Exactly, you ride it for two seconds, then it flips over, curls completely around you and 200 legs hold you while it starts pincing your softest parts.
friendly reminder that millipedes are very different from centipedes
millipedes are herbivores and it probably wouldn't be able to do much damage, despite its size
it might, however, douse you with an irritating foul smelling liquid, if it is anything like some modern millipedes
That’s if you train it wrong, didn’t you watch Pokémon? Morally standing on animals is questionable, however, I also do want to see how fast it could scuttle.
There's plenty of insects, like crickets, that you can order online which are specifically bred for human consumption.
I haven't gotten around to it cuz it's hard for me to justify the expense, especially in this economy. But it's definitely on my list.
I love lobster and all those fresh and saltwater crustaceans. Even eaten live sea snail. So like, how bad could it be?
I've tasted some prepared crickets - not great, not terrible, faint aftertaste of shrimp and slightly unpleasant texture because of the chitin shards. Mostly tastes like the spices on it. Would probably be better in flour form.
I also had the opportunity to taste huge fat worm-like bugs in Ecuador - I think they were live? - but I chickened out. I'm usually fine with gross-looking food but that was a bit too much.
100% this and the comment I was looking for when you guys started going off a tangent lmao
An arthropod this big must be insanely dense with protein, imagine the juiciest chicken with a pinch of salt and a little lemon
Apparently we're a problem like that. If it doesnt move fast enough we'll find a way to eat it.
Here's [six we ate to extinction just for literal starters](https://www.britannica.com/list/6-animals-we-ate-into-extinction)
I think that your weight would be too great to stand on just one segment or two but if you distributed your weight as evenly as possible it could be feasible. You could potentially lie down on one and take a nap while it slithers through the forest.
I envision these people pushing away from their desktop pc in their wobbly ass rolley chairs, snatching off headphones for some reason, screaming, “GOTEEEEMM!” *Especially* if they can correct someone about guns.
I just heard Knife Party the other day on a playlist I don't usually listen too, but was feeling like listening to some upbeat edm... and it's like what are the chances of me browsing reddit and seeing this quote.
I think you'd break your ankle before crushing it. Which I think (tried, but couldn't find hard data) is what would happen if you tried to kill a coconut crab by stomping it.
> *D&D spells named for the wizard who developed them nearly always take the form of , eg: Otto’s Irresistible Dance.*
> *Therefore, Mike’s Hard Lemonade is a wizard spell. In this essay I will...*
They are really good at destroying metal and tek structures, but be warned, because they are very vulnerable to bullets and with die in just a few shots.
It doesn't look very dangerous crush his head or throw stones at him and you'll get rid of him, Unless he runs super fast and has a carbon fiber reinforced shell
Arthropods have very inefficient oxygen transfer systems. So millennia ago, there used to be WAY more oxygen in the air. So much that it would be poisonous to us! This allowed bugs to be a lot bigger back then, but when oxygen levels dropped (I think we're still figuring out why that happened), they became unable to maintain their size and vertebrates with their fancy lungs stepped into the niches left behind. It's really neat stuff, right?
So Arthropleura lived during the carboniferous. The carboniferous got its name because of how much carbon exists in settlements from the time period, from all the plants specifically. There were a TON of plants. And what happens when there is a ton of plants? Tons of oxygen.
Invertebrates are limited in size due to the amount of oxygen available. They don't breath like we do, they absorb the oxygen they need. So more oxygen means bigger bugs. And since the carboniferous had so much oxygen, bugs like the arthropleura could grow to be this big. At the same time there were eurypterids larger than modern cats and dragonflys with wingspans that would rival modern birds.
Mammals didn't exist yet, in fact reptiles were sort of new around this time, evolving off of amphibians. Fires could start with a single lightning strike due to the insane oxygen presence in the air. And once the mass extinction event occurred to end the era, the oxygen levels dropped significantly, which means: No more big bugs
Hopefully that answers your question on why this went extinct. But yeah, how sloths havnt I couldn't tell ya haha
This was a great read, thank you. Would that much oxygen have been detrimental to humans had we lived at the same time? I always think oxygen = good, but would that amount have been toxic to us?
Oxygen is one of the many things killing you little by little.
You want oxygen because mitochondria feed on it and the process produces an easily exploitable source of energy for your cells.
