Spec evo short : Examining the 'hyper aggressive herbivore' trope
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- Опубликовано: 26 апр 2023
- Whilst carnivores are generally regarded as the supreme killers, this is chiefly for food. In recent years herbivores in fiction have began to fall into similar tropes - but what's herbivore aggression like and why does it occur? Plus, how many fit such tropes? Let's have a look!
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Like Casual Geographic once said
"You can convince a predator that you're not worth it, but there is NO negotiating with something thinks you're trying to turn it into calories"
Love Casual Geographic, he's so entertaining
Only real og's remember that he was called "hood nature"
@@user-xi5tp4pi6c big facts, can't remember why he changed it tho
@@kingdamazo7266probably bc his audience expanding meant he had to change his name to appeal to that wider audience
What?
My professor was actually asked about why herbivores can be so aggressive. He put it like this.
“A carnivore has to worry about its future even when it kills something, a broken leg is likely to mean inevitable death. A herbivore not only takes advantage of that, but also the fact that it has no future if it’s killed and eaten.”
It’s literally the saying “nothing is more dangerous than a man with nothing to lose” a Carnivore needs to kill to eat and so is much more conscious about death and injury because if they can’t kill then they will die. An Herbivore only needs to worry about staying alive and so it brain is geared so much more to violence because a lot of dangerous animals want to eat them.
the lion kills to hunt again tomorrow ,
the buffalo kills to see tomorrow ,
Bit of both for omnivores
Another possibility is that injuries may not be as bad for an herbivore as it would for a predator.
A hurt leg or foot might prevent you from running as fast, but all the grass I know can't run in the first place.
There is still a worry about predation but safety now is more important than safety later.
@@Broomer52 *sheds a shameful tear* relatable
Before I even watch the video, I will say this much…we need more aggressive herbivore representation in media. You don’t have to eat meat to be an antagonist.
The Wild (2006)
I agree with you! So many people I interact with think Herbivores just sit around all day, frolicking to pass the time, when in reality they have to survive everyday.
I think that Shen and Kai from Kung Fu Panda 2 and 3 respectively both make pretty good antagonists.
Huge credit to Gary Oldman and Dreamworks for making a peacock of all things that scary.
There's no such thing as "antagonists".
It's always so strange seeing people assume herbivores are passive and safe. They've gotta compete for resources just like the rest of us, what do folk think all those horns and tusks are for?
That's the history of taming/domestication right there.
disney
@@Stratelier Hell even domesticated animals are plenty dangerous, a horses kick can kill a person fairly easily.
Let's not forget that the animal that was most likely to kill you in the middle ages was the pig which were let out into cities to eat all the crap.
I gues it is all about assuming they only harm you in self defense, and you arent trying to harm them, thus they should know and be friendly.. Completly not knowing they will stand their ground and consider you being hostile for being remotly in their general vicinity. Like a drunken hermit with a gun itching to shoot someone
and they dont even have the "is this worth the energy", which is only made worse by certain ones such as sloth bears basically just going overaggro just in case
Honestly I think evolving to be awesome at traversing the most potentially trecherous terrain, to the point that it's not even worth it to eat you is just as cool as developing claws or horns or what have you. Like imagine being this highly adapted predatory fish who can swim incredibly fast and you have all this teeth but you can't even catch a clown fish because he is immune to being stung by anemones and you're not.
mountain goats tried that, but then birds of prey learned to play "mountain dominoes". so you, you are the domino =P
it is a good plan though, i'd say the abyss of the deep sea is probably one of the safest places to be adapted to, simply because its physically impossible for much to follow you down there (though squid like to do the same thing as mountain dominoes in the ocean, so maybe not)
Yeah , in that sense living in islands is the ultimate form of that : more ofthen than not it's impossible for large macropredators to evolve on islands , because of irregular must of trees and scarce animal biomass ,
So really dodos where supremely adapted to live on basically no food , and being slow and unreactive is also another fundamental part of having little food ...
Living somewhere remote means the challenge goes from "escaping predators" to "not run out of food"
@Davide Garuti Until someone says, "haha, wood floaty" and erases your slow, unreactive species
@@justapillow2443and then has the gall to call the highly adapted species “stupid”
Hyper aggressive Herbivores are my favorite stereotype beast and I love that they’re getting more attention lately
You can't even call them a stereotype honestly since many large herbivores tend to be aggressive. If anything, carnivores as monsters is more of a stereotype
"Who says we're gonna eat him after we kill him?"
@@LimeyLassennow that is a top tier reference
@@LimeyLassen 😂 "I understood that reference!"
I wouldn’t call it a stereotype, but I honestly agree.
Glad you started off with mentioning the African big herbivores cuz the title alone made me think “why would anyone question this trope’s logic”
I live in the Great Lakes region, you learn to fear the mighty Moose more than a bear or Coyote. Moose are bigger than you think, tougher than you can imagine and if you catch it in the wrong mood you better hope you can put run it.
@@Broomer52out run a moose? Nah if they dont like you thats that
@@zeeno902pray the moosiah spares you
@@Broomer52 bison
@@gary7867 Bison don't live in the great lakes region
As much of a T. rex fan as I am, Mark Whitton's painting of an Alamosaurus laughing at a retreating T. rex does make me chuckle.
Well what else is the poor T.rex going to do, letting himself get smashed by that titan?
a pretty vicious herbivore is the red kangaroo!! They don't really have any predators outside of crocodiles, eagles, and humans- yet they are super aggressive. Males are much more aggressive ofc but they're all just so freaky about attacking things. So many videos of them attacking people unprovoked- even trying to drown people. It's rlly interesting !!!
