It's late in the summer and you and a friend
are out on a charter fishing trip, having fun and catching wild salmon in the deep sea. You duck into the cabin real quick to grab
some more sunscreen in order to protect yourself from the blistering sun, and while you're
inside you hear a brief yell followed by silence. You figure your friend's probably caught a
big fish and got excited, but when you step back outside you realize you're all alone
on the boat- no friend, and no captain either. Even stranger, your friend's fishing pole
is gone as well. You scan the sea around you, thinking that
maybe the two fell in somehow, but from what you can tell, you're all alone in the big
blue sea. Leaning over the edge to look into the water
below you, you're stunned to spot the massive shape of... something... swim below the boat. Suddenly off to your left, the thing comes
to the surface as it does a lazy circle of your boat, and you're terrified to see a shark
fin as tall as you are, attached to a shark twice the size of your boat. With icy fear gripping you tightly, you slowly
realize that you're definitely going to need a bigger boat. Hello and welcome to another episode of The
Infographics Show's You versus- today we're pitting you, the average Joe, up against the
most feared ocean predator of all time, the Megalodon Shark. The Megalodon, or Meg as it's known for short,
is believed to be the largest shark to have ever existed. This can be a difficult fact to ascertain,
because sadly most of a shark's skeleton is made of cartilage which decomposes quickly
after the animal's death, leaving only teeth to fossilize as a record of the animal's existence. Combined with the millions of years of sediment
and tectonic shifts that have occurred throughout earth's history, there could well have been
a larger, much rarer shark that existed than the Megalodon, but who's fossils have never
been discovered. Megalodon though was plenty big enough, reaching
an incredible size of up to 59 feet (18 meters), that's about the length of a bowling alley,
or almost the length of two telephone poles stacked on top of each other, an absolutely
incredible size. And with predators you know what they say,
big size, big teeth- the Megalodon's name literally means big tooth, with each tooth
reaching a size of about 7.1 inches, making each tooth so big it would take both your
hands to hold it. By comparison great white sharks have teeth
that typically grow about 2-3 inches in length, and reach a maximum size of around 20 feet
(6 meters). The Megalodon is thought to have varied its
hunting strategy depending on the prey it consumed, though generally relied on its oversized
jaws and teeth to crush bones and deliver killing blows. While the modern great white shark likes to
target the soft underbelly of prey, where its teeth can slash through flesh and cause
massive bleeding, the Meg is believed to have directly targeted areas such as the heart
and lungs, breaking through the protective rib cage with its bone-crushing teeth- something
which a great white simply doesn't have the power to do. It was not a dumb predator though, and when
chasing fast, agile prey, the Meg would often target flippers and fins, ripping them off
with one massive bite so that its prey could no longer outmaneuver the big predator. Like great whites though, the meg is believed
to have targeted its prey from below, swimming up from the depths at great speed before slamming
into a prey animal like a bulldozer made out of teeth and fury. And if you thought you would be safe given
your small size and just not worth the effort, think again, as there is plenty of fossil
evidence to suggest that megalodons were very opportunistic feeders who would eat anything
at all that it had a chance to. We suppose that makes sense considering the
massive energy requirements of having such a large body. Now after millions of years of extinction,
the Meg is back and it's coming after you. All we can say is, good luck. As usual to defeat your opponent you must
know your opponent, so what exactly are you up against here? Well, we think we laid it out pretty well
up to this point- you're up against the single most feared predator the ocean has ever known. An evolutionary perfect organism who dominated
the very top of the food chain for millions of years, and which could only be wiped out
by massive climate change and overcompetition for shrinking food resources. Unlike most modern whales, the Meg was a very
fast and agile swimmer despite its size, and it would have had to be in order to catch
prey we're pretty sure spent 99% of their lives fleeing from giant predatory sharks. The meg is also believed to have had a very
refined sense of smell, with similar capabilities in detecting bleeding and struggling prey
from many miles away. It may even have had the electro-receptive
sense of many modern sharks, letting it hunt in even the deepest, darkest waters by detecting
the electricity generated by a swimming animal's muscles. In a bit of good news, the Meg may not have
had very sharp eyesight, but with such overdeveloped sense of smell, it probably didn't need it. This is the part where we explain your opponent's
weaknesses, so that you can capitalize on them and win the fight. This time, we're hard pressed to list any
exploitable vulnerabilities, other than, we don't know- it can't survive on land? So there you go, to defeat the megalodon simply
stay on land and never, ever again venture into the water. Sadly for you, that's not how this fight's
