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Wondering who would win in a battle between humans and gorillas or which animals might return by 2028? Plus, exploring how animals see the world offers an intriguing look at life from entirely different perspectives.
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00:00The last time humans and gorillas had a common family member was about 10 million years ago.
00:05Scientists found out that around 15% of gorilla genes are more similar to human genes than those of our
00:11closest relatives, the chimps.
00:13But all in all, our genes are pretty alike.
00:16Humans and chimps share more than 98% of genes, and with gorillas, it's over 96%.
00:21So we're all kind of like distant genetic cousins.
00:26Note that not all apes are gorillas.
00:28The terminology gets mixed up in daily language.
00:31It'll sound like a riddle, but here it goes.
00:34Nearly all monkeys have tails.
00:36Apes don't have tails.
00:38Since gorillas don't have tails, they are also classified as apes.
00:42Other apes include orangutans, chimpanzees, billy apes, and bonobos.
00:47Details are coming.
00:49Apes are a type of primate that includes animals like chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans.
00:54Monkeys are another type of primate, but they have tails.
00:59They come in various sizes and species, like macaques and capuchins.
01:04Primate is like an umbrella category that includes both apes and monkeys, along with lemurs, tarsiers, and a few other
01:11animals.
01:12Primates are known for their grasping hands, forward-facing eyes, and complex social behaviors.
01:18Where do the gorillas go again?
01:20They are the largest of the great apes and are known for their strength and living in the forests of
01:26Africa.
01:27King Kong and Dawn of the Planet of the Apes movies have some truth about how strong these animals can
01:33be.
01:33A fully-grown male gorilla, often called a silverback, outmuscles 20 grown humans combined.
01:41To put this in perspective, a silverback gorilla can effortlessly lift 4,000 pounds on a bench press,
01:47whereas even the strongest human weightlifters can only manage about 885 pounds.
01:54These animals are typically 4 to 9 times stronger than humans on average.
01:59This remarkable strength isn't just for show.
02:02It plays a pivotal role in their social dynamics.
02:06Silverbacks earn their title as leaders and protectors of gorilla groups, which can range from 5 to 30 gorillas.
02:13They have robust conical-shaped heads that house prominent crests.
02:17These features aid in supporting their jaw-money.
02:21Can a human take on a gorilla in combat?
02:23Humans would stand no chance in a direct confrontation.
02:27Gorillas are the world's largest primates and some of the most powerful creatures on Earth.
02:32In fact, if you ever engaged in hand-to-hand combat with a silverback gorilla,
02:38your survival would depend solely on the gorilla's goodwill.
02:41If you were to strike a fully-grown silverback gorilla with all you got,
02:45you would likely end up fracturing your own arm in the process.
02:49Gorillas are equipped with thicker skin and skulls compared to humans,
02:53making it exceptionally challenging for us to inflict harm on these remarkable primates.
02:59For instance, mountain gorillas boast a dense coat designed to fend off harsh climates,
03:04but it also serves as protection against superficial injuries from hits or bites.
03:11Now, let's talk about the force behind a gorilla's punch.
03:14It's so immense that it could shatter a human skull with a single hit.
03:18It has between 1,300 to 2,700 pounds of force.
03:23This is roughly equivalent to the weight of a small car resting on your head.
03:29Yeesh!
03:29To put this in context, gorillas, which average around 400 pounds in weight,
03:34possess muscle mass density approximately four times greater than that of the most muscular humans.
03:40If you were to extract a volume of muscle fiber from both a human and a gorilla,
03:45the gorilla's muscle fibers would outweigh the humans fourfold.
03:49Additionally, gorillas have bones that are on average three times thicker,
03:54heavier, and more calcified compared to humans.
03:58Now, let's briefly explore the hypothetical scenario of a gorilla
04:02facing off against not a human, but a lion.
04:06While both gorillas and lions inhabit East Africa,
04:10they occupy vastly different terrains.
04:12Gorillas thrive in thick forests at altitudes ranging from 5,400 to 12,400 feet,
04:20while African lions primarily inhabit grasslands, specifically the savannah.
04:27Anyway, lions have evolved to hunt and defend their territories, sporting impressive manes.
04:32They probably aimed to attract females and intimidate other males.
04:37On the other hand, gorillas possess large and elongated canines,
04:41primarily intended for display and intimidation, rather than hunting.
04:46Gorillas have one of the strongest bite forces in the animal kingdom,
04:50approximately 1,300 pounds per square inch, twice that of a lion.
04:56But it remains uncertain if this advantage would offset the lion's predatory arsenal of teeth and claws designed for hunting.
05:03We can't know for sure which one would win in the fight.
05:08Oh, and do you know that gorillas are aspiring musicians in their own right?
05:12They may not be composing symphonies or playing the piano,
05:15but they do have a knack for creating their own unique beats in the wild.