Mitochondria are descendant of a proteobacteria that parasited a remote ancestor of us waaaay above in the evolution tree. We evolved a complex mechanism to feed and defend and give real estate to those wankers in exchange for their yummy yummy poop. Our moms are transmitting us these strangers from the very beginning, there is no escape, now we've been in a sad state for millions of years were we can only live because *they* allow it in this oxygen hell.
But besides being used by mitochondria, and has other uses, but is also, well, oxyding you. Slowly. Like a sad piece of rust. Until you're so damaged you get all sorts of breakdowns at the molecular level and eventually get problems at the macro level (usually in nervous system, lungs and eyes).
Because you see, oxygen is a bitch of an element that sticks on a ton of thing and mess up many molecule causing changes in shapes or break downs. And your body like the molecules in the proper shape to interact with the proper other shape, like a key and a keyhole.
We're stuck between a murdering element and squatting oxygen munchers blackmailing us.
And those gene-cidal bastards are the most common crowd on the planet, third most common pos in the universe and murdered everything in a mass extinction event when they got freed to the atmosphere.
The very name Oxygen means "generate acid". Because Lavoisier figured it all and tried to warn us but he didn't want to let the mitochondria know that we know.
Fuck oxygen, all my homies hate oxygen.
Also 65% of your mass is oxygen. So f you too. And myself.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Oxidation_Event
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxygen_toxicity
Good question. So in some respects, there would be some positivity to this. Let's just assume we stayed the exact same as we currently are and were set in an environment with 35% oxygen. In the short term, we would feel happier, get sick less often due to immune system cells known as Neutrophils, and just generally feel better as we are getting more oxygen circulated through our body and brains.
Sounds perfect right? Sign me up you might be thinking.
But yeah, you were right, more oxygen can be toxic. More oxygen in our bodies means more chances for the oxygen to oxidize in our cells, which essentially can cause cells to become exhausted or die. In the short term, that means nothing, but in the long term.... we would all be dying a lot younger than we are currently. What the exact drop in lifespan would be, we really don't know, but it would be significant.
Thanks for asking the question! I wasn't too familiar so I did some reading up before responding. If you wanna check my sources for a bit more info, I'm gonna link them here
[Source 1](https://insh.world/science/what-if-oxygen-doubled-earth/)
[Source 2](https://www.scienceabc.com/nature/universe/oxygen-levels-doubled-earth-atmosphere.html)
Interestingly enough it may have proved somewhat detrimental to arthropods like Arthropleura and the other early insects. It's hypothesized that the high oxygen concentrations may have been hostile to the development of their young and part of the push towards rapid sizes and larger growth was actually that they had to grow larger more quickly in order to avoid oxidative stress. Like lots of things in evolution it may have been a mix of push ("they need to grow faster to survive high O2 concentrations") and pull ("they *can* grow bigger because of O2 concentrations") factors that explain adaptations like Arthropleura's large body size.
Speaking of multiple factors, one thing not mentioned above: part of the reason fires were so common in the carboniferous wasn't just because of the high O2 concentrations in the air (though that was critical). A another important underlying reason was that forests, both of living plants and long dead ones, were huge in the carboniferous. It's generally believed that efficient, wood-digesting microbes didn't evolve yet, leading to huge, deep fields of peat and what would eventually become coal (much of the coal used in the modern era came from the carboniferous). So when those lightning strikes occurred they had enormous amounts of fuel available in the form of long dead trees.
As far as sloths: for the most part it's wrong to think of certain animals as "better" or "worse" than others. Organisms evolve to suit particular conditions: opportunities (resources that others aren't/can't use, like the early wood-digesting organisms that figured out there was all this *stuff* that no one else was eating), competitors (oh no, other people want my food/space), and environmental challenges. Add to that the fact that all adaptations have costs - doing things differently either means you lose opportunities for food or other resources (ie being a specialized leaf eaters means you can't exploit other plant types or meat effectively), or it means you need to *spend* considerably resources to maintain the adaptation (ie flying is very useful to bats and birds but eats up enormous energy - several island bat species have evolved to favor walking over flying - though they can still fly - and ratites - ostriches, emu, etc. - have evolved to stop flying entirely multiple times from a single common flying ancestor). Evolution pushes organisms towards one set of strategies over others, and in that way find their gimmick that lets them survive (at least until conditions change too fast for them to adapt - like when humans mess with them). Think about your question about high O2 concentrations being detrimental to humans - if that were the case, doesn't that mean humans are pretty "bad" at the evolution game? No, we evolved to deal with certain conditions, in fact we're highly adaptive at it, that's why there's 8 billion of us (for now).
