- 8 hours ago
- #brightside
- #brightsideglobal
In this video, we will explore the reasons behind the enormous size of some of the insects that live in Australia, such as the giant burrowing cockroach, the huntsman spider, and the rhinoceros beetle. We will also learn about the ecological and evolutionary factors that influence the body size of insects, and how they adapt to their environment. Stay tuned for more fascinating facts and amazing images of these incredible creatures.
#brightside #brightsideglobal
TIMESTAMPS:
0:01 How kangaroo made it to Australia
09:50 Why no one lives in the middle of Australia
18:30 What if a giant spider trapped you in its web?
This video is made for entertainment purposes. We do not make any warranties about the completeness, safety and reliability. Any action you take upon the information in this video is strictly at your own risk, and we will not be liable for any damages or losses. It is the viewer's responsibility to use judgement, care and precaution if you plan to replicate.
#brightside #brightsideglobal
TIMESTAMPS:
0:01 How kangaroo made it to Australia
09:50 Why no one lives in the middle of Australia
18:30 What if a giant spider trapped you in its web?
This video is made for entertainment purposes. We do not make any warranties about the completeness, safety and reliability. Any action you take upon the information in this video is strictly at your own risk, and we will not be liable for any damages or losses. It is the viewer's responsibility to use judgement, care and precaution if you plan to replicate.
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FunTranscript
00:00Have you ever wondered what's inside of a kangaroo's pouch?
00:04Maybe they're saving some snacks for later.
00:07Maybe it's for their house keys.
00:09Or perhaps they're used to their part-time job transporting people to work every day.
00:14The short answer is kangaroos use the pouch to carry their young, or joey.
00:19They need the bag because after a short gestation period of up to 36 days,
00:25the joey is born and crawls into the pouch for their continued development.
00:29Where other mammals would not.
00:32Once he is born, it's the size of a jelly bean.
00:35Although he is deaf and blind, it has an acute sense of smell and finds its way into the warm
00:41and protected pouch.
00:43The joey will then attach itself to the mother to drink milk where it receives nutrients,
00:48and from there it will live, grow, and develop for the outside world for the next four to six months.
00:55Once the joey develops enough, it can leave the pouch and stretch its legs to adapt to the world outside.
01:02But it will still go back to feed inside the pouch for a further six to twelve months.
01:07These time frames vary depending on the types of species of kangaroos.
01:12There are four different types.
01:14The red kangaroo, the largest of all the kangaroos and all terrestrial animals in Australia,
01:21is found throughout the mainland, though generally in deserts and open grasslands.
01:26Nicknamed the Big Red, it can stand as tall as six feet and weigh up to 200 pounds.
01:33The eastern grey is mainly typical of the eastern coasts.
01:37These are the second largest, with a height of five feet tall and a weight of up to 180 pounds.
01:46The antilopean kangaroo, the smallest of the four, is located in the far northern tropical regions.
01:53Their height reaches up to four feet tall, and they can weigh as much as 110 pounds.
01:59And lastly, you'll find the western grey in the southwestern and southern areas of the continent,
02:05weighing up to 120 pounds while standing up to four feet tall.
02:10Of all the different sizes, their most notable ability is to leap forward in a bouncing motion,
02:16covering vast distances.
02:18The Big Red can cover up to a staggering 30 feet in just one bounce.
02:24Although, what makes the kangaroo so unique isn't uncommon in Australia.
02:29They share evolutionary traits with other classifications of macropods.
02:34Wallabies, wallaroos, quokkas, and patamelons are distant cousins of the kangaroo,
02:39with several species in each classification.
02:42They all come in many different sizes and live in the unique areas that they've adapted to
02:47throughout Australia and New Guinea.
02:50Although marsupials were once more common throughout the rest of the world,
02:54it's unclear where they originated.
02:56The old fossils of marsupials were found in North America,
03:00but it is clear that the marsupials slowly made their way down under
03:04and came through South America, across Antarctica, until finally into Australia.
03:10Of course, we're keeping in mind that this was when the continents were all still attached.
03:15Once making it to Australia, they quickly adapted without competition from the other animals.
03:21Some other mammals made it to Australia around the same time.
03:24The bat family and the rodent family,
03:27it's not surprising that mites and rats had managed to make it to Australia before humans.
03:31Although Australia's climate would have been very different from what we know of it today,
03:36marsupials had adapted quickly to the changes.
03:39There has been some debate about the unique characteristics of the marsupial
03:43were better suited for the drastic changes in weather as opposed to other animals.