05:20They have a habit of using their chests as drums.
05:23This rhythmic chest beating isn't a sign of aggression or anger, as you might initially assume.
05:29Instead, it's a form of communication and self-expression that reveals fascinating insights into gorilla social dynamics.
05:37Within their family groups, they establish complex hierarchies and maintain bonds.
05:43Chest beating is a way for gorilla individuals to assert their presence and dominance within the group.
05:48The intensity and duration of the beats can vary, and the louder and more pronounced the drumming,
05:54the more it signals the gorilla's confidence and authority.
05:58This behavior is even more endearing because young gorillas often try to mimic the chest beating of the grown-ups.
06:05Yeah, it sounds very much like how we learn to speak.
06:08So, this drumming behavior is both a learning experience
06:11and a way for the young ones to integrate into the group's social fabric.
06:16This might also mean Tarzan calls for Jane.
06:19Scientists have cracked another code of gorilla drumming.
06:23It turns out that the beat of these drumming gorillas changes with their size.
06:28Larger males are like the bass players of the jungle.
06:31They hit those lower audio frequencies.
06:34Why?
06:35Well, it might be because they've got some extra large air sacs near their vocal cords.
06:39This discovery hints that lady gorillas might be listening in on these drumming concerts to pick their perfect mates.
06:48Gorillas have been making tools from sticks and leaves to help with tasks like gathering food and testing the depth
06:54of water.
06:55This is a problem-solving ability.
06:58And who knows, maybe one day they'll start making some instruments to complement their chest drums for the sake of
07:04music.
07:05Gorillas have a fascinating repertoire of behaviors besides the chest beating.
07:10For example, they step aside when a dominant individual approaches, showing deference in the simplest way.
07:16Just as human emotions are revealed through expressions, gorillas, too, use their faces for communication.
07:24The play face is a classic example.
07:27The gorillas open their mouths and hang their lower lip.
07:30Here, we don't see their teeth.
07:32Younger members of this species are the ones most keen on making this face.
07:37Think of it as gorilla laughter.
07:40Gorillas occasionally flash their teeth in other ways, too.
07:43One example of this is the bared teeth look.
07:47This time, they don't laugh.
07:48They smile.
07:50If you see a gorilla with an open mouth showing both rows of teeth, know that it's smiling to you.
07:55In the ape world, it's a sign of submission.
07:58Additionally, male gorillas may reveal their teeth through yawns.
08:02It's a warning sign during moments of distress.
08:06Now, you can actually see that these animals are quite peaceful creatures.
08:10People observe them in their natural habitat during safaris or gorilla tours.
08:15It's a safe experience.
08:17People are provided with gorilla trekking guidelines.
08:20These primates are typically social creatures that live in close-knit family groups.
08:25Among gorilla species, the mountain gorilla, which hangs out in the forests of East Africa,
08:30is generally considered the least dangerous to humans.
08:33Due to tourism and research, these gorillas have been habituated to human presence to some extent.
08:39Welcome, human observers.
08:42What do Paris Hilton and Chris Hemsworth have in common?
08:46Well, apparently, they both want to bring animals back to life.
08:50But we're not talking about making your favorite pet live forever.
08:54Nope.
08:55These celebs are actually helping a science company bring back animals that no longer exist,
09:00like the mammoth, the Tasmanian tiger, and even the iconic dodo.
09:06If everything goes according to plan,
09:08these fascinating creatures could be walking among us again by 2028.
09:14This groundbreaking effort is led by a company called Colossal Biosciences.
09:19At this very moment, they're working on a way to revive the core genes of animals
09:24that disappeared from Earth ages ago.
09:27The idea is to replicate those genes using DNA from a close, living relative.
09:33If that's all Greek to you, don't worry.
09:35We'll break it down a bit later.
09:39So, the mammoth is one of the animals they plan to bring back,
09:42and people are especially hyped about it.
09:46These incredible, massive creatures roamed parts of Africa, Europe, Asia, and North America
09:52until about 4,000 years ago.
09:56Some people might mix them up with modern elephants,
09:58but there are some key differences.
10:00For starters, they had huge, curved tusks that curled inward
10:05and were used to dig for food.
10:07They also adapted to survive in freezing climates,
10:11like having two layers of thick fur to keep their blood warm.
10:14But mammoths and elephants do have a lot in common.
10:17The woolly mammoth shares 99.5% of its genes with its closest relative,
10:23the Asian elephant.
10:24That's huge because it means that mammoths are genetically closer to Asian elephants
10:29than Asian elephants are to African elephants, for example.
10:34The company's bold plan is to create a living, walking elephant-mammoth hybrid
10:39that looks just like the ones that used to roam the planet.
10:42This animal will look like, walk-like, and even sound like a woolly mammoth.
