What does the ghost leviathan eat?
FlamingChickenWings
Netherlands Join Date: 2017-10-27 Member: 233751Members
Netherlands Join Date: 2017-10-27 Member: 233751Members
I've been wondering, if nothing lives in the dead zone, then what do the ghost leviathans eat there?
Down in the lost river it's pretty easy to presume they just eat fish. That one is fairly simple.
But for the dead zone, the game gives us only two real options: either microbes, or other leviathans.
Microbes seem unlikely to me. The game doesn't really show off scale very well, but ghost leviathans are huge. Like, 4 times as large as the average largest whale on our planet, the blue whale.
Blue whales eat Krill, which are way larger than microbes. Needless to say, unless the dead zone is wáy more densely packed with microscopic life than our oceans are, I doubt a full size ghost leviathan could very well live off of microscopic live.
Another clue that they prefer larger organisms is in their build and behavior.
Adult Ghost leviathans are extremely aggressive and perceptive. They will come at you, Just a tiny live form, almost instantly as soon as you enter their territory.
They don't seem very aggressive towards each other though, as they often attack together. On top of that, where whales have huge mouths to let in as much krill as possible, Ghosts' mouths are relatively tiny.
They're not starved for food, or they would be competing instead of cooperating. They're territorial.
My guess: Those hammerhead like appendages actually function to increase their perception, much like in real hammerheads. It helps them locate each other, as well as notice prey entering their territory almost immediately from beyond the veil of darkness.
This hints that the ghost leviathans have some form of social culture. They work together and have advanced methods of observation. They're a pack animal. Although they're beyond the reach of light, they're never too far away from each other and ready to come at eachother's battlecries. What do they need this for then? If they were just preying on things that wander into the dead zone, they really wouldn't need to hunt together.
Well, the game specifies the dead zone is home to leviathans, but it doesn't say which leviathans. What other leviathan do we know that has advanced perceptive capabilities?
The Reaper.
Just a little clearing up for those who don't know: reapers use echolocation. They scream so analyze their surroundings. When you hear it's cry, it knows where you are.
They also have 2 pairs of eyes. Completely black. The reasons our pupils are black is because your eyes aren't meant to let light get out. It absorbs it all, so no light bounces back, making them look black. It is possible the reaper has these completely black eyes because it is native to a place with very little light, such as the dead zone. It's large grabbers also suggest that it is built to hunt something bigger than unlucky peepers or stalkers.
So after all that, here's what I'm suggesting: Reapers are not native to the vulcano that Subnautica takes place in. Like the ghost leviathans, they hail from the dead zone. Through natural competition with the ghost leviathans, they both developed specialized senses for the dark environment that they lived in. However, the ghosts developed a social system and hunted in packs, giving them the edge over the reapers. The reapers learned to stop hunting the adult ghosts and instead focused on the juveniles, which are less socially structured and often guard a territory on their own. Their face claws adapted to the purpose of grabbing and quite possibly breaking though the ghost's outer layer to get to the snackable insides. They go to where the ghosts lay their eggs, waiting there for any juveniles to come out. This puts them on the map for another predator, the sea dragon leviathan. Although their eyes may be fine for picking up the bioluminescent ghosts, and their claws perfect for grabbing and damaging them, they've got nothing on the hard sea dragon, which has the huge advantage of having arms. Due to the presence of this super predator, they stopped going down to the lost river, instead hunting and guarding closer to the surface for anything they can get their claws on. Considering the continued existence of ghosts and reapers, it's likely that occasionally the reapers chase the juveniles to the dead zone, where they become food for the ghosts.
...
Alright, I know there's a lot of extrapolating, assuming and stitching together unrelated facts happening here, but it's fun to consider the symbiosis between these ridiculous creatures anyway. Let me know if you know of any lore that might favor some other theory.
Down in the lost river it's pretty easy to presume they just eat fish. That one is fairly simple.
But for the dead zone, the game gives us only two real options: either microbes, or other leviathans.
Microbes seem unlikely to me. The game doesn't really show off scale very well, but ghost leviathans are huge. Like, 4 times as large as the average largest whale on our planet, the blue whale.
Blue whales eat Krill, which are way larger than microbes. Needless to say, unless the dead zone is wáy more densely packed with microscopic life than our oceans are, I doubt a full size ghost leviathan could very well live off of microscopic live.
Another clue that they prefer larger organisms is in their build and behavior.
Adult Ghost leviathans are extremely aggressive and perceptive. They will come at you, Just a tiny live form, almost instantly as soon as you enter their territory.
They don't seem very aggressive towards each other though, as they often attack together. On top of that, where whales have huge mouths to let in as much krill as possible, Ghosts' mouths are relatively tiny.
They're not starved for food, or they would be competing instead of cooperating. They're territorial.
