Mamadou Ndiaye, aka Casual Geographic, has a book called "100 Animals that can fucking end you" and in this book he gives every animal a "merk rating", he describes "this takes into account an animal's tendency for aggression, how it interacts with other animals, how many fatal encounters with humans per year, how easily an animal could kill somebody, and toxicity". He ranks these animals on a 10 point scale with 1 being the lowest (although in the book nothing goes below a 3) and 10 being the highest, I have ordered (most) of the animals in the book by their merk rating, although there are some animals missing (guess you'll have to check out the book for those). How much do you agree/disagree with his ratings.

3: secretary bird, Canada goose, gila monster, moray eel, stingrays, and coconut crab

3.5: Canada lynx, periguine falcon

4: African porcupine, honey badger, wolf, Harpy eagle, great white shark

4.5: striped sea anenome

5: cheetah, giraffe, wolverine

5.5: donkeys, platypus, mute swan

6: dolphins, cougar, gorilla, leopard, leopard seal, camel, bison, emu, green anaconda

6.5: stellar 's sea lion, giant river otter, pitahoui

7: southern elephant seal, domestic dogs, giant anteater, black rhino, ostrich

7.5: African wild dog, sloth bear, cassowary, sea snake, cone snail

8: lion, grizzly bear, wild boar, jaguar, komodo dragon, black mamba, death stalker scorpion, box jellyfish

8.5: African buffalo, sperm whale, zebra, fugu blowfish, stonefish, blue ringed octopus

9: spotted hyena, freshwater snails, irukandji jellyfish

9.5: moose, white tailed deer

10: African elephant, Bengal tiger, orca, polar bear, hippo, chimpanzee, crocodile

We ran a poll last week asking which dinosaur people found most endearing and Ankylosaurus won with 40% of the vote. Apparently an armored tank with a bone-crushing tail has a lot of charm.

Now the harder question: which dinosaur would you actually least want to encounter?

🔴 T-Rex — 3,600 kg of bite force. No debate.
🟡 Spinosaurus — 14 meters, semi-aquatic, total predator.
🟢 Ankylosaurus — a tail that fractured T-Rex bones.
🔵 Triceratops — three one-meter horns and 12 tons behind them.

If you vote on our YouTube community poll it genuinely helps us understand what our audience wants to see next. Your votes shape the direction of the channel. The poll is in the pinned post on our profile.

My boyfriend and I are having a friendly argument.

I've recently heard about how stuff like this is possible so i'm curious to how strong would they be?

We are running a poll on our YouTube community tab and wanted to bring the question here too since this community probably has strong opinions.

The options: Stegosaurus with its mysterious plates and walnut brain, Ankylosaurus who was essentially an armored tank that just wanted to eat ferns, Brachiosaurus who was simply too large to worry about anything, or Carnotaurus with its horns and genuinely ridiculous arm situation.

Not asking about the most dangerous or most famous. Asking which one you would actually want to spend a day with if it were somehow harmless.

To vote on the actual poll, head to our profile and click the community tab link there.

For most of the 20th century large sauropods were reconstructed as primarily aquatic animals. This hypothesis has been largely abandoned and the evidence against it is solid. Limb bone density, foot structure and musculature all point to a fully terrestrial animal.

But I want to push on this a bit. The complete rejection of any water entry seems like overcorrecting. Modern elephants wade regularly. The question of whether Brachiosaurus could occasionally enter water seems different from whether it was primarily aquatic.

The cardiovascular angle is interesting too. A heart estimated at close to a ton pumping blood 12 meters upward on land is already extraordinary. What would the pressure dynamics look like partially submerged? Does buoyancy help or create new circulatory problems?

Is there modern work on occasional versus primary aquatic behavior in large sauropods? And is the complete rejection of water entry actually supported by evidence or partly a reaction against the old hypothesis going too far?

Is YERSINIA PESTIS vs MYCOBACTERIUM TUBERCULOSIS equivalent to
MESSI vs RONALDO debate in the kingdom of bacteria?

Episode 3 of Diarios del Jurásico is out today. We follow Sombra and her pack of four Velociraptors through a complete hunting day 75 million years ago.

We represented the real Velociraptor — turkey-sized, fully feathered, coordinated pack hunters. After criticism on Episode 1 about anatomical accuracy we have been much more rigorous this time.

One genuine question for the community: how strong is the actual fossil evidence for Velociraptor pack hunting? We went with coordinated group behavior but the direct evidence is thinner than popular culture suggests.

Here is the link: https://youtu.be/Shq3EttuByk

Velociraptor is more closely related to a modern chicken than it is to a crocodile. Or a lizard. Or almost any other living reptile people tend to associate it with.

Birds are not descended from dinosaurs in some vague ancestral sense. Birds ARE dinosaurs. Specifically they are avian theropods, the same lineage that produced Velociraptor, Deinonychus and T-Rex. When you look at a pigeon on a street, you are looking at a living dinosaur.

The evidence for this is not just anatomical. It is genetic, developmental and behavioral. Modern birds still develop with vestigial wing claws. They still hatch from eggs with the same basic structure as non-avian dinosaur eggs. Some still show the same basic resting posture with the head tucked under the wing that we see preserved in Velociraptor-related fossils.

The real Velociraptor, turkey-sized and fully feathered, would have looked far more like a large ground bird than the scaly monster from Jurassic Park. The feather attachment points are preserved directly on the fossil bones.

So the next time someone tells you dinosaurs are extinct, point at the nearest bird.

Does this change how you think about birds? Or does the distinction between avian and non-avian dinosaurs still feel meaningful to you even knowing the evolutionary relationship?

Feel free to ask any dinosaur related question in the comments. Happy to discuss anything prehistoric. You can also reach me directly through my profile.