Becoming a Predator Was Hard

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Animals eating other animals seems like a tale as old as time, but it's only almost that old. Predation had to evolve in the Ediacaran period -- so let's look at early almost-predators like Auroralumina, Kimberella, Ikaria, and whatever punched holes in Cloudina.
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Sources:
Ikaria:
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32412...
www.pnas.org/doi/pdf/10.1073/...
Kimberella:
www.cell.com/current-biology/...
www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/news/2...
Cloudina:
www.jstor.org/stable/3515782
General:
arxiv.org/pdf/2212.00899.pdf
doi.org/10.1016/j.tree.2008.0...
doi.org/10.1017/S108933260000...
Images:
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www.inaturalist.org/observati...
www.nature.com/articles/s4155...
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www.nature.com/articles/s4159...
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[@SciShow]

Visit brilliant.org/scishow/ to get started learning STEM for free. The first 200 people will get 20% off their annual premium subscription and a 30-day free trial.

[@artdent9871]

I posted the following comment (my WORM WARS theory) to a Sci Show vid a few weeks ago, and this new vid about predation in the Ediacaran would seem to be almost ALL the current evidence supporting my theory. THANK YOU! My theory: WORM WARS! Current thinking among scholars is trending towards understanding that there was an Ediacaran Explosion prior to the Cambrian Explosion, but we know the oceanic chemistry necessary to develop calcium-carbonate body parts didn't exist until near the end of the Ediacaran. The more conservative among paleontologists seem to think that there was very little diversity prior to the late Ediacaran, because without shells, teeth, etc, almost no evidence of diversity is left in the geologic record, ergo it didn't exist. NONSENSE, there is evidence of worm tracks in the sea floor of shallow, coastal waters going back almost to the last Slushball/Snowball Earth, and by the end of the Ediacaran, a worm was building layer after layer of thick, cup-like armor rising up out of the coastal biotic mat, which had a large circular hole drilled into it from another worm trying to eat it (Google THAT picture). Things were getting BUSY in that mat, obviously. All PRE-CAMBRIAN. There was clearly intense predatory behaviour going on among worms in the mat long before calcium carbonate allowed a geologic record of it. Eventually genetics might allow us to piece it all together, but until then, CMON, WORM WARS were a thing throughout the Ediacaran, the predation eventually resulting in Molluscs (fat worms with shells), Crustaceans (shelled worms with funky limbs), Vertebrates (fast worms with inner skeletons), etc etc etc. Their earliest, worm ancestors had to have been subject to predation, and when animal life got highly competitive IN the mat, that's when worm variants and other early animals started getting the hell out of the mat to live, and only then could they leave some fossils, imho. Some levels of the mat clearly lived by dissolving and absorbing the remains of anything that died IN the mat, and worms started very small, predator and prey, with no hard parts. No record, except descendants who were just too evolved, too fast. Almost all modern animals are basically worms with a bunch of stuff added on, it's kind of obvious that there had to be incredible diversity and predation among worms throughout the Ediacaran, not just at the very end, for the incredible diversity of late Ediacaran and Cambrian Explosion to be reasonably explained. The diversity of the Cambrian makes a lot more sense if there was "amazing" diversity among the Ediacaran worms who evolved into these Cambrian animals, they just couldn't leave a record of their existence until calcium-carbonate body parts became possible due to oceanic chemistry changes in the late Ediacaran. By then, they were pretty diverse and complex, to the point where they were apparently eating the mat, and earlier above-mat animals, out of existence. Imho😉

[@alto7183]

Buen video, entonces de ser todas las células iguales del canibalismo celular a la necesidad de mutar son una de muchas formas de surgir los predadores, me temo que si esto no existiría la evolución en la tierra, gracias a esa carrera evolutiva se crearon órganos y neuronas de ambos lados, conexiones neuronales básicas de presa y predador, de modo que se podría Imitar o rastrear las matemáticas detrás de esto y por tanto comprender desde el surgir la conciencia hasta la relación neuronas y sus decisiones cambiando el adn del cuerpo masculino y femenino para acelerar los cambios en la biológia, aunque lejos de poder entender poderes psíquicos de cerebros biológicos predadores y presas si tuvieran diferencias de diseños e ingeniería biológica evolutiva de carnívoros, omnivoros y hervivoros sugerencia.

[@seanrowshandel1680]

Were you students of Tri-low-bite-tease in this seminar?

[@roxaskinghearts]

to eat meat thats why they were invented or to just feed micro organism with their energy dense foods there use to be more animals around even the biggest cities then people now people are consuming the planet dry why the west is burning so bad the amount of predators we need to fix our micro biome because the small ones are just as important as the big ones in some ways more so

[@laattardo]

I'm not sure you meant your video's title to come across the way it does. It sure sounds like intelligent design (aka a god) invented predators. And I'm here for it. God is unknowable, all we can do is try to discern God.

[@outlawbillionairez9780]

To a blade of grass, a cow is a horrendous predator. First, it eats you, then it craps your dead neighbors all over you!

[@DMahalko]

Grasses evolved a defense against predators... they absorb silica from the ground and use it to strengthen cell walls. Cows had to develop complex stomachs and the ability to regurgitate previously swallowed grasses to chew it further, break apart the silica, and make it easier to digest.

[@oracleofdelphi4533]

That smell of freshly cut grass after mowing a lawn is the grass' way of screaming for help.

[@DHuangy1]

more like eat your competition and crap gold onto you so you outcompete your now dead neighbors.

