@subsolar - Tumblr Blog

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So are you going to tell us about the giant hyperpredatory sperm whales or do I have to go google some nightmares myself?

we’re all familiar with the Sperm Whale of our modern seas, largest of the Toothed Whales! it’s also completely specialized for eating squid and squid ONLY, a comfort to anyone who’s ever managed to get just a bit too close to those enormous razor jaws.

but this was very much not always the case! the earlier members of the Sperm Whale lineage were much less… discerning.

early Sperm Whales all resembled our friendly modern swimming school bus to some degree, but the main difference was in the jaws- early Sperm Whales like Acrophyseter and Zygophyseter all had wide, powerful jaws with ENORMOUS teeth suitable for snacking on fish, dolphins, aquatic sloths, and pretty much anything else they could fit down their enormous gullets, kind of like a modern Orca.

and from 12 to 7 million years ago, these things RULED the seas. Megalodon who?

but the greatest of these was Livyatan Melvillei, which was the size of our modern Sperm Whale.

reaching up to 60 feet long and weighing well over 60 tons, it this thing was a Sea Monster in every sense of the word.

it is so BONKERS huge that they named it after the Hebrew name for the Biblical Leviathan (and also Herman Melville, who would have gotten a real kick out of it). I cannot overstate how unsafe it would be to share an ocean with this thing. Moby Dick would have been an entirely different book if it was still around.

so what does a 60-feet hyperpredatory whale eat?

*Groucho Marx voice* WHY, ANYTHING IT WANTS.

(but mostly other whales.)

Livyatan spent most of its time cruising around looking for delicious smaller whales to shove into that nightmare maw up there, a lifestyle choice we call macroraptorial. though in a pinch, anything else would also do.

(basically, if you were a mid-sized baleen whale in the paleozoic seas you were just SHIT out of luck, between Megalodon and this thing.)

Livyatan may have died out as little as 5 million years ago, meaning it might even have been around to make the early ancestors of Orcas regret their life choices! (Livyatan is the only animal that could possibly make an Orca regret anything, but God, at what cost)

but die out they did, and that’s probably a good thing for us. why don’t we all just take a moment to really appreciate our modern hyperspecialized Sperm Whales, especially the part where they don’t eat us!

bunjywunjy

UNRESTRAINED SUMMER FUN

tallullahbonkhead

Aquatic sloths?

bevismusson

Thalassocnus. Got pretty big, between 2 and 3 meters long. Used their claws to walk across the sea floor.

See the monster whales eating the giant underwater sloths

magicalshadesoflamps

why would you hide this in the tag?

namk1

stars-in-mine-eyes-deactivated2

"He wants us to know he's too big to slurp" did not get the laughter it deserved

thefloatingstone

@pangur-and-grim

bestviralposts

INCREDIBLE PHOTO <3

link below to see:

http://sh-meet.bigpixel.cn/?from=groupmessage&isappinstalled=0&fbclid=IwAR1CWHqrxwZ1OUHem0CjjLrTBDH2j2cS4zISRo_2a6coC-A_YkFRr6QzMls

credit to: ketul

warmwate-r

Zoomed in and found this gem

roseverdict

I think I found someone who knows about the camera

Hello there, observant person!

thyrell

uh oh

all-hail-mono-onion

i encourage you guys to click the link it’s hella rad

bonus:

special protected fire hydrant

shrimpathy-for-the-rogue

Bucket

tadpoledancer

Hello darkness my old friend

fuckyahumor

damnnnnn

cdpdoodler

enemy spotted

lubricates

damn this had like 3k notes yesterday

yhellhole

this:

made me cry

made me happy

got me excited

THIS IS FUCKIN’ COOL

digital-magus

Finally, a photo you can zoom in and say “enhance” and it actually works.

Also, I may be excited and gleeful, but also reeeeeaaaaally fuckin’ terrified by this.

shinypenguinpizza

Blessed post

balladofthelamb-deactivated2022

this is probably a longshot but recently I read a poem titled something like “the last thing she sees”……. and its like. from the perspective of a bird on a birdfeeder in someones yard… and the bird is the last thing that sees the person alive before they pass away / the last thing the person sees but obviously the bird has no way of knowing that. anwyays like. i have been thinking about it for two days straight but like a fool i neglected to save it and so now here i am on tumblr dot com asking if youve heard of this poem

balladofthelamb-deactivated2022

FOUND IT!!!!!!! it’s called “Please Read” by Mary Ruefle:

I am the yellow finch that came to her feeder an hour before she died. I was the last living thing she saw, so my responsibility was great. Yet all I did was eat. Through eight long months of winter the black oiled sunflower seeds had gone untouched—not a single one of my kind or any other kind had approached them. It was too much work. Even if we’d had the strength—which we did not, half-starved as we were—we were not in the mood to crack anything. On the morning of the twenty-second of April she took them away and refilled the feeding tube with sunflower hearts—sheeny niblets whose hard outer husk had been stripped away by some faraway, intricate machine. She went back inside and waited. From my branch I could see her do the things she liked to do—she picked up a towel from off the floor, she filled out a card stopping the mail, she boiled water, she stared into space. She saw me coming. Her face flickered with, if not exactly joy, the ordinary wellspring of life. It’s true there was a sheet of glass between us. But I could see the seeds of her eyes and the upturned corners of her mouth. I ate a heart. I turned my head. She looked at me as if I were the last living thing on earth. And as I was, I kept on eating.

michaelnordeman

The Mountain hare/skogshare would like to remind you of the importance of washing your feet, including between your toes!

zepeli

Poughkeepsie, 3/9/2019

kyra-writes

I got a clearer shot if ur interested

fluffygif

Wall murals!

obviousplant

Jazz Crabs

pangur-and-grim

so much care put into housing this aging spider. why are my eyes wet

(tiktok link)

masque-de-nox

Alien Scientist: No, you don’t understand. Humans will pack bond with anything.

power-chords

I almost forgot to mention: this woman came into the penguin enclosure with a KESTREL??? I said “oh my god is that an American Kestrel?” and she said “Yes! She was outside doing raptor education for the kids, but she doesn’t like to get rained on.”