03:48The smaller gestation period allows their young to feed on milk a lot sooner.
03:53Marsupial milk has growth and immunity factors greater than other mammals' milk,
03:58which could be beneficial in a harsher environment.
04:01Which is why marsupials are more prominent in Australia.
04:05The kangaroo has explicitly adapted over the ages.
04:08Their success in adaptation reflects on their current population of around 40 million throughout Australia,
04:15easily outnumbering the human population.
04:18Although their success is not entirely due to their unique traits,
04:21it's mainly due to the lack of predators.
04:24The dingo.
04:25The mammal migrated to Australia approximately 8,000 years ago,
04:30but their numbers are controlled around most of Australia.
04:33And then there was also the thylacine, also known as the Tasmanian tiger,
04:39which slowly disappeared from the mainland since humans arrived around 50,000 years ago.
04:44And it's estimated they disappeared completely around 4,000 years ago,
04:49allowing marsupials like the kangaroo to thrive.
04:52The fascinating thing about thylacine is that it provides an excellent example of convergent evolution.
04:58It is the process where animals not closely related independently evolve similar traits.
05:04The thylacine and the gray wolf come from entirely different parts of the planet
05:08and only share a common ancestor that existed at least 160 million years ago.
05:14Yet they evolved similarly.
05:16Other marsupials fit the category of convergent evolution.
05:20The marsupial sugar glider, which is like the placental flying squirrel.
05:24The hopping mouse, which is like the North American kangaroo rat.
05:28There are types of marsupials and other moles.
05:31The Tasmanian devil is like the hyena and wolverine.
05:35And the wombat has resemblances to the groundhog and marmot.
05:39The possums and their cousin, the opossum in North America,
05:43has evolved to have opposable thumbs.
05:46A feature found in primates.
05:48Hedgehogs and porcupines, mammals completely unrelated to Australia,
05:52have their unique spikes, but share this similarity with the echidna.
05:57The echidna is another mammal altogether and not a marsupial.
06:01It is of the monotreme order.
06:04The echidna is one of the only two left in the monotreme mammals.
06:09Unlike other mammals, monotremes don't produce live young,
06:12but lay eggs, of which their young, or puggle,
06:16hatches just 10 days after being laid.
06:18But like all other mammals, the puggle will drink milk from their mother.
06:22A further example of convergent evolution is with the koala,
06:26which has evolved to have fingerprints, like primates.
06:30The koala has adapted through the warming of the weather in Australia.
06:33As the climate became drier,
06:36there was a distinct change in the fauna throughout the continent.
06:40Eucalyptus trees became more prominent
06:42as they more easily adapted to drier climates.
06:45Over 70% of native forestry in Australia is currently eucalyptus.
06:51The eucalyptus leaves, or gum leaves, are deficient in nutrition.
06:54They are so low in nutritional value that they shouldn't be the main diet.
06:59But the koala took advantage of this uncontested food and adapted over time,
07:04and now they only eat them,
07:06and they'll gorge themselves up to 6 times per day.
07:09It ensures that they need to sleep up to 20 hours each day,
07:13but although they sleep a lot,
07:14they're very safe high above the eucalyptus trees.
07:17The animal world in Australia is strange as it is diverse,
07:21but even those natives in this land have their own stories that make them even more bizarre.
07:27Indigenous Australians have stories from the dream time,
07:30telling tales of weird animals that existed.
07:33One mythological animal was the bunyip.
07:36It has been told in tales as a beast that lurked within the swamps, rivers, and lakes.
07:42Although commonly known as the bunyip,
07:44it's also referred by many different names throughout the country.
07:48Before Europeans arrived in Australia,
07:50there existed around 250 languages within the native population.
07:55Each language has a similar story of a beast that lived within the water,
07:59which would provide a valuable lesson to young children
08:02to be careful around swamps and rivers.
08:06The bunyip's various forms, scales, fur, or feathers,
08:10sizes as small as a dog and as large as a buffalo.
08:13Some are unimaginably strange in appearance,
08:17but others weren't too dissimilar to actual animals like the crocodile.
08:21A precursor to how mythological creatures like the bunyip were created
08:25had likely originated from bones and fossils of existing animals.
08:29For example, in Europe, stories about dragons are argued that they probably originated
08:34from finding dinosaur fossils.
08:37Fossils are the likely foundations for the stories based around the infamous bunyip,
08:41animals from the megafauna period,
08:43which around 2.5 million years ago,
08:46saw the largest of them all.