[@racecarrik]

First it eats you, then eats you again, then OMG why a third time, please let it end! But the end is even crappier...

[@outlawbillionairez9780]

@@DHuangy1 you went a little dark there. .... I like it!! 🙂👍

[@MatthewTheWanderer]

I suspect that scavenging evolved first and predation evolved from scavenging. It's not a big leap for a starving ancient herbivore to eat dead herbivore it happened to find.

[@GameTimeWhy]

Opportunistic omnivore is a term for a reason. Animals need protein and meat is really good for fats and protein.

[@dancoroian1]

Exactly this -- also unaddressed in the video is the fact that there's a non-insignificant chance that implements evolved for scavenging (e.g. sharp teeth for shearing flesh from skin in hyenas) could also provide an advantage in predation. Which I think all but resolves the supposed "paradox" presented by the video. This is without a doubt one of the poorest-researched videos I've seen from SciShow.

[@jimmyc3238]

And from there it isn't a big leap to "Well, it's not quite dead yet, so I'll just help it along."

[@TY_2020]

That's what I was thinking aswell, it'd make sense if predators went from eating dead prey, to then eating dying prey, which had better preserved nutrients, which led predators to then evolve to seek their prey in better and better physical condition.

[@MatthewTheWanderer]

@@jimmyc3238 Exactly!

[@TheZeroNeonix]

I wonder when animals first developed the ability to feel pain. It makes sense that would have appeared as a response to predators, as a way to tell the body, "Hey. Something's wrong. You're under attack. Defend yourself."

[@chupacabra304]

Good question , I feel alternatively it could have arisen as a chemosensory mechanism, because there is different ways to feel pain. Heat , environmental toxins, and as you mentioned 😳 predation!

[@littleredpony6868]

Predation might have helped refine the ability to feel pain. There’s survival benefits to the ability to feel pain other than predation

[@jackvos8047]

Around the same time they developed the ability to feel everything else.

[@kawafahra]

you may start on a cellular level. a cell is the smallest autonomic lifeform.

[@CahyoPrabowo]

When the animal feel pleasure?

[@super6w3n13]

"After all, if you *can* eat something, why wouldn't you eat it?" Such a mood for avoiding your diet.

[@einienj3281]

😂😂 True, we are omnivores after all. Got to taste everything, just in case it's delicious..

[@oberonpanopticon]

If we’re not supposed to eat ourselves to death, then why can we? Checkmate dieters.

[@hoon_sol]

@@einienj3281: Physiologically speaking humans are not even remotely close to being omnivores, we have a completely herbivorous physiology. We are culturally and habitually omnivores as a species (although not all individuals are), but none of us are so physiologically.

[@einienj3281]

@@hoon_sol We have K9s..

[@hoon_sol]

@@einienj3281: Human canine teeth are flattened and smoothed out. Look at the canine teeth of a gorilla in comparison. Canines don't have anything to do with carnivory or omnivory, canines exist in a wide variety of primates for purposes of self-defense. Even some species of deer have huge canines for that very reason (not to mention similar forms of self-defense in even larger animals, like tusks in elephants). In contrast, omnivores and carnivores have carnassial teeth, which in combination with their fixed jaws act as scissors to shear and rend meat. Not even close to human physiology.

[@AlmostEthical]

I like to think that the first microbial predation happened because the critters could not distinguish their peers from food. And there might not have been a lot of difference.

[@Arwenkid]

I was thinking the same thing! Makes me laugh to think they're all just happily munching and then suddenly one goes "Wtf, Greg?!"

[@AlmostEthical]

@@Arwenkid Too funny! That would make a good Larson cartoon

[@vladtepes97]

So, you're saying those special feelings I have for my neighbour might not be as wrong society says?

[@AlmostEthical]

@@vladtepes97 Maybe you should invite them to join you in a meal with fava beans and a nice Chianti?

[@DMahalko]

It's important to not assume intent with any of this. The biological responses are mostly due to random mutations in the cellular structure, many of which are useless and do nothing, or are damaging and kill the cellular offspring. The formation of a biomat likely occurred because some cell started randomly excreting this sticky slimy substance out from itself, which unexpectedly benefited other cells that happened to become bound together with it in this slime layer. Waste materials excreted from cells would then also become bound up in the slime. From this environment then, can arise mutations in cells that are able to absorb these waste products in the excreted slime and re-use it somehow as a food source. This then leads to the first beginnings of predation, on the excretions of other nearby organisms.

[@Chad_Thundercock]

The fact that Claudida had shells suggests an earlier evolutionary pressure to develop them, long before the eater started drilling them. I suspect predation began before that, but both predator and prey were to soft to have fossilized.

[@gluehuff43]

A very Chad take.. And I agree! Username checks out haha.

[@pandapower5902]

Could the shells have served another purpose maybe?

[@coltonbates629]

@@pandapower5902sexual selection? idk

[@PeteOfDarkness]

There are many things shells are good for outside of protection. Rigid body structure for bigger animals. Digging into sand or other hard materials. Protection from environment. Buoyancy in water. Separation of growth segments.

[@KuK137]

@@pandapower5902 They could, supporting bigger body that would collapse without something to prop it up, like our bones, or keeping walls of your burrow from collapsing...

[@oracleofdelphi4533]

I can't help but recall a quote from the Poor Richard's Almanac: "Fools bake the cakes, Wise men eat them." It kind of takes a new meaning here.

