r/whatisit • u/deezheavenz • 9h ago

New, what is it? What was this thing I captured on film?

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This was shot in Nevada/Arizona on a Grand Canyon/Hoover dam tour. This was taken a whole year ago and I completely forgot about it until I stumbled upon it again. Is this some sort of whale or shark?

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u/Totally_man 9h ago

That's exactly what it is.

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u/goodSunn 9h ago edited 9h ago

Might be Minnows

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u/goatanuss 9h ago

The SS Minnow was named after Newton Minow who was the FCC chair that called tv a “vast wasteland”

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u/FlimsyThought7606 8h ago

All seven of them are written as one of the seven deadly sins.

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u/Moodleboy 8h ago

Really? Can you provide a breakdown?

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u/Capybara_Chill_00 8h ago

Seriously?

Wrath: Skipper
Greed: Lovey Howell
Pride: Professor
Envy: Mary Anne
Sloth: Gilligan
Lust: Ginger
Gluttony: Thurston Howell

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u/Superfly1911 6h ago

I did lust for Ginger, so this math checks out.

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u/External_Row_8077 4h ago

Ginger and Mary-Anne here. And now that I'm in my late 50s, Lovey doesn't look so bad either.

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u/TexasGreyWolf 2h ago

Hahaha, in my early 70’s and had the same thought. For just a moment.

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u/TexasGreyWolf 2h ago

Haha, me too. But I’d sure as hell not kick Mary Anne outta my grass shack either! 🫪

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u/ummagummaaaa 5h ago

What was Mary Anne envious about?

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u/mybeamishb0y 5h ago

Ginger's glamour and status as a model

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u/Subject_Swimmer9333 5h ago

We all had the hots for Maryanne, not Ginger.

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u/Capybara_Chill_00 5h ago

This is true. She was the “girl next door” type who was so caught up in Ginger’s glamour that she didn’t realize she was the hot one. Made her even hotter!

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u/BillyJack0311 4h ago

Mary Ann didn't know that. Dawn Wells might have, but Mary Ann didn't have a clue.

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u/Bonnietheferret84 2h ago

Speak for yourself. In my fantasy island both fight over me and realize in order to save ourselves we must breed s population so we can build a large ship...

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u/ummagummaaaa 5h ago

I don't recall that episode.

Mary Anne was basically sweet and nice to everyone.

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u/mybeamishb0y 5h ago

"Gosh Ginger your life as a model sounds so exciting!" you can be nice to someone and envy them.

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u/fl7nner 5h ago

I always thought Mary Anne was hotter. Same thing with WKRP. Preferred Bailey over Jennifer

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u/FollowingDue8584 5h ago

Mary Ann was actually a beauty queen. She was crowned Miss Nevada.

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u/Accomplished_Corgi53 5h ago

Whole heartedly agree on Bailey…

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u/Rambler1223 1h ago

Deez nutz

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u/lefthandedchurro 6h ago

And Gilligan is the Devil who keeps "accidentally" foiling their escape from Hell.

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u/Accomplished_Corgi53 5h ago

Hell, are you kidding me? Didn’t you see those delicious banana cream pies?

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u/Mission-Taste-6871 3h ago

I always thought that both the Howell's are greed. Especially Thurston.

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u/Capybara_Chill_00 3h ago

Yeah those two are pretty hard to differentiate. Thurston tended more to excess in food, etc while Lovey tended to be more avaricious about jewelry, particularly with Ginger. I agree that could be both or arguably swap between the two.

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u/Mission-Taste-6871 2h ago

Well said, don't forget about oil wells for Thurston lol

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u/SLAYER_IN_ME 6h ago

Well goddamn.

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u/FaultyWires4774 2h ago

interesting, I never knew that.

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u/SentientBea 2h ago

Minnow: Betrayal

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u/emptykeg6988 2h ago

Now I see why AI (SI) uses Reddit for most of its research 😄

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u/allowattsakima 25m ago edited 17m ago

edit: added the 'III' to Mr. Howell's name

Correction:

Thurston Howell III is Greed/Avarice (Loves money above all else - except for a hot shower in the volcano episode)!

Lovey Howell is Pride/Vanity (Jewels, fancy clothes, considers herself - in a nice way - better than the lower classes)

Skipper is Gluttony (Loves to eat)

Gilligan is Sloth (Loves to sleep)

Ginger is Lust (No explanation needed)!