10:47But most importantly, it'll be able to live in the same ecosystem that the mammoth left behind.
10:53If the scientists succeed in bringing back enough of these creatures,
10:56one of their big goals is to help restore the Arctic tundra ecosystem.
11:02But how do they actually plan to create the mammoth?
11:06Here's their plan.
11:08First, they need to find well-preserved samples of woolly mammoths in places like Alaska, for example.
11:14Then, they'll need to sequence the mammoth's genome,
11:16and the genome of its closest relative, the Asian elephant.
11:20The next step is to identify the important genes that made the woolly mammoth perfectly adapted to cold temperatures,
11:27like its shaggy hair, curved tusks, and dome-shaped cranium.
11:32In other words, they need to identify which genes make the mammoth, well, the mammoth.
11:38Now comes the interesting part.
11:40They will use top-notch gene-editing tools, kind of like scissors,
11:45to cut the Asian elephant DNA and replace those spots with the mammoth sequence.
11:52This will allow them to create a new cell line and, later, an embryo.
11:57This embryo will grow inside a healthy female Asian elephant, who will be the surrogate.
12:02And just like that, a new, cold-adapted elephant will be born.
12:07Or at least, that's what scientists hope.
12:11Specialists predict that this mammoth 2.0 could be on Earth as early as 2028.
12:17The reason it will take a while is that their gestation period is around 22 months.
12:23But if that deadline feels too far for you,
12:26there is actually a chance we could get a surprise a lot sooner.
12:30That's because some of the other animals they plan to revive have a much shorter gestation period,
12:35like Australia's thylacine, also known as the Tasmanian tiger.
12:40The company is also doing whatever it takes to give this animal a second shot at life.
12:46And the good news is that the process seems to be well advanced.
12:50Recently, the group announced that the Tasmanian tiger's genome is about 99% complete.
12:56This animal was native to the Australian mainland and the islands of Tasmania and New Guinea.
13:02A big part of the Tasmanian tiger population disappeared over 3,000 years ago.
13:08But about 5,000 of them kept roaming around until pretty recently.
13:14It's believed that the last thylacine passed away in 1936.
13:19To revive the Tasmanian tiger, scientists first need a sample of the ancient animal.
13:25So, they took RNA molecules from a 110-year-old preserved head that had been kept in ethanol.
13:33The team was really lucky because it's rare to find old samples that are so well-preserved,
13:38allowing scientists to use advanced DNA analysis techniques.
13:42And by that, I mean they did a full, complete analysis.
13:48By studying RNA samples from important tissue areas like the tongue, nasal cavity, brain, and eyes,
13:55experts were able to learn a bunch of interesting things about the Tasmanian tiger.
14:01They could figure out how its brain worked, and also what this beast could smell, see, and taste.
14:08By the way, these semi-nocturnal animals had a special appetite for small rodents, lizards, and birds.
14:15After finding the perfect sample, the process of reviving it will be pretty much the same as with the mammoth,
14:21but with an elephant as a DNA donor, of course.
14:25In the case of the Tasmanian tiger, its closest living relative is a small marsupial called the fat-tailed dunnard.
14:33Even though this animal is small, it is a ferocious carnivore.
14:37So experts believe the whole DNA editing process will work just fine with its sequence.
14:43Their goal is to turn a fat-tailed dunnard cell into a thylacine cell.
14:49To accomplish that, they did more than 300 unique genetic changes into a dunnard cell.
14:55So there is no doubt they're pushing all the boundaries to make the dream of reviving animals a reality.
15:03This project also plans to revive the iconic dodo.
15:07You know, that funny-looking bird from the paradisiacal island of Mauritius in the Indian Ocean?
15:13And here, things get a little trickier, since we don't know much about this creature,
15:18which has origins that go back about 23 million years.
15:23Basically, the only clues we have about what dodos looked like when they were alive
15:27come from a handful of drawings, paintings, and written descriptions from the 17th century.
15:34But since those pictures are all pretty different from each other,
15:37and only a few of them were based on real, live dodos,
15:41we're still not 100% sure what they actually looked like.
15:44And as for how they behaved, well, we don't know much about that either.
15:50That's why reviving this long-absent legend will be super interesting and really enlightening.
15:56The sample they used to extract an old dodo genome
15:59came from a skull in the collection of the Natural History Museum of Denmark.
16:04And the dodo's closest living relative, which will provide the host cells,
16:08is the Nicobar Pigeon, a grey bird with colourful features found in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands in India.
16:17If everything goes smoothly, in a couple of years,
16:20we might see the fabulous and iconic dodo with our own eyes.
16:26Reviving animals might sound impossible,
16:29but science and technology together can be a real game-changer,
16:33not only by protecting today's animals,
16:35but also by restoring species that disappeared from the planet long ago.