[@yusheitslv100]

So if I bake a cake and eat it, am I both a foolish and wise man?

[@sohida_solidarity]

​@@yusheitslv100 I guess 🤷‍♂️

[@oracleofdelphi4533]

@@yusheitslv100If you put in the hard work but reap the rewards, you are wise. Predators don't care about what you baked. You're the cake.

[@WindsorMason]

Wise men eat the fools huh

[@michaelmicek]

Sophomoric thread

[@junebegorra]

In Journey to the Microcosmos, single-celled creatures act like lions and gazelles or gazelles and grass. It's interesting to think that predation didn't follow alongside the rise of multicellularity at first.

[@tillettman]

That’s what I was thinking. Mitochondria and chloroplasts are theorized to have originated as independent single-celled organisms that were then “eaten”, but not digested, by other single-celled organisms.

[@metal87power]

Checkmate for vegans.@@tillettman

[@WilhelmDrake]

We spend far too much time focusing on the macro instead of the micro when it comes to the evolution of life.

[@sianmilne4879]

I mean, if you count eating single-celled organisms as predation, then all those animals eating from the bacterial mat WERE predators... It's being able to go after other multi-celled organisms that took time!

[@michaelwintermantel9127]

I see it more as a step along a continuous process- the rise of multicelluarity was much akin to the rise of megafauna- they could potentially be eaten, but in general were too big to kill (kinda like whales or elephants). Then because there's an unexploited resource, evolution inevitably finds a solution to gain kill those. What bugs me is she dismisses cnidarian predation, which involves stabbing things with tiny spears and ingesting them- very much a kind of predation, just different from a cheetah, which is honestly only one kind of predation

[@Nmethyltransferase]

"Long ago, all animal species lived in harmony/ But then, everything changed when the predators attacked!"

[@daniel_rossy_explica]

I've got the same reference.

[@ebonyblack4563]

🔥

[@fajaradi1223]

There are no predators on Ba Sing Se

[@akatsukigajou1639]

"This are not the prey your looking for" ->some random prey

[@LordSatoh]

(as a funny anecdote, not that it would really have happened like that) I imagine the first ever prey wandering around when the first ever predator approaches. The prey thinks "excuse me, respect my personal space... oh wait, wtf is happening??"

[@marigoldmusic5564]

It’s also interesting to think how predation would’ve started pretty peacefully too, until the species coevolved into prey prioritizing running when it needs to, and predators chasing after them, and furthering the complexity of the dynamics between animals :0

[@xk445g]

Well I'm sure that things had an "Avoid bad stimulus" reaction. Originally to either avoid toxic chemicals or other environmental hazards. Something using acid to consume it's flesh is not so different from acid in the environment. So the Avoid danger reaction was probably there. @@marigoldmusic5564

[@Krieguerre]

The first ever predator to hunt and chase down prey (that we know of) was eating algae or microbial mats, making it a "grazer" actively moving and hunting other living organism to eat. Those organisms were photosynthetic like plants, not anything like "animals" as we think of them today. (3:02)

[@oberonpanopticon]

any number of meme audio clips could fit well with that scenario

[@oracleofdelphi4533]

Predators... The greatest invention since Prey.

[@DiesMali]

Oh hey! I was the copyeditor/proofreader for the 2022 Bobrovskiy paper that analyzed and described the gut contents of Kimberella (and other Ediacaran animals)! I’ve seen this paper cited in a number of articles and videos now, which is pretty darn cool. That was one of the 2 most interesting/influential papers I’ve worked on thus far. Really cool seeing it pop up in the wild like this again! 🤩

[@dvoiceotruth]

Almost all of these very first predators sound like female names (Kimberella, Cloudina etc.). How was this approved.

[@qdaniele97]

_Long ago, the sea-floor creatures lived in harmony..._ _Then, every changed when the kimbarella attacked_

[@rkramer5629]

0:45 Thought for sure she was gonna finish that with, “when the fire nation attacked” 😂

[@kangarumpy]

Thr PvP update really did change the meta a lot.

[@darth856]

The Ediacaran is such a cool period, and I sense there is a lot more left to learn.

[@nicodemusedwards6931]

One day a cell saw another cell that died. And that cell thought… well, it didn’t think because it was a cell. But one day a cell stumbled upon a dead cell, and took that dead cell into itself. Because that dead cell had all the things the living cell needed to make more of itself. And a few billion years later, dogs came to be.

[@Cryptech1010]

Thats the title for the next video, "Why were dogs invented?"

[@unoriginalname4321]

This needs to be in textbooks

[@RyunoOhi]

@@Cryptech1010 That's an easy one. They were invented because humans wanted a loyal companion. There weren't any such things, so humans took wolves, & turned rivals into friends. We literally used the Power Of Friendship to make a species-wide buddy.

[@littleredpony6868]

@@RyunoOhiit is interesting that the only two species that evolved to be terrestrial persistence hunters ended up becoming allies

[@_Muzolf]

@@RyunoOhi Its unlikely that early humans would have taken the cubs of something they very much feared to raise them. Far more plausible is that the ancestors of dogs started following around groups of humans, because humans would leave behind food they themselves could not eat, but canids could. (Skin, bones, bone marrow ect.) Over time their usefulness as an early warning system would become apparent to the humans, and living in close proximity, benefiting from eachother would eventually turn into a genuine partnership.