08:47This period ended about 20,000 years ago.
08:51Variations of the bunyip coincide with animals that once lived during this period.
08:56The thylosolio, also known as the marsupial lion,
09:00was a large and powerful carnivorous marsupial.
09:03The diprotodon, which resembled a giant wombat,
09:07weighed around 6,000 pounds and was 10 feet long.
09:11A further version was of a beaked bunyip covered in feathers
09:15related to the dromornithidae,
09:17a bird standing at 10 feet tall.
09:19Each of these was from a time when megafauna was more common,
09:23and humans lived among them for a short period.
09:26Although the age of megafauna in Australia has long passed,
09:30there are still animals that adapted to the changes in the drying continent,
09:34the new species introduction,
09:36and even the involvement of humans.
09:39The four kangaroos, the red eastern, the western gray,
09:42and the atilopene,
09:44are still living reminders of the age of megafauna.
09:49Why is Australia so strangely empty?
09:52Why haven't we discovered so much of the ocean?
09:55Is our planet a perfect sphere?
09:57And was the Earth once more purple than green?
10:00I bet you didn't know these facts about our planet.
10:03So let's find it all out.
10:07Australia is really massive.
10:09To make it easy to understand its size,
10:11it's nearly as large as the entirety of Europe.
10:15Home to around 26 million people,
10:17Australia is among the countries with the least population per area.
10:21It's ranked only 55th for the highest population in the world,
10:25while it has the sixth largest land area.
10:28Why is so much of it empty?
10:31A good guess would be the many dangerous animals hiding behind every rock.
10:36At least this is enough for me to avoid Australia.
10:39But there is one specific reason to explain this.
10:42The dryness of Australia ensures that 85% of the population
10:47lives within 30 miles of the coast,
10:49and 80% of them live along the eastern side where rainfall is more common.
10:54But although there is an overall lack of rainfall,
10:57only 20% of Australia is unlivable desert,
11:01and only 40% is considered not habitable by human standards.
11:06The water consumption is actually higher than their average rainfall each year.
11:11But there is a further ancient water source hidden way below,
11:14which can support a much larger population.
11:17It's one of the largest underground freshwater resources in the world,
11:21the Great Artesian Basin.
11:23It covers a staggering 656,000 square miles,
11:28which is one-fifth the size of Australia.
11:30It holds enough water to cover the earth under a 1.5 feet deep layer of water.
11:36Or, more usefully,
11:38it could provide enough water for thirsty Australians over the next 1,500 years.
11:44Only 6.5% of Australia has soil suitable for farming,
11:48so this doesn't seem like a huge amount.
11:50But in case you forgot,
11:51Australia is big,
11:53and this small percentage is about the size of France.
11:57With this massive area available for farming,
12:00Australia has more than enough to feed its population,
12:03with a further 70% of agriculture products that are exported overseas.
12:08So, with plenty of land, food, and water,
12:11why are the population figures so low?
12:14A very slow migration process is the reason.
12:17First, only people from the United Kingdom lived there.
12:20Then, they opened their borders to other Europeans,
12:23and this restriction remained in place until 1973.
12:27You would think almost 200 years would be enough time for a lot of people to migrate,
12:32but Australia was just so far away.
12:35The risk of traveling such a long way and the cost of the journey
12:38meant that people from Europe prefer the shorter and cheaper options to migrate elsewhere,
12:43like Canada or the USA.
12:49For the past 2,000 years, people have understood that Earth is round.
12:54But did you know that it's not a perfect sphere?
12:56Through the wobbly rotation of Earth,
12:58our planet constantly changes its size,
13:01very slowly of course.
13:03The north and south poles are surprisingly flat.
13:07Earth is pretty much like a ball being squished.
13:10Imagine there's a giant hand with the fingers pressing at both poles.
13:15Because of this pressure, the equator pushes a little outwards.
13:18Along with an uneven gravitational field,
13:21Earth has loads of gravity glitches,
13:24some positive and others negative,
13:26creating an uneven, rocky, and bumpy surface.
13:30Some places on Earth have more gravity than others.
13:33If you weighed yourself along the equator,
13:35you would weigh 0.5% less than at the poles.
13:39Not a whole lot and definitely not worth the trip to change your weight.
13:44If you were to measure the length from the center of the Earth
13:47towards the furthest point of Earth,
13:49you would be shocked that Mount Everest isn't at the end of it.
13:53Instead, it's along the equator,
13:55which is the pushed out part.