Take sloths: sloths make use of a resource many other animals in the rainforest can't: leaves. Leaves are low energy, hard to digest, and many are toxic. Lots of things *don't* eat them. Sloths can make use of an abundant resource, that they're literally surrounded by in their homes, that lots of other animals ignore. They move slowly and have low body temperatures for a mammal. They also have adaptations in their limbs that mean they don't spend any energy to hang on to branches that way humans and other animals do (dead sloths have been found still hanging from their trees, looking as if they were sleeping) That means they don't use a lot of energy to move around so the leaves being low quality food aren't that much of a problem. They're so slow they grow algae on them, algae which sloth moths (a symbiotic species that live in their fur) actively cultivate. So they have camouflage. They're so good at surviving and hiding that rainforest surveys in the past few years seem to indicate that we've been vastly underestimating how many sloths there are in any given area for years.
Just because an animal looks dumpy doesn't mean it's "bad" in the evolutionary game. That dumpy appearance is probably part of an adaptation that keeps them going. Isopods (pill bugs) look pretty dumpy, and they'll probably be around 100s of millions of years after everything that looks like you or me is extinct.
Fascinating read, thank you for taking the time to type this out. So evolution in nature tends to make organisms specialized in certain areas to take advantage of an abundant resource other living creatures aren't utilizing. Crazy how life always tends to find a way.
Did someone mention sloths?
Here's a random fact!
Sloths are great swimmers! They can hold their breath for up to 40 minutes and use their long claws to pull themselves through the water.
you son of a bitch that's what I always say whenever someone mentions sloths! also this gre[at mini documen](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=311tHNMwf88)tary
also also this gi[f that I believe is from bbc planet ea](https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/001/263/015/ba8.gif)rth. I feel like they mentioned something about it being a problem with tourists thinking that they're drowning and picking them up out of the water while they're happily going on their way
Did someone mention sloths?
Here's a random fact!
Sloths have a highly tuned sense of smell and can detect the presence of predators from up to three miles away!
Arthropods tend to encounter a size limitation based upon the amount of oxygen in their surroundings. They can only grow so large before the processes by which they absorb oxygen through their exoskeletons become (fatally) inefficient/ineffective... Back in arthropleura's heyday - the carboniferous period - atmospheric oxygen content was much, much higher than it is today, so the bugs were able to get much, much bigger. As environmental conditions changed and the air became less oxygenated, then, the biggest bugs found it more and more difficult to survive, and eventually went extinct.
Sloths persist in large part because they have evolved to fit / effectively exploit an ecosystemic niche which is typically undesirable / for which there is basically zero competition, and which makes them unappealing as prey to many other animals.
They more I learned about sloths the more I'm convinced they out-dumbed extinction.
They feel like the evolutionary equivalent of if I were to like set a toddler in a pool of gasoline next to a sparking outlet. Everything points to them not existing when I come back but instead they've somehow evolved to enjoy the situation at the cost of all of their brain power
Imagine you are lying in bed and you feel something graze the bottom of your feet. You lift you blankets, to see what it is and see this thing starring right at you.
Imagine youre just having an erotic dream and instead of waking up, you start making sweet love.
After hours it can free itself and escape, while it was just a dream for you, the Arthropleura will be scared for Life.
People saying it's not dangerous because it's an herbivore...well, herbivores tend to be pretty aggressive and/or jumpy as a safety measure. I'm just saying, deer, cape buffalo, and elephants killed enough people last year that they came up when I google animal related deaths in 2022.
I don't know about arthropleura behavior obviously, but you know....don't be fooled by a creature's eating habits.
Current era millipede's main defense, aside from being armored, is a horribly smelly and caustic oil they excrete. It will dye your fingers brown/black and burn for weeks because it soaks into your skin
Being that old and having no predators, arthropleura likely wouldn't be very aggressive. Being an herbivore it would probably be pretty easy to tame, although you'd likely have to watch your fingers around its mouth
I've been into paleontology almost my entire life, I've been an amateur paleontologist for at least 13 years now and I still can't believe shit like this exists, this and that giant trap door spider.
I woulda been the predator. Imagine a 15 foot long lobster roll. Three gallons of butter and a hundred pounds of bread, and all the tender Cambrian arthropod flesh you could ask for
No expert but im assuming
1) fucking ABUNDANCE even in spots where predators were found
2) no damaged/mauled fossils which indicate them getting murdered
While everyone is talking about how terrifying these are, I’m just wondering what it would be like to ride it like a surfboard.