[@DonnaBarrHerself]

I imagine the microbial mat would have considered those early animals to be parasitic predators. Of course, the tradeoff was, we gobbled up all that toxic oxygen.

[@wasd____]

"If you can eat something, why wouldn't you eat it?" MOOD

[@goyoelburro]

I'm VERY interested in the Ediacaran!!!

[@pepino4271]

For my gym teacher it wasn't.

[@yours09trully]

Great show! Good host. I love how she keeps me entertained and informed at the same time. I like her energy.

[@naingaung2748]

I could beat a prehistoric predator in a fist fight.

[@aaronmoravek]

I've noticed that when complex things evolve that you may always be able to hypothesize a solution by using a gradual step by step process. Something complex like a baleen whale's baleen plates started when whales begun to eat only a couple of fish at a time. Some predator may have started by eating plants with creatures on them and slowly begun to eat more creatures as millions of years passed.

[@darkonyx6995]

It's a plausible possibility!

[@richardvanasse9287]

I wonder how many times predation independently evolved. How many times did predators evolved into prey animals and prey animals evolved into predators?

[@jimjimsauce]

i wonder if one of the great filters is that some predators emerge and are too OP, therefore eradicating other life and then dying off themselves

[@sirsanti8408]

Usually they seem to regulate themselves, they can only evolve as fast as their prey so once they start hunting, the prey starts being harder to hunt, and the less prey the less food for predators

[@mcgritty8842]

The Megalogon comes to mind with this thought. Climate change and lack of food is what is said to have led to their extinction

[@secondsein7749]

​@@mcgritty8842but that's not their fault though. OP meant of the predator hunted their prey to extinction, kinda like what humans tend to do...except that we have tons of preys so we are in danger of killing ourselves. I don't think there has been a known case of a predator being too OP that it caused its own extinction by overhunting. But like I said, known. Such predator might have exist but their fossil records didn't survive or even made into fossils.

[@jimjimsauce]

@@secondsein7749 you’re spot on, but i was talking more so about life on other planets. incredibly speculative but when we look up at the stars and see that it appears we’re alone, i think it could possibly be a filter, predation evolves and there’s not enough speciation and diversity of prey

[@PequenaNoobAmaPudim]

That's humans in a few decades

[@whizthesugoi]

"Taking a bite out of thy neighbour" was top notch

[@aidiot4461]

my uncle becoming a predator was pretty easy

[@galaxylord4000]

💀💀

[@akatsukigajou1639]

a idiot hmmmm🤔

[@akatsukigajou1639]

​@@galaxylord4000 nope not💀

[@hannah48844]

Ediacaran Period my beloved. Love how there's a mystery animal boring holes into shells, like yup we've got critters doing that today too, solid strategy 10/10, but also what are they.

[@probablyaxenomorph5375]

This makes me wonder if complex terrestrial ecosystems could evolve and function without predation. Imagine an alien world where the conditions were just right that life never had any reason to develop predator/prey dynamics.

[@estherclawson6876]

I have no idea how that would work. Even herbivores are predators to plants.... And micro organisms are such a complicated ecosystem themselves.... I am perplexed now. Thank you. I will think about this and try not to be too prideful about any answers I consider.

[@istvanczap3004]

Probably not, it is a very big open niche.

[@Flegado]

I mean if that ecosystem is thriving you got a whole lot of energy dense creatures sitting around just waiting to be a snack for an opportunist.

[@secondsein7749]

I doubt it as it would lead to predation anyways due to various factors such as the increasing lack of resource. If nobody eat each other, the amount of organism would increase and the competition for food would increase. Eventually one organism would accidentally ingest the other and found that's more energy effective than slowly absorbing energy from their surrounding. Then there's dead bodies. Dead organisms would leave behind their carcasses, which would lead to animals becoming scavengers to avoid wasting those valuable resources. Scavengers then would evolve from waiting for something to die, to activately make them die.

[@hoon_sol]

That's absolutely possible. We essentially know this for a fact, because ecosystems can function here on Earth with such vastly different levels of predation, and even in ecosystems with very little predation predators don't fulfill any essential function, as herbivores evolve to regulate their own numbers in the absence of predation, so the commonly cited necessity of predators to keep herbivore populations down is simply false. In fact, if we continue to progress technologically and gain ever more control of the biosphere, it even becomes a very important question whether or not it's moral at all to allow predation to continue if we can easily engineer an ecosystem to work just as well in its absence, since predation involves so much pain and suffering that mutualistic symbiosis does not. Even today the core of the most biodiverse ecosystems on the planet revolve around mutualistic symbiosis rather than predation, and you generally find the largest predators at more extreme latitude where resources are more scarce; it might be intuitive to expect the opposite, but it's likely due to the fact that complex systems where mutualistic symbiosis exists between a large amount of species are more resilient, and how the increase in available energy from sunlight doesn't just translate to more available for predators, but rather makes it easier for the mutualistically symbiotic species to defend themselves and each other.

[@viniciusdiniz6266]

Maybe "Why Do Predators Exist?" or "The Time Before Predators" would be a better title, "invented" is a weird choice of words.

[@miniverse2002]

This also only really explains animal predation as well. The origins of the first predators ever seems interesting in its own.

[@reinertgregal1130]

@@miniverse2002 Also how specialized they are despite being so few...

[@jimnatale9]

Cloudina predation seems like a stretch. I feel if the hole is the same size and shape and in the same area. Then it might be a feature of the Cloudina rather than evidence of predation.