You are forgetting dingos
@@alejandroelluxray5298 true but they don't rlly actively hunt roos since there's plenty of roadkill
@@kennypseudo3541 They do hunt them actively
@alejandroelluxray5298 Dingos rarely attack people outside of children, red roos are way more aggressive since they will try to actively kill you if they see you. Most dingos are scared of people while roos are to stay the least are not
Well they used too
Thylacoleo, Megalania, Quinkana, and Dynatoaetus were some of the largest predators Australia had to offer.
It’s only when the ancestors of the Aborigines came in and cleared out the landscape with brushfires that most of these predators died out.
And as a result, red kangaroos now have little to no natural predators.
To be fair, a lot of herbivores which aren't generally seen as omnivores will, on occasion, eat meat. I think the example that immediately comes to mind is deer eating bird eggs to supplement their diets.
Cows will sometimes eat bones and snakes because they don't get much calcium in their diet
My uncle's cat got killed and eaten by one of his horses
Deer and cows also straight up eat small birds too. Not just the eggs.
@@toeeater199 Oh Jesus. Poor thing.
@@toeeater199if bears got extinct horses could fill in their boots with few problems i bet ...
This video also works as a good companion piece to Headsquish talking about the portrayal of the Therizinosaurus in Dominion, arguably the best part by showing a herbivore in a Jurassic world movie being dangerous, and most notably, the opening scene.
The Theri should have been the antagonist Dino, not the Giga. Give us the prehistoric slasher villain, dammit.
@@johncronk8867 and herbivore one at that too
@@johncronk8867 kinds was it was more of an anti hero or lawful evil
And the fact that the therizinosaurus stood her ground throughout the giga fight and won is also great as well (tho she was still assisted by another carnivore)
Reminds me of the _Therizinosaurus_ scaring the predator off in The Giant Claw.
Honestly a lot of people don't have the idea of what some herbivores can do. Recently i had to explain to a relative of mine why interacting with a wild capybara was a bad idea including the fact that they could pass a desease or try to attack them if they bother the capy to much
For as chill as they are, capybaras must still be treated with respect
Even normal size rats can mess you up, so I fully respect the big rat that makes the rules
Saw a video of a cornered rat leaping through the air at a human once. It jumped way farther than I would have thought possible. Animal encounters always carry the risk of injury, and there's no universal way to indicate to an animal that you mean it no harm, besides giving it space. Too many people think that just saying kind things to an animals means they will immediately understand their intentions.
make sure to stay away from their treasure, or they murk you.
There is a reason capys are sucessful in the wild
If you can't kill or injure it instantly it's rodent and a big one at that with big dangeroust teeth
No wonder their primary predators are as mighty as the jaguar and crocodile
I was actually way more interested in the mountainous sheep than the aggressive herbivore facts. The existence of defense mechanism that entirely revolves around discouraging predators through lethal environment is both a bizarre yet sensible strategy.
The clown fish strategy
Just watched a TierZoo video where the myth of the poor eyesight was repeated, when I pointed it out people immediately demanded sources.
Which is funny, because TierZoo never cites sources as far as I know.
Which is also why I appreciate that you always show the sources and relevant quotes on the screen when you talk about the topic at hand
TierZoo lost my interest when he posted that paleo-mammal tier list. He listed several animals that had Eurasian wide assumed habitats in lower tiers, yet left “iconic” significantly less wide spread/short lived existence species in the top tiers. He has been given more authority than he deserves and it’s frustrating.
The reason why you were asked for sources is because it sounds outlandish as poor eyesight is the general thought process and thus it’s on you to provide where you got the claim.
And people who takes something called TierZoo (where they use game based words to help describe animals) as something professional and should be seen as something more than just an entertaining introduction to biology, deserve the Dunce Cap.
@@Predator20357 agreed
@@imlonelypleasehelp5443 To TierZoo's credit, the "joke" is that he's not rating them on survivability, but how they compare to each other in a likelihood to survive encounters with other animals. Like comparing PvP builds in an MMO, or just Smash characters. Though "ease of play" definitely seems to be a contributing factor, I wouldn't go into his videos treating them like they're ranking the animals based on how likely a species is to survive, spread, out compete for resources, etc. You're going into the whole concept entirely wrong. Take the video game theme he's running with and just go head long with it, and it's more fun.
Whoever said horns aren't useful for defense never got one-shotted by a black diablos charge. Great work, really enjoyed learning more about the large herbivores of our world.
This vid also gave me a notion about diablos/monoblos: though healthy adults are all but immune to predation, they may be much more vulnerable in their younger dispersal periods, pressuring them to adopt preventative aggression. Even though they can burrow to avoid confrontations, that's still a comparatively time/energy expensive response, especially against ambushes.
They've never seen a buffalo's horn go in through the bottom of a lion's chin and out its mouth.
I do think that Diablos just want to have a calm life and are only aggressive when others enter it's territory yes yes during mating season they will indeed turn aggressive like every being ever
Horns are always deadly, no matter what the primary use is, any animal that has them is going to use them to deadly effect one way or another, and the bigger the animal with horns, the more dangerous it becomes
@@DarlexGardenWarden Black Diablos are female in heat. So basically you were killed by a horny woman.
@@alejandroelluxray5298 That’s not entirely true. Most herbivores with horns don’t actually use them in defence.