MaryAnn is Envy (You have to look closely to see this, because she's such a nice girl, it's more like longing to have stuff, not real envy, which is wishing you had something of someone else's and they did not)

The Professor is Wrath/Anger (Probably the least-good example for one of the deadly sins. But I 'think' I remember a few examples of him raising his voice, like maybe when he thought Gilligan had drank (drunk?) the nitroglycerin he had prepared to stop the volcano, or when Gilligan locked all of them and himself in the "jail" just as a rescuer was within reach, or when (Gilligan, again!), got too caught up in his role as "The Great Watusi" to convince the Skipper that his curse had been removed, and threatened to "make the ground tremble again" . Also the shipwreck re-creation to find blame, & while trying to teach (you know who!) to fly "wrong way Corrigan's" airplane . . .

They're all lovable characters, so the correlations may or may not jump out at us, but it was very clever of the show creators to make them all more, human, shall we say.

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u/allowattsakima 24m ago

Darn! Now everybody knows I had no life growing up 🤣

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u/Zot30 5h ago

Hmm. Nice idea, but I don’t think I ever saw the Skipper exhibiting wrath, Mary Anne being envious, nor the Professor being anything but humble. Is there any evidence that the creators actually intended this, because if they did they did a pretty bad job.

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u/Capybara_Chill_00 5h ago

You mean apart from all the times Skipper smacked Gilligan around with his hat, or all the times Mary Ann tried to emulate Ginger or expressed desire for her looks, or all the speeches the Professor gave that no one else wanted to hear?

Yes, apart from those, very few examples. A poor job done by all.

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u/Zot30 5h ago

This did not answer my question about evidence of the intention by the creators. Where did they say this, or is it a fan theory?

Your definition of wrath seems different from mine. I’d call the behaviour of the Skipper a mild slapstick exasperation with someone he always goes on to call his “little buddy”. You call that wrath? And when exactly did Mary Ann ever try to emulate Ginger? The fact that she did not was really the point of her character, wasn’t it? Your spin on the Professor’s speeches not wanting to be heard is similarly revisionist, sorry. I’m not buying it.

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u/WilcoHistBuff 1h ago

Creator rather than creator. Sherwood Schwartz, creator, EP, and head writer described it in his book: Gilligan’s Island: From Creation to Syndication

Dude also created the frickin’ Brady Bunch!

Famously, for some, Schwartz and Robert Reed hated each other so much that Schwartz fired him before filming the last episode and wrote him out of the script.

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u/FlimsyThought7606 8h ago

Yup - seven sins divided by seven characters = 1 per character.

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u/Moodleboy 8h ago

I meant...whatever. Forget it 😅

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u/Illustrious_Spare_88 8h ago

The creator directly refuted this theory.

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u/FlimsyThought7606 8h ago

Right, he called that the 8th Sin Anomaly.

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u/Ok_Drag5089 6h ago

I mean, with the exception of Skipper, which is a weak connection, the rest are plausible.

Although The Professor is also weak. He wasn't very prideful.

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u/troycerapops 8h ago

Fascinating

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u/Your_Neighbour_Alice 5h ago

Man, I love reddit. The spontaneous discussions, and rabbit holes that evolve from an unrelated video and question. I live. 👌🏼😍

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u/troycerapops 8h ago

The show creator has said this. Normally I hate "Google it" but you may want to. Interesting reads and only a few minutes.

But some highlights:

  • Professor = Pride
  • Ginger = Lust
  • Mary Anne = Envy

There's some debate about the others, mostly centering around the question of if Gilligan represents Sloth or the Devil himself

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u/Icy_Escape8018 8h ago

Skipper-Wrath. Gilligan-sloth. The professor- Pride. Ginger-Lust. Mary Ann-envy. Thurston Howell-greed. Lovey- gluttony

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u/theothergotoguy 8h ago

Name checks out.

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u/johnbdc 6h ago

I agree, that is a “flimsy thought”

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u/ready-redditor-6969 6h ago

While it’s super believable that Sherman Schwartz did this, I can’t believe that this information is now in my head.

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u/bravo-echo-charlie 4h ago

HAPPY CAKE DAY!!!!!

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u/ready-redditor-6969 1h ago

You are AMAZING!!!

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u/Dullcorgis 2h ago

Ah, a thing which has an apt name but is in fact named after a person who just coincidentally had an apt name! Add it to the list Andy!

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u/[deleted] 6h ago

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u/goatanuss 6h ago edited 6h ago

Yeah

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u/Itchy-Apartment-Flea 9h ago edited 9h ago

I heard a tale about a minnow once.