[@elonstruths1475]

It's only on a minority of Cloudina fossils. Most have no hole at all, but several have more than one. Also, while they are pretty much in the same region, the holes are not in the same orientation. So the likely explanation is they are from an external source.

[@mho...]

2 Words: Energy Density!

[@tonytaskforce3465]

Back in the Ediacaran all life had long hair, wore headbands, tie-died shirts and embroidered flared jeans. The only thing they did was feast on the slime-germs and murmur "Peace, my dude,' 'Awesome.' It all ended when one of them stole another's stash hidden behind a rock. The world's been uncool ever since. 🦕

[@NitroIndigo]

I just realised that the planet Leera from Animorphs is based on Earth in the Ediacaran - full of squishy marine animals that absorb nutrients and little life on land.

[@maillardsbearcat]

NERD just kidding I loved Animorphs

[@yaitz3313]

...I mean, I doubt that was deliberate, but sure, I'll go with it.

[@fakshen1973]

Scavaging seems like the most natural path. Then as there is more competition for scavaging takes place, those scavangers that cN tackle an almost dead creature seems the next likely advance. Then as competition ever increases, there becomes a race to tackle more and more fit creatures until a species no longer scavanges bit specializes, as a new species, that hunts.

[@SaturnCanuck]

That was quite fascinating and I had never thought of this before.

[@haramanggapuja]

I’m sure that one of the driving elements of the evolution of predation was the evolution of sight. Seeing what was eating what makes a big difference.

[@anetahajkova1336]

I believe smell, taste and touch are more important than sight. I have pet snails. Snails are VERY old creatures. My snails are omnivores, scavengers, but there are many predatory snail species, both in water and on land.

[@michaelwintermantel9127]

Sight is surprisingly unimportant. The vast majority of predator species on earth use olfactory senses far more than vision. (Eg insect antennae, jellyfish taste receptors, etc...)

[@leonardofusaro6029]

@@anetahajkova1336please tell me more about your snails! i dont see other snail people in the wild much

[@gluehuff43]

​@@anetahajkova1336 Yeah I've always felt like snails use all their other senses for cruising around and exploring and save the eyes as mostly a defense mechanism. I have a number of pet snails and I love watching them go about their lives. It's hypnotizing to watch their little radulas scrape food off of glass enclosures.

[@haramanggapuja]

Only so, yes, because there are a multitude of other senses that play. Hearing, sense of smell/taste, all that. But the emergence of sight is considered a very big milestone in the evolution of complex life. Just to think that animals developed a way to make sense of a tiny portion of the electromagnetic spectrum --- nerves becoming antenna -- is an astounding evolutionary step. Not that descerning molecular structure (smell/taste) and subsequent following of pheromones isn't just as important ;-) So, yeah, sight is just one sense, but the entire ability to make decisions wither autonomic or purposefully out of some sort of consciousness, is pretty damn impressive too.

[@DB_000]

I was having a reasonable conversation with my neighbor... Until he made a sharp turn into a one sided discussion of how evolution isn't real and there is no proof of its existence. Meanwhile, I passively nod and my small dogs maintain their excitement at my feet and ask for uppies~

[@Brickertown]

I absolutely love the delivery of the line at 0:43

[@Viewer372]

Actually, this may be the most profound video I’ve ever viewed. As an octogenarian with with degrees in ancillary medical field, I never gave thought to the original predator or the origin of predation.

[@LadyAnuB]

Why predation in the first place? Calories. The caloric content of animals is higher than that of plants or fungi. Enough so that it is worth it to adapt to eating them as their primary food source.

[@craigskiles]

A very interesting and charismatic presentation. Love it. Give me more.

[@Zulk_RS]

One thing that confuses me here though... is why? Like if all the creatures were able to absorb the nutrients they need from the mat of bacteria, why develop predation in the first place? Why adapt at all when you have everything you need right there? I guess you can call absorbing nutrients from the bacterial mat as being like a predator but still, why develop tools to eat anything other than the bacterial mat?

[@secondsein7749]

Because it's more efficient and effective that way. Absorbing nutrients from the environment is slow and it affects your entire being especially reproduction. Organisms that ate others find out that they gained more energy that way, allowing them to do more.

[@Zulk_RS]

@@secondsein7749 Wait... I thought getting energy from the environment was more effective? I thought when herbivores ate plants, they only got 10% of the energy the plant got from Photosynthesis. And then when a tiger or something eats the herbivore, they get 10% of the energy the Herbivore stored from eating grass.

[@awaredeshmukh3202]

​@@Zulk_RSEven if you only get 10% of the energy in the prey, it's soooo much more concentrated that finding that energy yourself would take much longer. Eating one prey organism that has kindly spent its whole life harvesting energy from the environment is a lot more efficient than harvesting it yourself, even if you can't actually use all the spoils

[@YAHGOA]

The error is in your question. It doesn't have anything to do really with efficiency. The issue is that your asking the question as if evolution is a process with an aim or a goal when it is really just the end result of 3-4 steps (scarcity is a condition more than a process or a step). Heritability: Offspring that have traits that correlate positively with what created them Variability: That heritability is imperfect so that there are some of the population that are different in various ways Scarcity: There is not an infinite amount of the resources outside of the units (do not have to be living things to evolve) Selection: In that there is a limited amount of resources only some of the units will replicate onwards. Moving into a new niche isn't really about the old niche not existing at all it is more that some of those variant forms are now to some degree capable of using resources that were previously unavailable to their progenitors and many of their competitors/siblings. This new resource does not need to be better than the old one. The benefit is that it is relatively uncontested. If we only see those variant forms that became successful and focus our awareness on them then it SEEMS like the groups as a whole are trying to evolve with a purpose to try to preform goals or become better adapted but it is really just selection bias. Funnily enough looking at a process which functions off of selection bias through another layer of selection bias is where this error comes from and thus your question can seem like an issue.