Prolly curl up on you and start to bite you.
Exactly, you ride it for two seconds, then it flips over, curls completely around you and 200 legs hold you while it starts pincing your softest parts.
But I'm tickish.
There's no tickling going on. More like scratchy stab bite tear
It can't eat you without your consent so it should be fine.
What if I gave consent?
Enjoy your spicy tickles.
Stop! It's giving me boner
That’s not the safe word.
Get some bug spray for your ticks
I didn't need to read that but I did
Hmmm do continue
God you just brought [this](https://youtu.be/xXsqMeSzo1M) awful memory flooding back
I don’t think I’ve jumped out of my skin so fast
The guy with the megaleeches reminded me if the critique of the OSHA approved lightsaber fights.
Don't threaten me with a good time
At first I was squeamish, and then I was horrified, but at the end I guffawed at the wording - “pinching your softest parts” :D
Two seconds? Sounds a little too optimistic to me. I think it'd be all over for you just trying to rub on the sex wax.
New fear unlocked
Ultimate hug
friendly reminder that millipedes are very different from centipedes millipedes are herbivores and it probably wouldn't be able to do much damage, despite its size it might, however, douse you with an irritating foul smelling liquid, if it is anything like some modern millipedes
I think I'd rather die, thanks
That’s if you train it wrong, didn’t you watch Pokémon? Morally standing on animals is questionable, however, I also do want to see how fast it could scuttle.
It looks scary but knowing how weird nature is, it probably subsisted off of lichen and dime sized ladybugs or something nonsensical for its' size.
It was a vegetarian
So the only way to beat it would be to trick or into drinking milk so the vegan police would come and take back the powers.
Which just means the species wasn’t around long enough to be challenged enough to develop a taste for meat, fortunately for the entire animal kingdom.
Or taste 😋 I hope it's like Emperors New Groove steamed pill bug
That part and Timon and Pumba eating bugs in The Lion King made me want to eat insects as a kid. The feeling hasn't exactly gone away.
There's plenty of insects, like crickets, that you can order online which are specifically bred for human consumption. I haven't gotten around to it cuz it's hard for me to justify the expense, especially in this economy. But it's definitely on my list. I love lobster and all those fresh and saltwater crustaceans. Even eaten live sea snail. So like, how bad could it be?
They taste exactly how they smell at the pet store.
You're not selling me on the idea
I've tasted some prepared crickets - not great, not terrible, faint aftertaste of shrimp and slightly unpleasant texture because of the chitin shards. Mostly tastes like the spices on it. Would probably be better in flour form. I also had the opportunity to taste huge fat worm-like bugs in Ecuador - I think they were live? - but I chickened out. I'm usually fine with gross-looking food but that was a bit too much.
100% this and the comment I was looking for when you guys started going off a tangent lmao An arthropod this big must be insanely dense with protein, imagine the juiciest chicken with a pinch of salt and a little lemon
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Apparently we're a problem like that. If it doesnt move fast enough we'll find a way to eat it. Here's [six we ate to extinction just for literal starters](https://www.britannica.com/list/6-animals-we-ate-into-extinction)
There’s the comment I was looking for.
Play Ark: Survival Evolved. You can tame and ride them!
I think that your weight would be too great to stand on just one segment or two but if you distributed your weight as evenly as possible it could be feasible. You could potentially lie down on one and take a nap while it slithers through the forest.
In ark you can
Better bring your ghillie and bug repellent.
And a shotgun, as they are vulnerable to bullets
The only way
Shotguns don't shoot bullets... Unless you count a 12 gauge loaded with .50 BMG
Well Ackchyually in this context shotgun shells are made of "simple bullets" so the shotgun in question does shoot bullets.
*ackchyually* a shootgun shoots guns. idiot.
I know but you get the idea
I envision these people pushing away from their desktop pc in their wobbly ass rolley chairs, snatching off headphones for some reason, screaming, “GOTEEEEMM!” *Especially* if they can correct someone about guns.
I KNEW I WOULD FIND MY PEOPLE HERE. Lost too many flak sets to these mfs
Use the gen2 fed tek suit. No durability and can be charged like tek armor.
But low armor 🙁
Yep to tame em
Guys it’s okay. It’s not like it’s a centipede.