The best way I explain herbivores with hyper aggression is that while predators kill to eat, prey animals kill to stay alive. A predator largely will give up if their target is more trouble than its worth, but prey will fight to the bitter end
You could flip that by saying a carnivore has to fight till its target is dead if it wants to succeed while a herbivore only needs to show its more trouble than its worth
I always pictured dinosaurs like those in the Ankylosaurus family having a poor eyesight like rhinos making them swing their clubs first then ask questions. I can also see Sauropods whipping or trampling smaller dinosaurs or other creatures if they get too close.
At the same time, one would think that animals that tall would use their better sight range properly (like giraffes) and actualy have decent vision.
@@gabrielbarbosa7882 I don't doubt that. I see Sauropods being territorial towards other species. Kind of like an elephant charging a gazelle for being in its space. I remember a book I read as a kid where a herd of Brachiosaurus just chased off a predator, and saw everything as a threat, even the baby Ankylosaurus the story was about.
@@redfireeverstar2651 Man this so, realistic
Ankylosaurus has a great sense of smell along with evidence of binocular vision and decent hearing. It probably would be able to identify that “Hey, this thing standing a ways back doesn’t seem that much of a threat and it doesn’t bug me all too much, I might as well not kill it” though I imagine it would mock charge you or get pissy if you bug it.
It also isn’t built to charge at stuff since even with higher end speed estimates it’s nowhere near as fast as a rhino and overextending in a fight can get it killed because asides from its tail club most of its adaptations are to avoid predators in the first place or to deflect blows, both of which don’t work as well if it charges straight at things.
@@gabrielbarbosa7882 Some animals can have good eyesight but bad image processing. Humans for example have better vision than many insects and arthropods that can see into the infrared and ultraviolet wavelength because we have bigger imaging centers in our brains. Mantis shrimps for example, may not see more color than humans despite being able to see more spectrum than us because human brains are better at blending the color. Ducks and chickens are another example. They definitely can see seeds on the ground better than us but can't see the difference between their eggs and rocks of similar sizes and shapes.
Bush Pigs live in my backyard practically. Quite a few people have lost their dogs to them.
In the bow hunter community people say they feel safer hunting buffalo than Bush Pigs. When bow hunting Bush pigs, even if you got a good heart and lung shot, its common practice to have a large revolver/pistol or a rifle as back up after you loosed the arrow.
Have met people who hunt bushpigs who say the same thing, and a lot them didn't like using dogs on them for that reason as well.
Suids are the medium tanks of the animal kingdom, and are just as hardy and destructive as one of those war machines
There's a reason spears for hunting wild boar were made with a crossguard to keep the boar from impaling itself up the spear to take you down with it.
Wild suids in general are some tough motherfuckers.
Imagine hunting something like a giant forest hog.
Or god forbid the extinct Megalochoerus, a pig the size of a large rhinoceros.
Any form of life: exists
Buffalo, Diablos, Monoblos, Duramboros and Banbaro: "And I took that personally"
You forgot hippos, ferrucutus and elephants in musth
@@alejandroelluxray5298 True i also forgot Garangolm but so did the MH fanbase xD
@@gogglesesm9122 which is sad since I like that ape a lot
@@gogglesesm9122Garangolm is extremely passive, the one in sunbreak story is disturbed by the qurio, the species is normally non aggrrsive
I've always known that large herbivores can be dangerous and should be respected, but what really blew my mind was this line on wikipedia:
"In the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, which includes Yellowstone National Park, bears are the most significant predators of calves while **healthy bulls have never been recorded to be killed by bears and such encounters can be fatal for bears.**"
It's one thing to recognize big, bulky animals with big teeth like hippos as dangerous. It's another to recognize how dangerous seemingly mundane deer can be.
Cervids have pretty hard heads for a reason lol
(also pointy hooves + big leg muscles)
What species? The only deer I can think of that use the same age/sex terms as cattle are moose and reindeer.
"Herbivores cannot do shit towards predators" Have you ever tried to catch an angry hamster? They bite you like if they are the original source of rabies!
Hamsters are in fact omnivorous and predatory.
As a wise man once said… you can negotiate with a predator by convincing them you aren’t worth the effort but you can’t negotiate with an animal that thinks you are going to eat it
Ah Casual Geographic, the great speaker.
To put it another way, predators pick their fights... they go for the old and the weak, the halt and the lame. They pick when to disengage, and have less skin in the game. A herbivore gets in a fight with a predator, it's immediately and always a life-and-death scenario. It may as well fight with everything it has.
Nothing like a "short" that's over 20 minutes long! More minutes means more learning!
Someday I hope you cover the creatures of Pandora, I feel like they aren’t covered enough and you’re hands down the best science channel that covers fictional animals
I have seen 2 but your right about the next thing
PAN-DOR-A, PAN-DOR-A, PAN-DOR-A...
JAMES CAM-ERON, JAMES CAM-ERON, JAMES CAM-ERON.
There are actually covered quite a few places you just have to look for them correctly
which Pandora who, Borderlands Pandora or Cameron's Pandora?
@@Marc-zi4vg Cameron’s but the borderlands one needs some love too
“Chat faeces exit the species”
That was brilliant
Diablos are also said to be extremely territorial because of the very scarce quantity of its hyperspecific diet: cactus patches, they are also ironically not able to identify the only real threat: carrier ants, due to its poor eyesight, making it hunting barroth ironic as it preys on them
It's surprising that aggressive herbivores are so rare in fiction when large herbivores in the real world are so wildly aggressive. Even Monster Hunter which is generally pretty good lacks this trope, with Diablos being one of very few examples. I guess predators are just more exciting and dynamic to create.