[@littlejourneyseverywhere]

"if you can eat something why would you not eat it?" Me, facepalming as i try to stop my dog from eating crayons and my kid from eating floor candy.

[@GreatMossWater]

When you think of it, predators are basically stealing energy for themselves.

[@_Muzolf]

So are herbivores, and really, anything that is not doing photosynthesis or is just scavenging entirely dead stuff.

[@hoon_sol]

Yep, predation is definitely a form of parasitism. And the idea that it's necessary is not true at all, even though a lot of people repeat it quite a bit, because in the absence of predators you see herbivores evolve to regulate their own numbers in a wide variety of ways, so there's no need for predators to keep populations down.

[@hoon_sol]

@@_Muzolf: Not true for all herbivores, because a ton of herbivores are mutualistic symbiotes who derive their food in a mutually beneficial manner. Well-known examples are pollinators, which consume pollen and nectar that are offered up by plants, as this helps the plants sexually reproduce by having the pollen spread to other organisms within the same species, and seed-dispersers, which eat fruits that are offered up by plants in order for them to propagate their genetics to whatever other places the seeds might end up, preferably some distance away from the progenitor plant. There's also the mycorrhizal fungi that tend to form mutualistically symbiotic relationships with trees, where the fungi provides the tree with easier access to various minerals and chemical defense for the roots, all in exchange for simple sugars. In fact, in the most biodiverse systems on the planet you see these types of mutualistically symbiotic relationship make up quite significant portions of ecosystems, and are often also among the most resilient ones, as these systems essentially turn into larger superorganisms that subsume their parts.

[@_Muzolf]

@@hoon_sol Ok, yeah good point. Was not thinking about symbiotic organisms like that.

[@daka.notatp]

@@hoon_solim starting to think you are a cow trying to make a political crack between hervibores and predators

[@OAikoT]

For a moment there I honestly thought u gonna say 'but then everything changed, when the fire nation attacked' XD

[@danielbetts5806]

It took me a bit to realise the title wasn't talking about child predators

[@mistermonologue2442]

Lmao no it didn't. Stop lying.

[@hoi-polloi1863]

Just a thought here... the distinction between carrion-feeder, grazer, and predator may have been much less back then. Imagine the first predators evolving from microbial mat grazers... it's just a small step from that to munching on whatever immobile creature is rooted in the mat. Those early victims wouldn't have had any defenses, so to the first predator there was little difference; maybe just a denser field to munch on. That predation would start creating pressure for the prey to start escaping or self-defending in some way, which in turn would put pressure on the predator to up his game.

[@Nathanael.Thomas]

I'm betting the first animal to munch another was pure accident. Like, neither parties knew what just happened. But one survived and the other didn't.

[@ThatFreeWilliam]

Do Patrons get a video of Savannah trying to say "Helminthoidichnites"?

[@prism560]

The world was at peace, but then everything changed when the predators attack

[@a_e_hilton]

On Journey to the Microcosmos, we see microbes predating each other. Feels weird that this video only really discussed macro animals as predators?

[@ComradeDoubleM]

The predation in microorganisms predating predation in macroorganisms was briefly mentioned in the video, but it is not the focus of it.

[@marxtheenigma873]

Auroralumina is a pretty name. Why was that given this creature in particular? What's the story behind it?

[@marcoasturias8520]

"Aurora" mean dawn or the light of dawn. Lumina is lightsource, specifically a torch. So they are the Torches of Dawn, named after that because their bodies resemble a torch and their tentacles, fire! Picture an anemone. Oh and their species name is Attenboroghii, after David Attenborogh for this animal was discovered where he used to play looking for fossils when he was a child! So yeah, thus animal is British!

[@sunnyquinn3888]

This episode has a lot of pretty sounding names.

[@zotaninoron3548]

Definition of predator presented at about 1:50 leaves open to classifying something that subsists on plant or plant analogue also as predator.

[@a52productions]

With how many ecosystem/evolution simulations I've played, and how difficult it is to get a sustainable predator-prey dynamic to evolve (let alone persist!) predation being difficult completely makes sense. You have to evolve senses, fast movement, a degree of intelligence, a more specialized gut, natural weapons... That's so many mutations, and most dont do anything until you have nearly all of them. All simple herbivores have to do is move forward and eat.

[@mathieugariepy2948]

Great subject.

[@KenMathis1]

The first predators wouldn't have had a dangerous time, because no prey had developed defenses yet.

[@passiveaggressiveflamingo6851]

You rocked this Savannah! Well done!

[@jamestown8398]

Now I want to know more about the mysterious Cloudina-hunter.

[@_vallee_5190]

The reason is because eventually herbivores eat all the available food which in turn produces evolutionary intensive to carnivory, which is seen even in the Ediacaran.

[@nicksalve]

"once vast mats" is my new band name

[@squish998]

I really enjoy the way you explain things. Keep up the good work.