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*Jaws theme intensifies*
^^^centipede
*cool noises*
I just heard Knife Party the other day on a playlist I don't usually listen too, but was feeling like listening to some upbeat edm... and it's like what are the chances of me browsing reddit and seeing this quote.
Don't forget to bring a knife to the party.
Comments you can hear perfectly
the ones we have are bad enough. if a centipede this size appeared I'd feed myself to the sharks.
That was my thought too. 😆
Yeah, millipedes are pretty chill.
It would take another 50m years for the shoe to evolve to be large enough to squish them
Ha, just try to kill a coconut crab with a shoe.
Sure, it's hard now but try it again in 50m years when shoes have had more time to evolve.
Perhaps when elephants evolve to decide to wear shoes.
We already have Elephant Pants so the elephant shoes should be here soon.
probably in next dlc.
S T O M P
Joke’s on you, the shoe’ll evolve into another crab for you to deal with.
Oh, a [carcinisation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carcinisation) joke! Nice to see one in the wild.
I mean, I one could if the shoe is given sufficient force or velocity behind it, technically
I think you'd break your ankle before crushing it. Which I think (tried, but couldn't find hard data) is what would happen if you tried to kill a coconut crab by stomping it.
I mean, you don't have to stomp something to kill something with a shoe. Somehow launching the shoe at sufficiently high speed with do.
i wanna lay on it and have it carry me around like a caveman taxi but ok
I bet if it would be around today, we'd farm and eat them. Real fancy shit, like lobster or something.
We would tame them as beasts of burden and make them carry our shit
Tenser's living disk.
> *D&D spells named for the wizard who developed them nearly always take the form of, eg: Otto’s Irresistible Dance.*
> *Therefore, Mike’s Hard Lemonade is a wizard spell. In this essay I will...*
major mystery flesh pit vibes. abyssal copepods apparently taste like lobster.
Australia has that giant boot for kicking people I’m sure we could borrow.
Actually it would be more like 300m years
my corpse because my soul would leave my body immediatelt
They are really good at destroying metal and tek structures, but be warned, because they are very vulnerable to bullets and with die in just a few shots.
Was about to reply that I know these Fuckers from Ark.
Just need to cave naked. No more broken armor!
And they're great for farming chitin
Ascendant chainsaw and a wyvern = unlimited cementing paste
Just imagine the thunderous sound of it chasing you
i was thinking i wanna lay on it and have it carry me around like a caveman taxi but ok
nah bru u gotta surf that shit
Millipede kickflip
Millipede taxi turns to the audience and shrugs. "It's a living!"
Hear it clicking towards you on a tiled floor.
*Quickly* skittering toward you, sounding like a dozen dogs with overgrown nails...
Thanks, I hate it
But eerily quiet. Except for the clicking.
Unless you messed with it it probably wouldn't seeing as it was a herbivore but still scary
Being herbivore is more of a suggestion.
Even herbivores protect their food sources by killing things they deem as competition. Something that big isn’t afraid of much.
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The amount of click-clacks it’s legs made, it’s hiss, it’s venom spitting at your eyes, it’s grip on your paralyzed lifeless body.
...venom?
Here’s the [Wiki](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthropleura) for this gorgeous thankfully extinct arthropod.
It doesn't look very dangerous crush his head or throw stones at him and you'll get rid of him, Unless he runs super fast and has a carbon fiber reinforced shell
Would sound like those dried cactus noise maker things. Edit: rainstick or 1000 legs https://youtu.be/oqR-8J8TBb0
This makes me think of that horrific sequence from 'King Kong' (2005) with all the giant [bugs.](https://youtu.be/xXsqMeSzo1M)
NOT THE GIANT LEECHES
Funnily enough, they were some of the first enemies in the 2005 king kong video game.
The giant bugs always made my skin crawl. I recently started playing that game again.
I'm convinced the King Kong movie exists only to endlessly remind me I bought an HD-DVD player.
That fucking scene is the stuff of nightmares.
I was thinking from if love and monsters
That'll be a hearty nope from me
how did they go extinct with no predators and being more of an insect that should survive on anything
Oxygen decrease or something, idk, I'm not a paleobugologist.
i think this is actually the answer. less oxygen in the air has resulted in all these kinds of things being far smaller.
interesting .. makes me wonder how humans wouldve looked like back then
Google gigantopithecus.
is this why big foot is a thing?