Banbaro.
@@crowdemon_archives banbaro? hyper aggressive? have you been playing a different game? he will literally sit with you next to a hotspring when unprovoked
Gammoth is said to hate everything not popo or other gammoths
@@fancygecko8936 Mf gets in screaming contests with everything and charges into your other monster hunts unprovoked, Banbaro is aggressive as hell
@@theawesomestuff2408 that is only on gameplay if I remember correctly because banbaro is an invader and actively disturbs fights
One thing to consider is the fact that people tend to let their guard down around herbivores and get too comfortable around them until it's too late. Watch any Yellowstone footage of tourists and you will always see people getting entirely too close to bison (often with disastrous results). Compare that to say, a mountain lion where the average Joe is much more likely to give it a wide berth. So on top of herbivores being more aggressive, confrontations with humans are more likely because far too many don't perceive them as dangerous
Damn straight!! Love this trope. One of the reasons I love original King Kong. All the herbivores are psychos. In a scrapped 1979s King Kong movie the swamp monster for it was actually going to be a hadrosaur.
Have you considered doing a video of the benefits of invader monsters in MH?
I was also disappointed realizing Brachydios was a predator. Now he's no longer my favourite monster.
Tbh, most of brachydios was taking advantage of the fact that the monsters who live in the volcano are armored up. So blast works well to destroy it. And also there are no plants inside of the volcano.
@@mysterygamers3603 There still are a lot of large herbivores and mineral eaters that live in volcanic regions. Bufflango, Kelbi, Apceros, Gastodon, Gravios and Uragaan. So it is actually somewhat of a diverse area with a lot of resources. There's also a ton of large apex predators living in this area, Rathalos, Agnaktor, Lavasioth, Glavenus, making it almost the Kem Kem beds of Monster Hunter. I imagined him being similar to a mineral eater in which the slime was mainly used for getting at minerals or intrasexual selection between rivals. This would explain why he is so aggressive and build for combat. Also for being a predator having explosions is not really a smart thing, especially since the explosions take time to actually come forth. I've heard some interesting theories that his long claws tucked underneath his pounders are used for digging for prey like uroktor. Perhaps when the Iceborne encyclopedia finally gets translated I'll finally get some answers.
It makes a ton of sense too since aggression can prevent predators from even trying to attack since after awhile they'll realize it's not worth even trying most of the time. Part of the reason why many predators fear humans is because we tend to kill off predators and because we're one of the few animals that will seek revenge. If your cousin gets killed by a wolf there's a good chance you'll go out and try and kill all the wolves near your village. People think that's a recent policy but one reason stone age man expanded so far was by killing off tons of predators in an area so there would be more prey animals: in stone age Europe for example they used to start forest fires to clear woods and come back later, the predators like wolves couldnt hunt as effectively in regrowing forests since they lacked cover and it was easier for humans to spot prey animals (who will often go for recently regrowing forests as the plants are younger and more tender).
He doesn’t really seem suited for a predatory lifestyle tbh.
I personally see the slime as a self defense mechanism similar to poisonous tree frogs or cane toads. Brachydios is relatively small compared to the monsters it lives so it’s not impossible that an azure Rathalos or a large Glavenus could see it as prey, and it they attacked it a slime detonation to the face is a great deterrent. They’ll think twice about attack a Brachydios ever again lest they risk another injury. Also explains their back armor designed to repel attacks from above
Nah, I think of him as a big volcano dino boar.
I love deep dives like this, itd be really cool to see a break down of the "man-eater" trope. Itd be really cool to do a whole break down on examples of it in real life and what causes that behavior in the first place
From my knowledge man-eaters occur from several different reasons, the least likely being they naturally just eat humans or will go after humans they see. This happens in animals such as crocodiles and a few species of shark such as the bull shark (which are naturally very aggressive) or don’t discern much in what they eat. Most fall into eating humans due to illness or lack of usual prey due to human influence which we see in lions and other big cats. There are known cases of tigers attacking humans after they have been hurt or have had a cub or mate lost to humans. The other known reason would be rabies which if an animal gets the aggressive form of it and are a predator they may go after and eat humans even if that’s not prey they would usually go after.
As one who has been the victim of several murder attempts by a single herd of elk in Oregon over the period of several years, I can assure you --
The "hyper-aggressive herbivore trope" is absolutely practical, cold hard fact.
I don't worry about bears, cougars, or sharks --
I worry about elk.
They frighten me.
Pretty sure, when I'm an old man in a nursing home, that one herd of elk will send a cleverly disguised assassim to my deathbed and finish the job.
Never met a more vengeful, hate-filled, gratuitously violent species than Western Elk.
Y'know the mere thought of somebody saying "horns aren't effective at driving back predators" makes me not just want that vid on horn shape over many species, but a buncha footage of predators losing.
One important context to note about fatal herbivore attacks, however, is that large herbivores are far more common than large carnivores. This is further exacerbated by how endangered many large herbivores are. The total population of bush elephants for instance, is ten times the population of lions. Hippos and buffalos are even more numerous.
14:34 AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!! I've never heard that one before! The literal sophisticated version of 'talk shit get hit!' OH MY SIDES!
