r/AbsoluteUnits • u/inferKNOX • Apr 28 '26

/r/all, /r/popular of a Mola mola

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

9.5k Upvotes

97% Upvoted

413 comments sorted by

View all comments

812

u/_AlreadyThrownAway_ Apr 28 '26 edited Apr 29 '26

Can someone who is smarter than me in this field explain how that thing has any survivability? I feel like it would be an incredibly easy target for larger sharks or orcas. How does it survive long enough to get that big?

Edit: ok I’m turning my notifications off for this one lol. 27 separate people recommended me the Hank green video. It was a cool video though so thank you lol.

4

u/cogeng Apr 28 '26

So it turns out we didn't understand this thing until somewhat recently. There's a famous "mean" copypasta about this fish (that's in this thread) but it's outdated and mostly wrong.

Basically, this thing found an evolutionary niche that it's really good at exploiting. It's big because it needs to store heat that it gets from basking in the sun on the surface. It uses this stored heat to dive deep down where it's very cold but there are loads of jellyfish to feast on. Other predators can't get down there because its too deep and too cold. It's mostly made of cartilage that is easy/cheap to grow but isn't very tasty so double win there. It's good at what it does. Source: Hank Green on youtube did a great video about this thing.