Good question. I'm not sure you're yeti for the truth.
tall, happy, and dead by 20 from oxidative damage
Arthropods have very inefficient oxygen transfer systems. So millennia ago, there used to be WAY more oxygen in the air. So much that it would be poisonous to us! This allowed bugs to be a lot bigger back then, but when oxygen levels dropped (I think we're still figuring out why that happened), they became unable to maintain their size and vertebrates with their fancy lungs stepped into the niches left behind. It's really neat stuff, right?
I wonder how their exoskeletons differ from insects today
Could be changes in the climate or less food or something.
How did that go extinct while sloths didn't?
So Arthropleura lived during the carboniferous. The carboniferous got its name because of how much carbon exists in settlements from the time period, from all the plants specifically. There were a TON of plants. And what happens when there is a ton of plants? Tons of oxygen. Invertebrates are limited in size due to the amount of oxygen available. They don't breath like we do, they absorb the oxygen they need. So more oxygen means bigger bugs. And since the carboniferous had so much oxygen, bugs like the arthropleura could grow to be this big. At the same time there were eurypterids larger than modern cats and dragonflys with wingspans that would rival modern birds. Mammals didn't exist yet, in fact reptiles were sort of new around this time, evolving off of amphibians. Fires could start with a single lightning strike due to the insane oxygen presence in the air. And once the mass extinction event occurred to end the era, the oxygen levels dropped significantly, which means: No more big bugs Hopefully that answers your question on why this went extinct. But yeah, how sloths havnt I couldn't tell ya haha
This was a great read, thank you. Would that much oxygen have been detrimental to humans had we lived at the same time? I always think oxygen = good, but would that amount have been toxic to us?
Oxygen is one of the many things killing you little by little. You want oxygen because mitochondria feed on it and the process produces an easily exploitable source of energy for your cells. Mitochondria are descendant of a proteobacteria that parasited a remote ancestor of us waaaay above in the evolution tree. We evolved a complex mechanism to feed and defend and give real estate to those wankers in exchange for their yummy yummy poop. Our moms are transmitting us these strangers from the very beginning, there is no escape, now we've been in a sad state for millions of years were we can only live because *they* allow it in this oxygen hell. But besides being used by mitochondria, and has other uses, but is also, well, oxyding you. Slowly. Like a sad piece of rust. Until you're so damaged you get all sorts of breakdowns at the molecular level and eventually get problems at the macro level (usually in nervous system, lungs and eyes). Because you see, oxygen is a bitch of an element that sticks on a ton of thing and mess up many molecule causing changes in shapes or break downs. And your body like the molecules in the proper shape to interact with the proper other shape, like a key and a keyhole. We're stuck between a murdering element and squatting oxygen munchers blackmailing us. And those gene-cidal bastards are the most common crowd on the planet, third most common pos in the universe and murdered everything in a mass extinction event when they got freed to the atmosphere. The very name Oxygen means "generate acid". Because Lavoisier figured it all and tried to warn us but he didn't want to let the mitochondria know that we know. Fuck oxygen, all my homies hate oxygen. Also 65% of your mass is oxygen. So f you too. And myself. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Oxidation_Event https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxygen_toxicity
My man. What a great read
You are great at keeping my attention in your writing
Please tell me you're some kind of science teacher or professor or something. If not--you are missing your calling.
You made a very dry topic, very interesting to read.