Two things I want to point out that expands on this notion:
1.) Ungulates (except for whales in general) are more of interspecific fighters, and herbivorous animals with fighting adornments in general prioritize intraspecific rather than interspecific fighting (ankylosaur fossils from recent discoveries have head injuries corresponding to tail whips from the same species, most probably mating competition). hyperaggressive herbivores seemingly appear in the larger scale of their family (we could easily include silverback gorillas here, the largest of the current living primates). The size requirement lessens once the animal is somewhat omnivorous but evolved from (or evolving into ) herbivores. Chimps which aren' megafauna as well as pigs (and suiids in general) are known to be dangerous even though they are far from megafauna levels.
2.) Herbivorous beetles especially stags and rhino beetles, are notorious interspecific fighters. They are hyperaggressive in general even at small scales. Though in the insect world's scale, herbivorous beetles are in the rough equivalent of megafauna levels. In beetles, it seems the meta is defined by the horns arms race, and their strong territorial defense habits are supported by their horns. Like in vertebrate megafauna, horns are generally important for species identification as well, and the more impressive your set of adornments roughly corresponds to your ability to keep your territory as well.
All of this makes horns seem like multi-purpose tools that can be used for all of those scenarios, which makes sense given how often their use is in each case
I think you switched around the inter- and intra- in the second instance in your first point.
surely you meant that animals with fighting adornments prioritize intraspecific over interspecific
@@Red-yt2dk No, it turns out, horns and antlers help with species identification itself + bigger = better meta coming to consideration and thus it serves more purpose within one's own species over developing it as defense against predators or other species, especially if the males prefer to mate with the largest number of females available.
We can use the bison as an example: female herdmates use the encircling strategy to protect the calves against wolves, etc. Female bison are still known to have smaller horns on average compared to males.
Oh wait, you know what, I should also put a note that in most of these species, if sexual dimorphism is present in the form of horns or extra muscle mass, then the males tend to fight interspecifically and just use those as a bonus against predators/enemies. If the female of a species has horns, they prioritize using those to protect their young. Both could be true at the same time esp in bovids and horned and/or armored dinosaurs.
@@carlorielmendez6505 Indeed, I agree with everything you've said here.
I'm being a semantic pedant
"herbivorous animals with fighting adornments in general prioritize interspecific rather than intraspecific fighting (ankylosaur fossils from recent discoveries have head injuries corresponding to tail whips from the same species, most probably mating competition)"
prioritizing _inter_specific would be competition with other species, while _intra_specific is competitions with animals of the same species
The following sentence about ankylosaurs describe an _intra_specific competition
I may just be misreading your point here, but i think these prefixes have been swapped accidentally
@@Red-yt2dk oh yeah, got you now. Will change
I would like to point out a bit about the dangers of herbivores to people. In my experience, it's not that the herbivores go out of their way and attack people (hippos and formerly rhinos being notable exceptions) it's that people are dumb, see the cute animal, know it's a herbivores, assume it's safe, mess with said animal, and learn how terribly terribly wrong they were.
True
I wonder if the reason why so many people are attacked by cattle is because livestock don't fear humans?
@@NitroIndigoit's mostly from incidents involving moving large numbers of cattle where accidental trampling are likely
I hope in Prehistoric Planet season 2 features Edmontosaurus actually fending off a Tyrannosaurus. It doesn’t have to be the same as buffalo, just show them standing their ground, bellowing, and even charging the predator. If the filmmakers are really daring, have the bull bite the Tyrannosaurus on the leg like in paleoart!
One aggressive little herbi (I think its a herbivore anyway) that I know of is the norweigan lemming. I'm not sure if its aggression is over hyped, but it's certainly a brave little bugger. I don't think it counts for hyper aggressive though, seeing as it isn't going out of its way to attack anything. It just goes all in if anything gets too close for comfort.
The lemming could be put in the same category as the bushbuck. A lemming will run away and hide, however if it is cornered it will become really aggressive. While it isn't really capable of doing that much damage, it can still be enough to make a predator lose interest
Wyomingite here...the excess in American Bision attacks is attributed to how often tourists approach them trying to get close up photos or even trying to feed them.
I like these new spec evo shorts! I always think these murder vegans in pop culture could have a revamp given the time.
It is what a wise man on the internet once called, "generational trauma"
Assuming you do another Monster Hunter video, please cover Seltas next. Its similar in many ways to the Asian Giant Hornet, which would be the perfect analogy
It would be interesting to see if Seltas are primarily solitary creatures or have some sort of hive colony like Giant Hornets do. It would have to be a very large hive covering a large enough area, given Seltas large size
I highly doubt that notion given that the Seltas Queen is often very violent with her male counterparts not to mention the cannabalism. It isn't unheard of for queen insects to be violent to their workers, but this is usually found in colonies with the gamergate system, where any worker can become the queen. In the case of Seltas, where the workers in question are all male, this is impossible. I would compare Seltas and Seltas Queen more to Spiders or Mantises, at least behavior wise.
There is actually a giant eusocial insect in Monster Hunter though! The Altaroth!
@@saurianfan7102 The Seltas looks like a Giant Hornet (aside from the horn and shell) but behaves more like a spider or, well, beetle I guess.
@@saurianfan7102 I've always had a bit of a theory that Ahtal-Ka is an Altaroth "queen", but since she isn't seen at all directly interacting with them, this really is just more of a crackpot theory than anything substantive.