My guess: Those hammerhead like appendages actually function to increase their perception, much like in real hammerheads. It helps them locate each other, as well as notice prey entering their territory almost immediately from beyond the veil of darkness.
This hints that the ghost leviathans have some form of social culture. They work together and have advanced methods of observation. They're a pack animal. Although they're beyond the reach of light, they're never too far away from each other and ready to come at eachother's battlecries. What do they need this for then? If they were just preying on things that wander into the dead zone, they really wouldn't need to hunt together.
Well, the game specifies the dead zone is home to leviathans, but it doesn't say which leviathans. What other leviathan do we know that has advanced perceptive capabilities?
The Reaper.
Just a little clearing up for those who don't know: reapers use echolocation. They scream so analyze their surroundings. When you hear it's cry, it knows where you are.
They also have 2 pairs of eyes. Completely black. The reasons our pupils are black is because your eyes aren't meant to let light get out. It absorbs it all, so no light bounces back, making them look black. It is possible the reaper has these completely black eyes because it is native to a place with very little light, such as the dead zone. It's large grabbers also suggest that it is built to hunt something bigger than unlucky peepers or stalkers.
So after all that, here's what I'm suggesting: Reapers are not native to the vulcano that Subnautica takes place in. Like the ghost leviathans, they hail from the dead zone. Through natural competition with the ghost leviathans, they both developed specialized senses for the dark environment that they lived in. However, the ghosts developed a social system and hunted in packs, giving them the edge over the reapers. The reapers learned to stop hunting the adult ghosts and instead focused on the juveniles, which are less socially structured and often guard a territory on their own. Their face claws adapted to the purpose of grabbing and quite possibly breaking though the ghost's outer layer to get to the snackable insides. They go to where the ghosts lay their eggs, waiting there for any juveniles to come out. This puts them on the map for another predator, the sea dragon leviathan. Although their eyes may be fine for picking up the bioluminescent ghosts, and their claws perfect for grabbing and damaging them, they've got nothing on the hard sea dragon, which has the huge advantage of having arms. Due to the presence of this super predator, they stopped going down to the lost river, instead hunting and guarding closer to the surface for anything they can get their claws on. Considering the continued existence of ghosts and reapers, it's likely that occasionally the reapers chase the juveniles to the dead zone, where they become food for the ghosts.
...
Alright, I know there's a lot of extrapolating, assuming and stitching together unrelated facts happening here, but it's fun to consider the symbiosis between these ridiculous creatures anyway. Let me know if you know of any lore that might favor some other theory.
Comments
But in game with how unusually aggressive they are and how much damage they're somehow able to do to the Cyclops, them eating other leviathans (or possibly a combination of both plankton and leviathans) makes more sense.
Yeah, that was my first thought too, also based on the mouth. I was just riffing on the game describing the dead zone as exclusive to microscopic and leviathan life. If there's anything beyond the dead zone that contains smaller lifeforms, that would make sense as prey, but then I wonder why they hang around the dead zone enough to immediately attack you if you enter.
I like the idea of them hunting reef backs. They could have a predator/prey relationship kinda similar to zebras and lions. Only problem is that I've never seen a reefback swim anywhere near fast enough to escape a ghost leviathan, and such a predator/prey relationship would drive them extinct very quickly. Then again, I never tried to eat one of them..
They also have these light-up goatees I thought might be similar in function to an angelfish's lure, but then the whole bio luminescent head wouldn't really make sense :P
the transparent outter bodies might alternatively be kinda like bumpers to protect their internal bodies. Alternatively they may be cold blooded and the outer layer is a way to expel heat. The pda entry for them shows they have folded skin, increasing it's surface area, so perhaps.
Judging by the size of the mouth, I think crab squids would be a nice snack for them.
"While fully capable of tearing through the flesh of any creature in range, all evidence indicates that mature ghost leviathans feed on microscopic lifeforms in the waters around the edges of the inhabited zone. Their vicious attacks on interlopers to their domain are not predatory in nature, but territorial. A creature so vast requires a huge expanse of water to satisfy its daily calorie requirements."
But if you scan a Ghost Levi I believe it will tell you otherwise.
This is the pda entry for the adult ghost leviathans (part of it)
The only apparent life for the Ghost to feed on would be macro-life such as the average fish that we find in nearly every biome, which would have to feed purely on flora.
Soooooo, in conclusion Leviathan life forms must have ridiculously slow digestive processes that are insanely efficient, which if we universe merge could be plausible because we know the Sarlacc of Star Wars takes 1000 years to digest a person size organism and can live off of this. The Sarlacc and Ghost have comparable body sizes.
You're correct.
The adult entry suggests it eats plankton, meanwhile the juvenile one affirms the juveniles eat herbivores, probably rays.
Wait, can you get several pda entries on leviathans, based on their age? Like adult ghost and juvenile ghost?
Yes.
SPOILER ALERT!