going down, so just how in the world are you going to defeat the meg? First you're going to need protection, really
serious protection to keep those massive jaws and their 108,514 newton bite force at bay. To survive in the water with Megalodon, you're
gonna have to hijack the US Navy's DSRV-1 Mystic- or Deep Submergence Rescue Vehicle,
a mini-submarine currently on display at a naval museum who's job was to rescue sailors
trapped in submarines up to 5,000 feet (1,500 meters) below the surface. Sporting walls made of steel several inches
thick, Megalodon may have been able to crush the rib cages of giant whales in its time,
but if it tries to do the same to your mini-sub, it's going to leave with a bad toothache-
unfortunately for you the meg had rows upon rows of replacement teeth always ready to
go much like a modern shark. We bet many of you are thinking, ok, easy,
just blow up the shark and you're done- and yes, it's true it would be relatively easy
to kill the Meg with modern explosives. Sadly the concussive force of explosives powerful
enough to actually kill a megalodon shark will also crush the hull of your submersible,
and leave you with a Pyrrhic victory at best. So while we typically believe in problem solving
through superior firepower, this time we're going to tip our hat to science once again-
modern biology to be more specific. At a tiny fraction of megalodon's size, the
box jellyfish may not look very intimidating versus a giant mouth full of oversized serrated
teeth, but the box jellyfish produces what may be the most dangerous natural venom in
the world. Stored along the tentacles, the stingers of
a jellyfish fire off when the stinger cells detect the chemicals present on exposed skin,
shooting their stinger into flesh at several hundred feet per second. Even if severed, the tentacle of a jellyfish
can still be dangerous and will automatically fire off its stingers if unspent nematocysts
come in contact with exposed skin. Once in the bloodstream, the venom attacks
the body's cells, wearing down the protective membrane and causing them to become porous
enough to cause the leakage of potassium, causing hyperkalemia or elevated potassium
levels in the blood. This can lead to cardiouvacular collapse and
death within just two to five minutes. To win this fight you're going to have to
do some prep work, because you might be thinking now that luring the big shark into a school
of jellyfish is a pretty good idea, except sharks have very tough skin that is all but
impervious to jellyfish stings. Instead, you're going to have to get the jellyfish-
or at least the stingers- inside the shark somehow. Capturing box jellies is surprisingly easy,
and can be done at night with the help of bright neon lights. Scientists have proven that jellyfish are
attracted to lights, which helps explain why so many have in recent decades been showing
up on beaches near big cities- the jellies have been lured in close by the bright lights
of the city shining in the dark. So with a simple neon tube, you're going to
fish for jellies with a net, and using neoprene gloves to protect your skin, start gathering
tentacles, which is where the nematocysts, or stingers, are located. You want to be careful not to fire off the
stingers prematurely, and with a shark the size of the Meg you're going to have to round
up a few pounds worth of jellyfish tentacles which is not going to be easy at all. But like we said earlier, this time we're
not giving you access to high powered weaponry- for your own safety. You're going to have to go all natural and
become an underwater Rambo of sorts. Now you have several pounds of fresh jellyfish
tentacles, all loaded with deadly toxin just waiting to be released. Your next step is to get it inside the shark,
much like a stinging, trojan horse full of death. Sharks are not particularly picky eaters,
and as we learned earlier the Meg was no exception. The next step is going to be to stuff fish
guts full of the stinging tentacles, while being careful to avoid being stung yourself,
or we can basically just go ahead and declare the box jellyfish the defacto winner of this
death match. Once you've got a mess of stuffed fish guts,
it's time to slip beneath the waves protected by your submersible, and then simply release
your bait into the water. An opportunistic predator with a massive caloric
requirement, the Meg is going to literally leap at the chance to get in on a free feast,
and within seconds is going to have an esophagus and stomach full of stinging box jellyfish
tentacles, all pumping their terrible venom directly into its soft, vulnerable interior
tissues. In minutes the toxin will have caused massive
leakage of potassium into the shark's bloodstream, enough to overwhelm its natural filtration
processes, which will lead to a massive, and very sudden heart attack. Congratulations, you just scienced the crap
out of a victory against the most formidable predator to ever stalk the oceans, proving
once again why humans really are the apex predator... at least until sharks team up
with jellyfish to keep us out of the water forever, because despite very fine mesh anti-jellyfish
nets, stings from deadly box jellyfish are on the rise all around the world. So even though you won this fight, maybe it's
time to do like we said near the start of this episode and just go ahead and stay out
of the water forever... How would you defeat the Meg? Also check out our other video in You vs series,
You vs Thanos. Thanks for watching, see you next time!