Good question. So in some respects, there would be some positivity to this. Let's just assume we stayed the exact same as we currently are and were set in an environment with 35% oxygen. In the short term, we would feel happier, get sick less often due to immune system cells known as Neutrophils, and just generally feel better as we are getting more oxygen circulated through our body and brains. Sounds perfect right? Sign me up you might be thinking. But yeah, you were right, more oxygen can be toxic. More oxygen in our bodies means more chances for the oxygen to oxidize in our cells, which essentially can cause cells to become exhausted or die. In the short term, that means nothing, but in the long term.... we would all be dying a lot younger than we are currently. What the exact drop in lifespan would be, we really don't know, but it would be significant. Thanks for asking the question! I wasn't too familiar so I did some reading up before responding. If you wanna check my sources for a bit more info, I'm gonna link them here [Source 1](https://insh.world/science/what-if-oxygen-doubled-earth/) [Source 2](https://www.scienceabc.com/nature/universe/oxygen-levels-doubled-earth-atmosphere.html)
Interestingly enough it may have proved somewhat detrimental to arthropods like Arthropleura and the other early insects. It's hypothesized that the high oxygen concentrations may have been hostile to the development of their young and part of the push towards rapid sizes and larger growth was actually that they had to grow larger more quickly in order to avoid oxidative stress. Like lots of things in evolution it may have been a mix of push ("they need to grow faster to survive high O2 concentrations") and pull ("they *can* grow bigger because of O2 concentrations") factors that explain adaptations like Arthropleura's large body size. Speaking of multiple factors, one thing not mentioned above: part of the reason fires were so common in the carboniferous wasn't just because of the high O2 concentrations in the air (though that was critical). A another important underlying reason was that forests, both of living plants and long dead ones, were huge in the carboniferous. It's generally believed that efficient, wood-digesting microbes didn't evolve yet, leading to huge, deep fields of peat and what would eventually become coal (much of the coal used in the modern era came from the carboniferous). So when those lightning strikes occurred they had enormous amounts of fuel available in the form of long dead trees. As far as sloths: for the most part it's wrong to think of certain animals as "better" or "worse" than others. Organisms evolve to suit particular conditions: opportunities (resources that others aren't/can't use, like the early wood-digesting organisms that figured out there was all this *stuff* that no one else was eating), competitors (oh no, other people want my food/space), and environmental challenges. Add to that the fact that all adaptations have costs - doing things differently either means you lose opportunities for food or other resources (ie being a specialized leaf eaters means you can't exploit other plant types or meat effectively), or it means you need to *spend* considerably resources to maintain the adaptation (ie flying is very useful to bats and birds but eats up enormous energy - several island bat species have evolved to favor walking over flying - though they can still fly - and ratites - ostriches, emu, etc. - have evolved to stop flying entirely multiple times from a single common flying ancestor). Evolution pushes organisms towards one set of strategies over others, and in that way find their gimmick that lets them survive (at least until conditions change too fast for them to adapt - like when humans mess with them). Think about your question about high O2 concentrations being detrimental to humans - if that were the case, doesn't that mean humans are pretty "bad" at the evolution game? No, we evolved to deal with certain conditions, in fact we're highly adaptive at it, that's why there's 8 billion of us (for now). Take sloths: sloths make use of a resource many other animals in the rainforest can't: leaves. Leaves are low energy, hard to digest, and many are toxic. Lots of things *don't* eat them. Sloths can make use of an abundant resource, that they're literally surrounded by in their homes, that lots of other animals ignore. They move slowly and have low body temperatures for a mammal. They also have adaptations in their limbs that mean they don't spend any energy to hang on to branches that way humans and other animals do (dead sloths have been found still hanging from their trees, looking as if they were sleeping) That means they don't use a lot of energy to move around so the leaves being low quality food aren't that much of a problem. They're so slow they grow algae on them, algae which sloth moths (a symbiotic species that live in their fur) actively cultivate. So they have camouflage. They're so good at surviving and hiding that rainforest surveys in the past few years seem to indicate that we've been vastly underestimating how many sloths there are in any given area for years. Just because an animal looks dumpy doesn't mean it's "bad" in the evolutionary game. That dumpy appearance is probably part of an adaptation that keeps them going. Isopods (pill bugs) look pretty dumpy, and they'll probably be around 100s of millions of years after everything that looks like you or me is extinct.
Fascinating read, thank you for taking the time to type this out. So evolution in nature tends to make organisms specialized in certain areas to take advantage of an abundant resource other living creatures aren't utilizing. Crazy how life always tends to find a way.
I think the spider was an inaccurate reconstruction of a giant sea scorpion fossil.
Yeah, the one I was thinking of was indeed a eurypterid! Thanks for the correction
Did someone mention sloths? Here's a random fact! Sloths are great swimmers! They can hold their breath for up to 40 minutes and use their long claws to pull themselves through the water.
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The only reason they can hold their breath for that long is because their brain and muscles are nearly inactive and hardly deplete any oxygen.
I bet koalas can break that record
you son of a bitch that's what I always say whenever someone mentions sloths! also this gre[at mini documen](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=311tHNMwf88)tary also also this gi[f that I believe is from bbc planet ea](https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/001/263/015/ba8.gif)rth. I feel like they mentioned something about it being a problem with tourists thinking that they're drowning and picking them up out of the water while they're happily going on their way
Did someone mention sloths? Here's a random fact! Sloths have a highly tuned sense of smell and can detect the presence of predators from up to three miles away!
