Megalodon: Apex Predator - Anna'nın Arşivi (2024)

FAQs

Were megalodons apex predators? ›

In addition to being the world's largest fish, megalodon may have been the largest marine predator that has ever lived. (Basilosaurids and pliosaurs may have been just as large.) Megalodon was an apex predator, or top carnivore, in the marine environments it inhabited (see also keystone species).

Killer Whales

When you think of top ocean predators, you probably think of sharks. Great white sharks, to be exact. But the true ruler of the sea is the killer whale. Killer whales are apex predators, which means they have no natural predators.

A study from 2022 suggests that competition with great white sharks for food may also have contributed to megalodon's downfall.

Entering the fray with its mighty rival, the Livyatan. Not only alive but actively competed against each other on the same food source.

Their results suggest that the megalodon could fully consume prey the size of today's killer whales and then roam the seas without more food for two months. The reconstructed megadolon (Otodus megalodon) was 16 meters long and weighed over 61 tons.

No, NASA Doesn't Have a Live Megalodon Hidden in the Atlantic Ocean. Sure would be cool if they did, though. Troubled and troublesome depression-era filmmaker Carl Denham (Jack Black) would do just about anything to achieve fame and success.

While mosasaurs were undoubtedly fearsome predators, they predated the megalodon by some 50 million years. But Livyatan melvillei, a prehistoric sperm whale, was among the other titanic aquatic animals that lived alongside the megalodon.

The megalodon turns its body to place the mosasaur squarely in front of its jaws and chops down on the quivering flesh of the mosasaur's tail as it tries to slither away. As the megalodon bites down again and again the flailing mosasaur's muscles seize and then go limp as blood spills out into the water.

Lions. As a large, apex predator that hunts animals weighing up to 1,000 pounds, a lion is more than capable of having a human for lunch. And they do. Lions kill between 20 and 250 people each year worldwide.

With their proven ability to immobilize a finback or even blue whale by pinning its flukes, it would be a simple matter for a large bull Orca to seize a Megalodon's tail and hold it in place. Soon, the shark would start to weaken and suffocate.

Is there still 1 megalodon alive? ›

The answer to the megalodon question is a resounding NO. Megalodon went extinct around 3.5 million years ago.

Global water temperature dropped; that reduced the area where megalodon, a warm-water shark, could thrive. Second, because of the changing climate, entire species that megalodon preyed upon vanished forever. At the same time, competitors helped push megalodon to extinction – that includes the great white shark.

Megalodon is definitely extinct, something we can be sure of because it preyed upon animals that live near the surface and therefore also lived much of its life at the surface, no battle scars have been observed on whales, and there are no accounts of attempted attacks on boats.

The majority of sharks we study are apex predators. Even though they are at the top of the oceanic food chain and can live for decades, they are still susceptible to overfishing. Unlike most fish, sharks grow slowly, reproduce late in life, and have only a few offspring.

'Apex predators': For 2.5 million years, early humans stood atop the food chain, eating mostly meat - Genetic Literacy Project.

Great white sharks are an apex predator in the ocean best known for their power, speed and strength. They are the largest predatory fish in the world and are also the only shark that regularly feeds on marine mammals, often hunting whales, seals and sea lions.