@@unicorntomboy9736 Seltas doesn't really have anything that makes it close to a hornet. If we look at the male, it's pretty much a beetle (or a MH universe equivalent) with mantis-like raptorial hands, which isn't so unlikely given multiple predatory invertebrates evolved them. If we look ath the species as a whole, then the closest concept are likely trilobite beetles, in which the female reached adulthood while retaining the larval form, but the males go under metamorphosis and becoem a regular beetle, likely because this way they can fly and go look around for the females.
I dont see Seltas as a hive creature really since they usually travel alone or with a mated pair. Their relationship is similar to black widows or mantis where the male is extremely expendable and is willing to die to protect his progeny from predators or to serve as a meal for his mate when no food is available as she is likely holding/caring for the fertilized eggs and with her defensive and heavier form she is the best candidate as a parent to survive
It is quite curious how plenty of media depicts herbivorous creatures as defenceless and sometimes useless animals (primarily seen in videogames and even documentaries)
Really ignoring aspects like size and weaponry... despite how surprisingly aggressive smaller herbivores can be not only to humans but to other animals as well
there's a particular fact most people don't know about hippos. They have a four chambered stomach, with the fourth chamber being not a fermentation tank but an acid bath. They are fully capable of eating meat and getting nutritional benefit from it, but they are poorly adapted to suddenly switch to full time carnivore.
Given that the Hippo exists, I wouldn't exactly call it a trope, more like a road sign.
I feel like Rut like occurrences are not used enough in fiction. Male deer outside of rut are actually quite docile and usually choose to flee. A typical passive animal that gets super territorial would make for good fiction.
Please make a video on The Future is Wild! You’d do an amazing job dissecting that series and seeing how the creatures and ideas hold up. Like mammals losing ground to other groups like invertebrates
Ah yes the hyper aggressive herbivore trope aka The Hippo Effect.
I noticed the trend of Caprids having restricted ranges a couple months ago, but I couldn’t find any literature explaining why. I’m glad you were able to put that concept into words!
One big topic sorta similar to this I hope to see in the future is a video about breath/elemental weapons. In MH/all media. Being a longtime viewer I wonder now how evolutionarily feasible it would be to develop elemental attacks. Or just what the "prompt" for it would be.
I would honestly love this too, hopefully this comment gets a bit more attention
This is a good one!
@@unnaturalhistorychannel [does a little dance]
@@doomcurse1986 l second this
Water would by far be the most viable of all of them, just look at the Archer fish
I hope one day you consider doing a video on After Man's animals in general.
I'd love that topic under the kind of analysis you do
I understand you probably have more monster hunter stuff, but eventually when that runs out it would be cool to see you talk about it
I'd love to see a part 2 to this video and on the note about how good flight is as a anti predator defense i feel the pronghorn antelope is a amazing example of this with them having essentially outliving their primary predator the healthy adults of the species appear to be eaten with primary predation occurring on their young. It would be an interesting video idea to see what it looks like to " win " an evolutionary arms race against a species such as organisms that have a extremely powerful venom/poison or animals with strange adaptations that would have aided in surviving with a now extinct predator etc
The main threat to pronghorns is barbed wire, due to their inability to jump
@@LimeyLassen
Pronghorn can jump they just prefer not to. So they try going under or around instead and can get caught on it. If you don't believe me about them being able to jump you can look it up right here on RUclips and there are multiple videos of them jumping fences. So it can be done it just usually isn't.
I definitely agree we need to see more aggressive herbivores in media showcasing dangerous wildlife, but it is a good idea to also be sure to give that animal justifiable reason why it behaves that way.
The hyper aggressive herbivore trope is basically "Don't confuse my kindness for weakness."
I think a horn-themed sequel would be very interesting. The Witton blog post was really insightful but I also thought that ceratopsians probably weren't that good in the flight departement, being built more like elephants or rhinos and thus don't compare all too well to deer and gazelles.
Not to mention there's a high chance that atleast some could have poorer vision in comparison with other herbivores, and that they could act just as agressively against anything that angers or threatens them, specially their tyranic nemesis
So in animal science, there is a theory that elephants going into Musth and becoming a threat to society is the result of poaching as more older and vateran bull elephants would teach them how to moderate it instead of letting it go out of control.
Here for mah boi Ferrucutus.
My only gripe is the statement that herbivores are routinely more dangerous than carnivores, I think a lot of the high death tolls especially in the case of bison are at least part due to the fact that on average people are in much closer and much more frequent contact/vicinity with many herbivorous species at least somewhat due to the general inaccurately assumed notion by be general public that they are not inherently dangerous as well as the fact that many herbivores exist at much higher local densities than large predatory species. I’d imagine if people walked past large groups of grizzly bears and behaved in as dumb a manner as they often do with bison similar death tolls would arise.
This is a good point, but bare in mind too across large parts of american people still co-exist closely with black bears and cougars with surprisingly few injuries. I think there's more bison incidents from Yellowstone alone than there are cougar or bear incidents from the whole lower 48.
A fantastic video, it's great seeing new info being shared while debunking myths to these kinds of topics. I'm surprised that, give when ceratopsians were brought up, stegosaurs weren't brought up as defenses specifically made as anti-predator weapons, given how dangerous they would be in intraspecific combat (although the possibility of that being a thing isn't impossible) and that we do have fossil evidence of theropods being inflicted with jabs from thagomizers.
Still a great topic, going to definitely apply the points learned here to a project I'm developing. One question that did come to mind though, and this is more difficult to judge, is if hyper aggression is more heavily linked to ornamentation or weaponry, in the likes of tusks, antlers, and horns, or body size.