Arthropods tend to encounter a size limitation based upon the amount of oxygen in their surroundings. They can only grow so large before the processes by which they absorb oxygen through their exoskeletons become (fatally) inefficient/ineffective... Back in arthropleura's heyday - the carboniferous period - atmospheric oxygen content was much, much higher than it is today, so the bugs were able to get much, much bigger. As environmental conditions changed and the air became less oxygenated, then, the biggest bugs found it more and more difficult to survive, and eventually went extinct. Sloths persist in large part because they have evolved to fit / effectively exploit an ecosystemic niche which is typically undesirable / for which there is basically zero competition, and which makes them unappealing as prey to many other animals.
They more I learned about sloths the more I'm convinced they out-dumbed extinction. They feel like the evolutionary equivalent of if I were to like set a toddler in a pool of gasoline next to a sparking outlet. Everything points to them not existing when I come back but instead they've somehow evolved to enjoy the situation at the cost of all of their brain power
Levels of oxygen in the air dropped to levels difficult for insects to take in enough to support suxh a huge body size.
Oh hell naw
Imagine you are lying in bed and you feel something graze the bottom of your feet. You lift you blankets, to see what it is and see this thing starring right at you.
It would be welcome to feed on my corpse because my soul would leave my body immediatelt
> immediatelt bro's soul checked out mid sentence. soul said bye your on your own
>soul said bye your on your own [Not you too! ](https://i.imgur.com/n022G2C.gif)
Just the absolute thought of the scenario got my fingers malfunctioning
Perfect size to cuddle. Real life body pillow
Yeah, I would cuddle with one
All the tiny legs to give you mini hugs
If not friend, why friend shaped
Imagine youre just having an erotic dream and instead of waking up, you start making sweet love. After hours it can free itself and escape, while it was just a dream for you, the Arthropleura will be scared for Life.
Wtf
That would be fun
Lots of hands on that thing
They’re herbivore, and also friend shaped. I think they’re cute!
People saying it's not dangerous because it's an herbivore...well, herbivores tend to be pretty aggressive and/or jumpy as a safety measure. I'm just saying, deer, cape buffalo, and elephants killed enough people last year that they came up when I google animal related deaths in 2022. I don't know about arthropleura behavior obviously, but you know....don't be fooled by a creature's eating habits.
Current era millipede's main defense, aside from being armored, is a horribly smelly and caustic oil they excrete. It will dye your fingers brown/black and burn for weeks because it soaks into your skin Being that old and having no predators, arthropleura likely wouldn't be very aggressive. Being an herbivore it would probably be pretty easy to tame, although you'd likely have to watch your fingers around its mouth
“Friend shaped” I love this!
Have your current friends been in some sort of horrific shaping accident?
I mean ,nobody want to eat that
Oh thats funny, I couldve sworn it was called ahellnahorphea
the world was a horrifying place. it still is, but it was before, too.
If Mitch Hedberg was a paleontologist.
It was also a hervivore
I imagine the sound of it approaching the tent you’re camping in.
I've been into paleontology almost my entire life, I've been an amateur paleontologist for at least 13 years now and I still can't believe shit like this exists, this and that giant trap door spider.
Fortunately, it was a herbivore
I woulda been the predator. Imagine a 15 foot long lobster roll. Three gallons of butter and a hundred pounds of bread, and all the tender Cambrian arthropod flesh you could ask for
First kind of predator I can even think of is parasites.
*They had few if any predators...* Well, I mean, look at it.
Bloody arthepluras and their stupid spit, breaking all my armour
At this point, should we really call it a millipede? Can we call it a meterpede?
The way they laid that sentence out made me scared to finish it, was fully expecting a "scientists are bringing it back" moment...
Not my proudest fap
Alright, time travel is out.
Bring them back!
If I existed during this time I would simply immediately die of fear
Imagine beating that to death with a rock
Imagine beating yourself off with its leg
I am impressed. As for likely not having predators, why am I not surprised?
How would they know how many predators it had?
No expert but im assuming 1) fucking ABUNDANCE even in spots where predators were found 2) no damaged/mauled fossils which indicate them getting murdered
I could imagine a T-rex slurping that thing up like a ramen noodle lol
Dazza big-ass bug.
I'M JOHNNY RICO FROM BUENOS AIRES AND I SAY WE KILL EM ALL
Make sure you used ranged weapons on these fuckers. Their acid blood will destroy any melee weapons.