16:42Actually, we've already pulled this off.
16:44A wild goat called the Bucardo,
16:47also known as the Perinean Ibex,
16:49went extinct in the year 2000.
16:52But three years later, scientists managed to bring it back to life,
16:55using a method pretty similar to what we've talked about in this video.
17:00It took 57 tries,
17:02but one of them finally worked,
17:03and a Bucardo clone was born.
17:06Unfortunately, the animal only lived for 10 minutes.
17:10You might think that wasn't a success,
17:12but it was actually a huge step forward in the whole animal revival field.
17:17Now, specialists can only hope the project to bring back the dodo,
17:21the mammoth,
17:22and the Tasmanian tiger go a bit better.
17:25Did you know that animals see the world differently from us?
17:28Take this.
17:29Pigeons actually have better vision than humans.
17:32Crazy, right?
17:33So let's try to see the world from the animal's eyes.
17:36Let's start with snakes.
17:38Their way of seeing the world is totally different from ours.
17:41They have special infrared-sensitive receptors in their snouts.
17:44This allows them to see the radiated heat of warm-blooded mammals.
17:48Now let's move on to cows.
17:50These big guys don't see colors as well as humans do.
17:53They can't see the color red,
17:55because they don't have the necessary receptors in their retinas for that.
17:59So they only perceive variations of blue and green.
18:02Also, they don't like it when someone approaches them from behind.
18:05They have a near-panoramic vision.
18:08And the only area they can't see is directly to the back.
18:11So if you're ever sneaking up on a cow,
18:14make sure you give them a heads up.
18:17Horses have a blind spot right in front of their faces because of their eye placement.
18:20This means they can't see things directly in front of them.
18:23Also, they don't see as many colors as we do.
18:26Just like cows, their world is mostly made up of greens, yellows, and blues.
18:31Poor guys.
18:32Fish eyes have ultraviolet receptors and a more spherical lens than humans.
18:37This gives them an almost 360-degree vision.
18:40As for colors, they're able to see all the same ones as we humans do.
18:44But because light behaves differently underwater,
18:47they have a hard time discerning red and its shades.
18:50Deep-sea fish can easily see in the dark, which is pretty cool.
18:54Sharks, on the other hand, can't distinguish colors at all,
18:57but they see much clearer under the water than we do.
19:02Birds have some pretty unique ways of seeing the world.
19:05Unlike humans, birds can see ultraviolet light.
19:08This helps them differentiate between males and females of their own species,
19:12as well as better navigate in their surroundings.
19:15Also, they are very good at focusing.
19:18For example, falcons and eagles can focus on a small mouse in the field up to a distance of one
19:22mile.
19:23A pigeon can see all the tiny details.
19:25So if you ever need to find a crack in the pavement, just ask a pigeon.
19:29And by the way, it has a 340-degree field of vision,
19:33and generally their vision is considered twice as good as a human's.
19:36There you have it.
19:37I'm envious of a pigeon.
19:41Insects have some weird vision patterns, too.
19:44Flies, for example, have thousands of little eye receptors
19:47that work together to give them a big picture of what's going on around them.
19:50And get this, they see everything in slow-mo.
19:54Plus, they can see ultraviolet light.
19:57It helps them with communication.
20:00Bees have their own problems.
20:01These guys can't tell what the color red is.
20:04To them, it looks like a dark blue.
20:06How messed up is that?
20:08Now, rats.
20:09These little guys can't see red either, but that's not the weirdest part.
20:13Either of their eyes moves on its own, so they're seeing double like all the time.
20:17It's a wonder they don't run into more walls, am I right?
20:21Cats don't see shades of red or green.
20:23But they do see brown, yellow, and blue hues like a boss.
20:27Plus, they got a wide-angle view, so they can peep more stuff on the sides than we can.
20:32There's more, though.
20:33When it's pitch black outside, cats become ninja-like and can see six times better than us.
20:39Their pupils adjust to any lighting-like magic.
20:42Now, let's talk about dogs.
20:44These furry friends can't see red or orange, but they do rock at blue and violet.
20:49Plus, they can differentiate 40 shades of gray.
20:52I mean, it's not 50, but still impressive.
20:55On a related note, frogs are really picky eaters.
20:58They won't even bother with food that isn't moving.
21:00They could be surrounded by a buffet of delicious bugs, but if they don't wiggle, frogs won't even bat an
21:06eye.
21:07And they're not the most observant creatures, either.
21:09If something isn't important to them, like a shadow, they won't even bother looking at it.
21:15Chameleons have eyes that can move independently of each other, so they can see everything around them without even turning
21:20their heads.
21:21They can even see two images at the same time, like a double-feature movie, one in front and one
21:27behind.
21:28Pretty impressive, right?
21:30What would you do if you suddenly got 360-degree vision like a chameleon?
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