of prior geological eras, periods, epochs, and ages.
Of course, take most of this with a grain or two of salt; between the fact that the Silmarillion was published posthumously (and, thus, not fully finished) and the fact that I am having to make a lot of textual and metatextual interpretation here, there is room for arguments, and I'm not exactly an authority on Tolkien's work to begin with. But my point is, there is plenty of time in the prehistory of Arda for the Fellbeast to have evolved and become relic species from a prior geological epoch and environment, and there was plenty of time for species to be formed or domesticated naturally even before you bring magic or divine powers into things.
One species that never gets discussed is the Grond oxen. (I'm told that the only name Tolkien gives them is "great beasts," but that's boring). They only appear for a few seconds in The Return of the King film, which is why nobody thinks much about them. Despite Tolkien's vague designation, the film's design makes them pretty easy to classify. Behind the scenes, they're said to be inspired by the brontothere Megacerops, and their physical appearance is very rhino-like. So, while I still choose to call them "Grond oxen," they're obviously some kind of huge perissodactyl. I find their mouths to be very interesting: in contrast to the fleshy lips of most mammals, they more resemble the horny beak of a tortoise, or perhaps an ornithischian. That might raise some interesting questions about their diet.
What about Dinocrocuta for the warg? I also like the more hyena-like wargs from the lotr films.
Tbf Ages in middle last thousands of years and the 3rd age (the one the movies are in) was considered the shortest. And the ages before the first age. Such ad the Age of the lanterns and the age of the trees that came before the first. So the fell beast could have been from those earlier ages
not that it's canon but when I look at the Caragor's from Shadow of Mordor and Shadow of War they do bear similarities to the Wargs of Mordor so I'm wondering if they were interbred to create the Wargs of Mordor.
Pretty sure that in the books the only distinction between worg and wolf was behavioral. Worgs are sapient, possess their own language and form allegiances with other races. Specifically the goblins of the misty mountains in The Hobbit.
Whatever bizarre conceptual decisions Peter Jackson made with their designs in his film is largely irrelevant to the source material
Caragors and Wargs are known for being rivals.
Orcs and Uruk hai of Middle Earth
If "WTF Azhdarchids" could Fly, These Muthafu--ers Could fly! XD
balrogs are most definitely sentient as are most trolls before sauron bred them with graugs in the 3rd age of course
Ok now do the rings of power warg aka the chuawaw
what the fuck are you doing why are you making me LEARN!?!?!?!
Because he is smart and you are not , he simply passing knowledge to guys like you.(no offence).
What other creatures from middle or if you will do
What Is a Caragor?
None of this is in the books this is just stuff the movie developers thought was a good idea, they should have stuck with Tolkeins wargs these giant mutant dogs are just stupid.Wargs are giant wolves they look like wolves and they are about as smart as people and move as quickly with the same amount of endurance as smaller normal wolves that is what makes them dangerous.And there not stupid domesticated animals they have a partnership with orcs.They where most likely developed by Morgoth from existing animals.
You have to train attack animals to be more aggressive: I know someone who trains attack dobermin(was 20 years ago so this might have changed) attack dogs, he would take the smallest pup of the litter and tie 1 or both legs up to make it easier to persecute and bully by the other dogs in the litter to make them more mean and aggressive.
weird that you left out the oliphants
Honestly, the film depiction of the Oliphants was absolutely absurd. From the books, there is little to indicate that the Oliphants are much more than larger elephants, and not significantly large elephants at that. Just as the wargs in the books are basically just sapient wolves.
@@jackodonail1980 I do kinda appreciate the gompothere influence but yeah they are maybe just a bit too large
Shadow of mordor replacing the warg for carigor was so dumb.
Haven't played the game but looking it up...yeah it seems like a bad choice.
Yea those game games really sh@t on the lore. Don't get me started on what they did to shelob....
Eh, perhaps I'm just too mellow, but I honestly didn't find the caragors all that objectionable. They had an interesting design, and if Middle Earth can have giant monster canines, why not a competing giant monster feline?
The way you don’t pronounce the R in warg, while talking about orcs is hilarious (and annoying) because it sounds like you’re talking about an Orc WAAAGH! from Warhammer 40K
Aaaaff
Skkkff