13:57Ecuador's mountain Chimborazo
13:59would actually be the tallest point on Earth
14:01as it's the furthest from the center.
14:05We still have around 80% of the ocean to map,
14:08which is crazy considering how much of the solar system
14:11we've explored in comparison.
14:13But we're still aware of many of the unbelievable details
14:16about the ocean.
14:18It covers over 80% of the world's surface,
14:21where 94% of the Earth's wildlife lives.
14:24And from some of the life in it,
14:26up to 80% of the world's oxygen is produced mainly from plankton,
14:30algae, and bacteria.
14:33One of the most famous already mapped places is the Mariana Trench.
14:37It's the deepest point on Earth,
14:39as low as almost 7 miles deep.
14:42That's a huge,
14:435 times the length of the Grand Canyon,
14:45and deeper than Mount Everest is tall.
14:48It's also home to one of the most ancient seabeds on Earth,
14:51casually laying low for about 180 million years.
14:56The pressure at the bottom is over 1,000 bars,
14:59but although this is 1,000 times more than normal pressure,
15:03life still flourishes here.
15:05Throughout the ocean,
15:07there is an estimated over 3 million shipwrecks
15:10lying in the murky depths.
15:12Countless artifacts sit there untouched,
15:15and there could be more than all the world's museums.
15:18The mid-ocean ridge is the longest in the world,
15:22reaching 40,000 miles.
15:24That's almost 10 times the size of the Andes,
15:27the longest mountain range on land.
15:30The sun is the reason behind the blue and aqua colors of the ocean.
15:33This color isn't from the reflection of the sky,
15:36though they are both blue for the same reason.
15:40The surface of our planet receives white light from the sun,
15:43and it absorbs the orange, red, and yellow light stronger.
15:47It doesn't absorb the blue light so much,
15:50so it returns to how we see it.
15:52Of course, this only occurs based on how pure the water is.
15:55If the water is full of mud or algae,
15:58they scatter the light and overpower the water's natural blueness.
16:03There are many factors that determine what color we see on our planet.
16:07Could you believe that the Earth was green before?
16:10Instead, it was purple.
16:13Chlorophyll in our atmosphere absorbs mainly blue and red wavelengths from the sun,
16:17and reflects the green ones to what we see our planet as today.
16:21Long ago, ancient microbes called retinol
16:24dominated the Earth instead of chlorophyll.
16:26They absorbed green light and reflected red and violet light.
16:31Those microbes had a simpler structure,
16:33so they were easier to produce in the low-oxygen environment of the early Earth.
16:37They provided our planet with a purplish color instead of green.
16:41But chlorophyll is more efficient,
16:43and as the Earth was developing, it eventually took over.
16:47Imagine that billions of years ago,
16:50faraway observers could see our home as a small purple dot.
16:53I wonder if we could have also been purple.
16:57Probably not.
16:59The biggest tree on Earth is a giant sequoia named General Sherman.
17:03It stands over 280 feet,
17:06almost reaching the height of a 26-story building.
17:09They believe it to be 2,700 years old,
17:12with a circumference of 1,000 inches.
17:15Its weight is a staggering 1,800 tons.
17:19That's heavy, but it isn't the heaviest living thing on Earth.
17:22In Utah, a huge grove of trees called Pando works like a single colony of trees.
17:28The massive root system connects all of them together with up to 47,000 stems.
17:34It weighs up to 6,000 tons and is 80,000 years old.
17:38It makes it the oldest living thing known to humans.
17:42Now, what about the biggest area of one being?
17:46Off the coast of Western Australia,
17:48a seaweed grows to an unthinkable size.
17:51The Poseidon's Ribbon Weed has been growing for 4,500 years,
17:56spreading underground clone chutes.
17:58It's all connected and shares the same DNA with most of its chutes.
18:02It covers a massive 77 square miles,
18:06the same size as 28,000 soccer fields,
18:09or the size of Nebraska.
18:11And it won't stop there either,
18:12as it continues to grow by 2 feet each year.
18:15It's hard to even picture the scale of these enormous beings.
18:19Now, just imagine if they were all purple.
18:39No!
18:48No!
18:49No! No! No!
19:10Oh, no.
19:30Stop shouting.
19:33Huh?
19:36You... you can speak?
19:48No! No! No! No! No!
20:01No!
20:07Don't even try to escape.
20:10Whoa!
20:12Okay, okay, I got it. Geez.
20:14No need to swing your fists here.
20:18These savages...
20:20Can't even eat in peace.
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