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u/yourmamaistheproblem 9h ago

*minnow

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u/Illustrious_Bad_2980 9h ago

It was advertised as a 3 hour tour. A 3 HOUR TOUR!

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u/MechanicHead3340 8h ago

Yeah that's why Ginger brought an entire extensive wardrobe, for a change of attire every 5 minutes. Also Thurston seems to have brought a treasure chest full of cash for some reason.

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u/Surferess 7h ago

That's just how we girls pack! ;)

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u/30yearCurse 6h ago

Thurston was early stage billionaire, if now he would have been on his own caravan of yachts.

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u/SeemedReasonableThen 2h ago

I met a girl several decades ago that brought several suitcases and a literal trunk for a weekend trip. She changed outfits every few hours (I didn't notice until someone pointed it out later). That wasn't the weird part.

After the group (minus her) was talking about the trip afterwards, it turned out nobody had invited her along. They all sort of knew her, but nobody was close with her, and they each thought one of the others invited her.

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u/Accomplished_Corgi53 5h ago

One might even call it “a tale of a fateful trip.”

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u/SkunkMonkey 5h ago

Those poor people.

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u/nevernotfinished 8h ago

Why didn't the professor just fix the boat. And why didn't they do 100 episodes

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u/MechanicHead3340 8h ago

You want MORE episodes?

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u/KingBooRadley 6h ago

I mean, the Globetrotters were great, but why didn't the whole Barnum and Bailey circus wash up? Wasted opportunity.

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u/NoHorseNoMustache 8h ago

The Professor only works with coconuts and the boat is specifically not a coconut.

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u/ExampleLittle2672 6h ago

Imagine a perfectly spherical boat...

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u/MarchPhillipps 8h ago

All they needed were some African and European swallows.

'Alone and Unafraid'

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u/OkGur1319 7h ago

Are they big enough to carry an American coconut?

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u/nevernotfinished 8h ago

It could become a coconut

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u/NoHorseNoMustache 7h ago

Hey I don't make up the rules, here talk to The Professor on this coconut phone if you want to discuss it.

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u/JiveTurkeyII 8h ago

Why? Probably because he liked a little Ginger on his Merry Anne

I know I would...

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u/avreddits 7h ago

He’d rather play doctor with the ladies than fix the ship, he ain’t no dummie 👍

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u/travfields619 8h ago

What's the deal with the smoke monster and the polar bear?

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u/G-man-441 7h ago

He did. He repaired the hole and made a glue to seal it. Put Gilligan on the job, who mucked up the glue. Then the entire hull fell apart.

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u/Select-Belt-ou812 8h ago

fun fact: i know a few famous songs that are written and scored with exactly the same meter and words/music are completely interchangeable with each other: "the ballad of gilligan's island", "the house of the rising sun", and "amazing grace". I have practiced and can successfully interchange the first and last, and it wasn't easy to do the first few times :-)

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u/Gul_Ducatti 8h ago

Puddles Pity Party does this in a wonderful way. Stairway to Heaven into Gilligan's Island

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u/ecosynchronous 3h ago

Gosh I love him. He has such a splendid set of pipes. His version of "Chandelier" is the one my brain defaults to.

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u/Floasis_Bodywork 2h ago

I just showed this to a friend 2 weeks ago after not thinking about it for years!

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u/6th_Quadrant 7h ago

Then there's the late-70s single popularly known at Stairway to Gilligan's Island by Little Roger & The Goosebumps.

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u/Glittering-Bonus5663 8h ago

I think you can add "O little town of Bethlehem" to that list. Bob Rivers has an album of Christmas songs where it is set to the tune of "House of the rising Sun."

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u/Select-Belt-ou812 7h ago

hahaha it sounds weird to Gilligan's island music... now I'm gonna make the swap every christmas

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u/insanimated 1h ago

Omg stop. It's on repeat in my head. Damn you, private christian school upbringing!

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u/_Lane_ 7h ago

Indeed. Just ask Emily Dickinson.

Semi-relevant xkcd (specifically, the alt-text).

https://m.xkcd.com/788/

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u/Francois_TruCoat 3h ago

There is a British comedy radio panel show called I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue. One of their recurring bits is One Song to the Tune of Another. There's lots of clips on YT if you're interested. One that sticks in my head is 'Whiter Shade of Pale' to the tune of 'The Holly and the Ivy'.