Probably to body size most of all, less so for other aspects of morphology / weaponry.
Stegosaurs are a good point, although I didn't initially mean for this video to have a paleoslant it was more just bringing up Witton's post.
@@unnaturalhistorychannel I figured in regards to the Stegosaurs, was just an interesting point to bring up. And that's good to know regarding body size, I've been thinking lately about the recent trend of making hadrosaurs more aggressive against carnivores and I've wondered how much truth there is to that paleo-meme. Is there some truth of hadrosaurs having turned the tables on carnivores, or were they all like the example you gave with rams? Personally I imagine only rare large individuals/species would display that type of aggression, but there's a lot of room to speculate.
The fact of the matter is evolutionary speaking herbivores need to worry about being hunted more than predators. This makes herbivores more anxious than carnivores and often times that anxiety translates into aggression. Now add this with the fact that herbivores can often grow larger than carnivores due to the cost effective nature of their diet and as a means to defend themselves from predators and we've got a pretty clear example of a death machine.
herbivores, or at least prey animals, are often a lot more aggressive than anything in a similar weightclass. this is one reason why mustelids, such as the honey badger, are hyper aggressive: theyre prey.
fear is a prime factor in aggression after all, and if your a big, bulky prey animal that cant outrun most of its predators, such as a honey badger, then you dont have much choice but aggression.
Love that in the spec evo comunity almost half a hour long videos are considered short videos. Also i think the hyper agressive herbivore trope might be my favourite since their weapons double as display pieces making them look cooler than carnivores.
After learning about the relationship between Buffalo & Lions on the African plains makes me wonder if Ceratopsians & Tyrannosaurs had a similar relationship in the Late Cretaceous. It would explain why Triceratops in particular was so ridiculously abundant in the Hell's Creek Formation. Perhaps Triceratops & it's relatives showed similar reactive aggression towards predators, & there are studies that show Tyrannosaurus's in the same population took different prey at different rates so there might have been something going on there...
There is water to certain Ceratopsids having reactive herd aggression towards their predators! A specimen of Centrosaurus suffered from advanced, aggressive bone cancer on one of it's hindlimbs (Unable to link the source, RUclips won't show my comments when I do, but you can easily find it by looking it up), which would have caused a limp in life and made the individual far more vulnerable to predatory attacks. Despite this, it survived with this cancer for a long time and died in the same event that all of it's healthy herdmates did, a flood. While the large size of a herd would make it harder to pick off singular animals, sick or not, infected individuals would likely be left behind in the event of the entire herd fleeing. It is possible that the individual survived out of simple, pure luck, but it's longterm survival does give credence to the idea that Ceratopsid herds may have actively mobbed their predators in the event of an attack.
@@ankylosaurussupremacy That would make sense, like Triceratops in Hell's Creek Centrosaurus was extremely abundant in the lower Dinosaur Park Formation. But back on the topic of Triceratops, I heard some say how Triceratops might have been solitary which I think is silly. It was the most abundant large herbivore in its environment & if you look at modern ecosystems the most common large to midsized herbivore is at least semi-social.
In short, I think Triceratops could have definitely mobbed predators.
i can't thank you enough for presenting an alternative to the VS forum way of seeing nature ,
as someone who fell into that way of seeing stuff just because i had found other pepole willing to talk about animals ,
it is sad because the cause is genuinely a self fulfilling loop of :
pepole intrested in animals with some disinformation ,
and networks looking for views and creating more of the same for cheap , as well as servers creating uniformity trough moderation and general structure ...
they start with misguided pepole and end up creating complete lunatics that will tie their ego to certain animals and will spend great amount of times and efforts sifting trough genuinely intresting information about their favourites , in search of that nugget that suggest an outcome ...
it's sometimes impressive that entire feudes have gone on , on such flimsy premises ...
it also brings forth a really degrading way of seeing things : with evolution being a nihillistic god , sometimes doing things just for the goof ,
being sadistic other times and yet once again being it's best with the most studied genera , them always being rich in tricks and swindles ...
this in the best case really , other times animals may be seen as gladiators existing from nothing and to nothing else rather than being pinned against each other ...
honestly to wish that these communities got reduced in scope and our egos finally got in check may be wishful thinking on my part ...
still thank you for the free almost university level information delivered with an eye to the casual viewer , you've done a whole lot against disinformation
In my spec evo world, I have a rhinoceros-like herbivore with sharp keratinous spikes covering its lower back and rear. It also possesses two large keratinous horns on its face, similar to brontotheres.
Is it a mammal or is it from some other group of animal?
@@nemanjastanimirovic155 it's a mammal. Specifically a giant rodent.
@@GhazMazMSM very nice
That sounds like the armored dinosaurs of mammals!
I wonder if some animals practice territoriality for access to better sleeping arrangements. Like the breeze is better on that side of the hill so we're gonna run out that other group of critters
Offensive structures that see more interspecific use than use between species can also be interesting to look at design wise, are they more likely to fight each other or to fight something else? It’s especially good for establishing social behaviors in the animals
When I’m writing a science fantasy dinosaur novel, I made herbivores as a bigger threat to the protagonists than carnivores, that are neutral, patient and will attack on brief occasions, even the Triceratops is portrayed as the main dinosaur villain, while the T. rex is portrayed as a guardian angel.