[@pinewuddin]

If there was a microbial mat with creatures feeding off it, there would also be the dead bodies of said creatures. With no predators, they may have reproduced at a rate that reduced exposure to the microbial mat or just an abundance of dead bodies mixed within the microbial mat. I can imagine a creature feeding off the mat and then accidentally eating some of their dead ancestors too. The ones that could digest the extra protein had a bigger energy boost and eventually started seeking out the dead, then the almost dead, then just anything they could munch.

[@jeremypreston5009]

I think we're all ignoring the most important question Was anomalocaris tasty?

[@Cybonator]

How odd, Kimberella sounds like the first girl to break my heart

[@thesharkormoriantm274]

In many cultures like tribes of Siberia, hunting is not seen as predation but as a sort of trade. That 's why people die of old age, as a "repaiment".

[@battlesheep2552]

I mean, it's kind of an inevitability that if a lifeform finds a source of energy and nutrition that nothing else is exploiting, it will adapt to exploit it to it's fullest.

[@bbbenj]

Really interesting 👍

[@einienj3281]

Invented? Where did predators come from? Well, some lifeforms were hungry and opportunistic..

[@shrikesvalley4272]

ok i absolutely love this thumbnail, like, yes that little primordial chicken nugget really IS a fierce predator

[@SeptemberMeadows]

Predation would have started with scavengers, becoming adapted to scavenging then predation would have been most likely a desperate act in situations where scavenging was temporarily no longer an option.

[@wasd____]

No, because the ability to digest other organisms is a highly specialized adaptation. A starving animal that normally gets all its nutrients through direct skin absorption can't just resort to eating another dead animal - it wouldn't have a mouth or a gut to eat it with.

[@eumesmo7698]

could you do a video showing theories about how carnivores evolved? like, what kind of enviroment forced things to eat other things

[@a.r.h9919]

Wonder how the world would look like if the complex lifeforms of this planet were not based on the predator and prey relationship but entirely different ecosystems and relationships

[@secondsein7749]

I mean if the planet is just plants, maybe. But even plants have parasitic plants so...

[@hoon_sol]

You needn't look further to the most biodiverse ecosystems here on Earth to get a glimpse of that. Yes, there are predators there, but the core of those ecosystems revolve around mutualistic symbiosis, so complex lifeforms that are not based on the predator-prey dichotomy already exist, and in large numbers at that. In fact, such organisms are arguably the most complex of all in many ways, due to the benefits of deriving your food in a cooperative manner with other organisms. Flowering and fruiting trees provide nectar and pollen to pollinators, fruits to seed-dispersing organisms, and trees in general provide shelter to countless animals and simple sugars to symbiotic mycorrhizal fungi. It's in fact very easy to imagine entire ecosystems working exclusively on those principles, just as we see human societies work exclusively on those principles. In the absence of predation, herbivores evolve a wide variety of mechanisms to regulate their own numbers, and we see in ecosystems with very low levels of predation that herbivores there typically have much slower reproduction rates as expected.

[@hoon_sol]

@@secondsein7749: It's not hard to envision with animals either; in fact, we already have tons of mutualistically symbiotic animals existing today, including a wide variety of insects, birds, and mammals. See my above reply for a bit more of an in-depth answer.

[@robertpayne9009]

Thanks!

[@nariu7times328]

Wow I love this show.

[@toughcreampuff5691]

Hard to be a predator? I don’t know… People like Dream and EDP make it look pretty eas- oh wait wrong predator.

[@Jaducaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa]

0:44 when the fire nation attacked

[@marioreds7826]

It's just another way of getting energy. Whenever and wherever there's some form of energy, evolution finds a way to exploit it.

[@joels5150]

This is kind of reminding me of the scene towards the end of the Futurama movie, Into the Wild Green Yonder. An evolutionary arms race…

[@MorrisSieh-rd6hj]

My question is, "When did Chris Hansen start catching these predators?"

[@lucidmoses]

Given horizontal gene transfer goes back a long way. I would bet the distinctions between predator and non is way more fuzzy.

[@tsm688]

horizontal gene transfer would have been easier back then, when everything was so squishy, unspecialized, and closely-related

[@adriannaconnor6471]

you're all awesome!

[@joshuaphillips755]

"Y'all" - you ain't above it

[@michaelwintermantel9127]

My issue with this is it entirely discounts the majority of predation. Yes, there is an important distinction to be made between a predator and a mobile, active, specialized hunter, but as a zoologist who specializes on invertebrates, i think its a bit unfair to ignore the fact that organisms have likely been eating each other for much longer than animals have existed- i suspect that what became the thing that you describe as "active predation" was really just the equivalent of a new predator evolving that can attack megafauna- animals that previously were too big to eat. For instance, bacteria have been killing and digesting each other for a long time- in the anscestors to snimals, the evolution of multi cellularity basically created a new "megafauna" that could eat other single celled organisms without fear. Over time you end up with the devopment of different strategies of hunting the smaller bacteria, including stabbing them with spears (cnidarians), filtering them from water (sponges), or grazing them (weird mobile things. The evolution of the ability to actively pursue and kill a multicellular organism is really no different than a cnidarian ability to stab and ingest a larger organism, which likely was starting to evolve at this time. Yet you entirely discount that because its a different kind of strategy to hunt and kill. At the end of the day predation wasnt some brave new invention. It was a natural step in a continuous set of developments designed to better aquire more energy than your neighbors.