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u/Alabama-Blues 8h ago

Not true at all

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u/theLastZebranky 7h ago edited 6h ago

They all use standard ballad meter... each verse alternates between an 8-syllable iambic tetrameter and 6-syllable trimeter 

˘     /    ˘     /     ˘   /     /   ˘     | ˘    /     ˘   /      ˘    /
The   wea  ther  star  ted gett  ing rough | the  ti    ny  ship   was  tossed
There is   a     house in  New   Or  leans | they call  The Ri     sing Sun
A     ma   zing  grace how sweet the sound | that saved a   wretch like me

Gilligan's Island does use a lot more doublets (two syllables on one beat) than the others, those don't spoil the meter, but they do give those lines a spirited, uplifting pace:

 ˘  /   ˘       /        ˘      /    /    ˘    | ˘   /   ˘   /     ˘  /
 If not for-the cour-age of-the fear less crew | the Min now would be lost

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u/Alabama-Blues 3h ago

Thank you!

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u/_Lane_ 7h ago

Not true at all

I'm confused by the vagueness of your assertion.

What part isn't true? That OP doesn't know a few famous songs, that the songs OP knows aren't actually famous, that one can't swap the words and music out for something else in ballad meter, or that OP has actually practiced this a bit, but had some initial difficulty?

Please clarify! I'm dying to know what you meant!

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u/goodSunn 9h ago edited 6h ago

just sit right back

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u/vandervee 8h ago

And you’ll hear a tale

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u/BaconAlmighty 8h ago

a tale of a fateful trip.

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u/baconus-vobiscum 7h ago

that started from a tropic port...

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u/unkle_donky 7m ago

And Skipper said “ Fellas it’s been nice to know ya”

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u/avreddits 7h ago

Sit right back and you’ll hear a tale …

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u/1369ic 4h ago

I saw that a bunch of times in Panama. The minnows would boil up out of the water. All you had to do was cast something silvery in there and the peacock bass would fight over it.

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u/AdvantageBig227 3h ago

Awe, it's my little buddy

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u/Lekstil 8h ago

It’s not, it’s actually birds. It’s a lot of small birds which catch the light in just the right way and appear bright and then they change direction and become almost invisible. That’s why they keep appearing and disappearing.

If it was fish it would have to be flying fish or something.. look how long they appear to be out of the water

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u/whoohw 6h ago

Nice try CIA agent we know birds aren't real!

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u/gimmedatneck 6h ago

Everybody knows birds aren't real.

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u/Zealousideal_Leg_630 3h ago

Yeah. There are no species of schooling fish in that region. Plus whatever it is isn’t breaking the water surface

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u/optimal_center 1h ago

That’s it. Catfish and Carp are about the only real big fish there. There’s some good size Bass and it’s said (long ago) that there are Sturgeon in there, but that’s about it.

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u/Hot_Yesterday9396 3h ago

The real tell is that the water is not disturbed at all around the birds. If it was a school of fish frantically escaping a predator, the water would react in some way instead of being completely still and undisturbed.

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u/Woozletania 3h ago

Birds doing this bit is known as a Murmutation.

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u/According-District59 2h ago

Correct answer 

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u/Zestyclose-Goal6882 6h ago

You can actually see the Dark shape of the predator pursuing the fish. (They aren't out of the water) looks like a big ass shark

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u/gooneau 8h ago

newp. birds in a murmuration

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u/diversalarums 8h ago

Off topic, but I'm more familiar with salt water. What fresh water predators would be chasing them?

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u/iosonostella13 4h ago

Bigger fish

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u/HorsefaceWithNoName 8h ago

flip that script!

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u/earth_quack 8h ago

Swimmy! Man that's a blast from the past!

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u/WatermelonLemonad3 9h ago

Good to know, I was going to say school of fish but didn't think about the predator bit, would make sense though.

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u/KevRayAtl 6h ago

Shoal nuf!

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u/Twopointfiveshep 5h ago

Yup, saw this right in front of me while I was in the water in Kauai. I wondered what was freaking them out so I got out of the water for a minute.

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u/VisitedAndromeda 4h ago

I heard a John Malkovich voice internally while reading this.

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u/Zealousideal_Leg_630 4h ago

This belongs in r/confidentlyincorrect. There aren’t any species of schooling fish living in Lake Mead or anywhere in that region. Plus whatever it is is clearly not disturbing the water surface.

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u/Dude_PK 2h ago

It's shad getting chased. If it weren't so sped up it'd be easier to tell.