Edit: Then I decided to change the Triceratops with an Ankylosaurus to not only the fact that it's a T. rex killer but it shows that just because something is cute that doesn't mean it's harmless, much like a hippo that killed 500 people a year.
I love your videos and im so happy to be educated on these things! Thank you!
I'd love to see a video about horn and antler morphology
Id really like to see you do a cover magnamalo not just to be a joke hate on video but to see what exactly your thoughts are on it and possibly to see if it could be related to teostora sense their both feline like and use a element thats similar in effect
Watch his 2 year QA, you'll hear all he has to say on magna.
Thank you for the useful information! As someone whos making a whole speculative biology world and unrelated speculative animals this video definitely helps.
The idea of buffalo counter-ambushing lions is oddly comical.
Unnatrual History Channel, thank you for your hard work, we all appreciate it.
I honestly didn't expect the zebra to be part of your list, they seem so timid o.O
Zebras bite like crazy, and are hyper aggressive when they feel threatened. Just look up on RUclips “Zebra fights lion”. They kick, buck and fight like hell.
Watch Casual Geographic on RUclips, he has done several videos on why herbivores (including zebras) are a lot more dangerous than people realize...
Oh believe me, zebras are everything BUT timid, they are even more agressive and dangerous that horses and with good reason
horns are very interesting since its both defense and attack
placed in easy reach of the neck, the main weakness predators tend to go for if they have the ability
commenting for the algorithm as I am saving this for tomorrow, also can you do the crabs?
Someday...
@@unnaturalhistorychannel when you do the crabs would you only do the main line crabs or would you do frontier ones too?
@@unnaturalhistorychannel yes the promise of the only consistent life form
Continue with this, this speculative evo serie are so awesome
I really like this sort of video discussing tropes and behaviours. I hope you do more of this more general video
Wanna see more of them tbf. Dragons with hippos tempermants are fun.
Excellent video as always. I would 100% be interested in a deeper dive into horns/antlers
I would say you make a good point in representing that herbivores are much more danger than the predators. There are many people who misinterpreted that herbivores are not danger, and they can come into their territory, and make a mockery of themselves.
I always knew that horns are use for both intraspecific combat and for defense against predators, so it doesn't make sense for some people to consider them useless in combat, when the reality is that horns are deadly weapons
Also, more agressive and hyper agressive herbivores interpretation on media, I hate whenever herbivores are represented as the helpless ones on popular media (including Beastars)
Edit: Regarding the rhino's agression towards lions, I do believe this is done to eliminate threats for future calves, since by the looks of it a lot of attacks towards lions are executed by female black rhinos, and since their calves could be a potential prey for lion prides and hyena clans, this in turn could also mean that hyenas occasionally are too attack by rhinos, with similar results
Another fun one as always. I've gotten a greater appreciation for herbivores as of late.
In terms of potential future spec evo videos, I would love to see one that covers the general viability and advantages/disadvantages of natural zombie viruses like the cordycepts from the last of us and other similar cases, maybe even comparing them to and talking about stuff like real world cordycepts and Leucochloridium.
A great video, as always.
awesome video!
Bring on the horns!
Can human influence also make large herbivores more aggressive overall? I know elephant/human conflict in some areas has resulted in elephants reacting more aggressively to people, but they are a very complex species (to the point they can react based on what clothes people wear), so I was wondering if this has been documented with "regular" herbivores like ungulates.
And for an unrelated question, what are your thoughts on TU 5?
Also I always thought Diablos were ever angry because they can't digest cactus spikes and thus have to feel them go through their cloaca every time they take a dump.
Well it's theorized that killer bees will attack people wearing black and white striped clothing because they tend to be raided by honey badgers when they are in Africa. So that can be one example although the bees attack on instinct and not a conditioned behavior.
Unnatural history channel, thank you for you’re hard work, we all appreciate it. You’re an amazing, wonderful, incredible, and awesome person. ☺️😊😄😃🤩😍 👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏 ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️
Carnivores fight for meals, herbivores fight for their lives.
It’s neat to come back to this video and hear the part at 11:58 after reading that isotope study on tarbosaurus that showed individual preferences in prey
The Ferrucutus attack is the only dinosaur-based action scene in King Kong that could be discussed in a serious, ethological way. This is a movie in which a herd of gargantuan Brontosaurus are somehow driven into an insane stampede by a pack of much smaller Venatosaurus (not to mention the ridiculousness of lumbering sauropods being able to run faster than humans) and a Vastatosaurus pursues a tiny woman while he literally has a big Foetodon in his jaws. Outside of dinosaurs, it's also quite far-fetched (and convenient for Ann and Jack) that a swarm of Terapusmordax decides to get themselves killed attacking Kong. Overall, this film is no Jurassic Park. In contrast to the convincing zoology presented in The World of Kong: A Natural History of Skull Island, the creatures in the film are depicted as unrelentingly aggressive monsters rather than animals.
On the topic of omnivores being belligerent, it’d be interesting to see a Triceratops scare, say, a younger Tyrannosaurus from its kill in PP season 2. Just saying!
I've been thinking a jurassic movie where a Triceratops is a main antagonist or a horror movie about hippos
I don't know where the trope of ''hyper friendly herbivore'' came from either, clearly from people who live far away from nature and from actual wild, not-tamed or used to be around others, animals...
I'd love to see a follow-up video on horn/antler morphology!
Thanks for that bit at the end about Wittons post about horns. Great guy, and he certainly has a point, but it never really sat well with me.
Holy shit this channel is sick. How have I not heard of this before?!