[@JKa244]

Predation definitely started before multicellularity

[@anyascelticcreations]

"Baggy passive blobs" I'm feeling very judged right now. 😅

[@juliuskwak1263]

It is entirely possible that predation came about due to organic evolution or even -by accident-. But predation is behavioral. We cannot forget that it is the result of an active behavior out of a simple need-based format in order to fulfill an immature notion. "I am hungry and I must eat and that thing over there is something I can eat to stop my hunger. I do it all the time." But then it also suffices to argue that had predation not come about (even by accidental means) that we would perhaps not have had evolution to happen. Imagine nearly wiping out an entire species of something because you and your fellow simple-celled fellas could take them all on with ease. And the result of that forced ecological change has allowed the environment to suffer or benefit. This being the very feature that invited evolutionary change because adaptation now must happen if you and your fellows are to survive since the main food source has been wiped out.

[@enterthecarp7085]

LUST makes its presence felt… Good stuff y’all 👍🏼 🧬

[@hypocritease]

Tool - "This is necessary, life feeds on life"

[@Sudstah]

Because there are resources for predators to exploit, the accidental second benefit is they help balance ecosystems, remember nothing is designed it works it survives it doesn't it dies.

[@GeoffryGifari]

If we were to restart the evolution of life on earth, would active predation inevitably emerge after some time?

[@_Muzolf]

It took a long time for multicellular organisms to rise. We do not know how hard it is or what conditions are needed, it is entirely possible that it would simply not come up again. So big smart predators actively hunting might never rise, and neither would herbivores or anything more complex as an ameba. But the ameba would, single celled organisms would still have predators among them.

[@KimvyKinsley]

I'm pretty sure becoming a predator has always been hard

[@hejgustavful]

1:45 That seem like a bad definition to me cause that’d also include cows grazing which I assume you would not classify as predation.

[@sharlharmakhis280]

3:06 🎶 Kimber-elly, Kimber-elly~

[@monkfishkilla]

Kimberella 🤣 I just "credited" my pants

[@darkhorseman8263]

Ikaria lol. They named it after the old Ikaria Warriors game.

[@nickvinsable3798]

🤔 . . . Question: How & why does organisms eating other organisms happens in the first place? If all organisms were, say, a careful combination of green (plants that generates oxygen) & purple (plants that generates carbon dioxide), then why have animals?

[@rodrigoma1350]

Because a random mutation allowed one of the organisms to steal nutrients from the others, and organisms are much more nutrient dense than their surroundings, so it provided a huge evolutionary advantage.

[@nickvinsable3798]

🤨 . . . Doesn’t exactly answer my question though, @@rodrigoma1350. What is the driving factor towards predation IF general nutrients is so abundant?

[@artdent9871]

I posted the following comment (my WORM WARS theory) to a Sci Show vid a few weeks ago, and this new vid about predation in the Ediacaran would seem to be almost ALL the current evidence supporting my theory. THANK YOU! My theory: WORM WARS! Current thinking among scholars is trending towards understanding that there was an Ediacaran Explosion prior to the Cambrian Explosion, but we know the oceanic chemistry necessary to develop calcium-carbonate body parts didn't exist until near the end of the Ediacaran. The more conservative among paleontologists seem to think that there was very little diversity prior to the late Ediacaran, because without shells, teeth, etc, almost no evidence of diversity is left in the geologic record, ergo it didn't exist. NONSENSE, there is evidence of worm tracks in the sea floor of shallow, coastal waters going back almost to the last Slushball/Snowball Earth, and by the end of the Ediacaran, a worm was building layer after layer of thick, cup-like armor rising up out of the coastal biotic mat, which had a large circular hole drilled into it from another worm trying to eat it (Google THAT picture). Things were getting BUSY in that mat, obviously. All PRE-CAMBRIAN. There was clearly intense predatory behaviour going on among worms in the mat long before calcium carbonate allowed a geologic record of it. Eventually genetics might allow us to piece it all together, but until then, CMON, WORM WARS were a thing throughout the Ediacaran, the predation eventually resulting in Molluscs (fat worms with shells), Crustaceans (shelled worms with funky limbs), Vertebrates (fast worms with inner skeletons), etc etc etc. Their earliest, worm ancestors had to have been subject to predation, and when animal life got highly competitive IN the mat, that's when worm variants and other early animals started getting the hell out of the mat to live, and only then could they leave some fossils, imho. Some levels of the mat clearly lived by dissolving and absorbing the remains of anything that died IN the mat, and worms started very small, predator and prey, with no hard parts. No record, except descendants who were just too evolved, too fast. Almost all modern animals are basically worms with a bunch of stuff added on, it's kind of obvious that there had to be incredible diversity and predation among worms throughout the Ediacaran, not just at the very end, for the incredible diversity of late Ediacaran and Cambrian Explosion to be reasonably explained. The diversity of the Cambrian makes a lot more sense if there was "amazing" diversity among the Ediacaran worms who evolved into these Cambrian animals, they just couldn't leave a record of their existence until calcium-carbonate body parts became possible due to oceanic chemistry changes in the late Ediacaran. By then, they were pretty diverse and complex, to the point where they were apparently eating the mat, and earlier above-mat animals, out of existence. Imho😉

[@andrewbrown6522]

This goes against everything else ive read in the past including a specific google search not all that long ago.

[@Khyranleander]

Where does the acquisition of mitochondria by cells fall in the evolution of predators? I mean, is it likely they just moved in strictly to be helpful? Seems likelier they were either parasites (predation from the inside) to the cells or absorbed by early cells (as a precursor to external predation).