Like Casual Geographic once said "You can convince a predator that you're not worth it, but there is NO negotiating with something thinks you're trying to turn it into calories"

My professor was actually asked about why herbivores can be so aggressive. He put it like this. “A carnivore has to worry about its future even when it kills something, a broken leg is likely to mean inevitable death. A herbivore not only takes advantage of that, but also the fact that it has no future if it’s killed and eaten.”

Honestly I think evolving to be awesome at traversing the most potentially trecherous terrain, to the point that it's not even worth it to eat you is just as cool as developing claws or horns or what have you. Like imagine being this highly adapted predatory fish who can swim incredibly fast and you have all this teeth but you can't even catch a clown fish because he is immune to being stung by anemones and you're not.

It's always so strange seeing people assume herbivores are passive and safe. They've gotta compete for resources just like the rest of us, what do folk think all those horns and tusks are for?

Glad you started off with mentioning the African big herbivores cuz the title alone made me think “why would anyone question this trope’s logic”

Before I even watch the video, I will say this much…we need more aggressive herbivore representation in media. You don’t have to eat meat to be an antagonist.

Hyper aggressive Herbivores are my favorite stereotype beast and I love that they’re getting more attention lately

As much of a T. rex fan as I am, Mark Whitton's painting of an Alamosaurus laughing at a retreating T. rex does make me chuckle.

a pretty vicious herbivore is the red kangaroo!! They don't really have any predators outside of crocodiles, eagles, and humans- yet they are super aggressive. Males are much more aggressive ofc but they're all just so freaky about attacking things. So many videos of them attacking people unprovoked- even trying to drown people. It's rlly interesting !!!

This video also works as a good companion piece to Headsquish talking about the portrayal of the Therizinosaurus in Dominion, arguably the best part by showing a herbivore in a Jurassic world movie being dangerous, and most notably, the opening scene.

Honestly a lot of people don't have the idea of what some herbivores can do. Recently i had to explain to a relative of mine why interacting with a wild capybara was a bad idea including the fact that they could pass a desease or try to attack them if they bother the capy to much

To be fair, a lot of herbivores which aren't generally seen as omnivores will, on occasion, eat meat. I think the example that immediately comes to mind is deer eating bird eggs to supplement their diets.

The best way I explain herbivores with hyper aggression is that while predators kill to eat, prey animals kill to stay alive. A predator largely will give up if their target is more trouble than its worth, but prey will fight to the bitter end

I was actually way more interested in the mountainous sheep than the aggressive herbivore facts. The existence of defense mechanism that entirely revolves around discouraging predators through lethal environment is both a bizarre yet sensible strategy.

Whoever said horns aren't useful for defense never got one-shotted by a black diablos charge. Great work, really enjoyed learning more about the large herbivores of our world. This vid also gave me a notion about diablos/monoblos: though healthy adults are all but immune to predation, they may be much more vulnerable in their younger dispersal periods, pressuring them to adopt preventative aggression. Even though they can burrow to avoid confrontations, that's still a comparatively time/energy expensive response, especially against ambushes.

Just watched a TierZoo video where the myth of the poor eyesight was repeated, when I pointed it out people immediately demanded sources. Which is funny, because TierZoo never cites sources as far as I know. Which is also why I appreciate that you always show the sources and relevant quotes on the screen when you talk about the topic at hand

I always pictured dinosaurs like those in the Ankylosaurus family having a poor eyesight like rhinos making them swing their clubs first then ask questions. I can also see Sauropods whipping or trampling smaller dinosaurs or other creatures if they get too close.

I've always known that large herbivores can be dangerous and should be respected, but what really blew my mind was this line on wikipedia: "In the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, which includes Yellowstone National Park, bears are the most significant predators of calves while **healthy bulls have never been recorded to be killed by bears and such encounters can be fatal for bears.**" It's one thing to recognize big, bulky animals with big teeth like hippos as dangerous. It's another to recognize how dangerous seemingly mundane deer can be.

"Herbivores cannot do shit towards predators" Have you ever tried to catch an angry hamster? They bite you like if they are the original source of rabies!

Any form of life: exists Buffalo, Diablos, Monoblos, Duramboros and Banbaro: "And I took that personally"

To put it another way, predators pick their fights... they go for the old and the weak, the halt and the lame. They pick when to disengage, and have less skin in the game. A herbivore gets in a fight with a predator, it's immediately and always a life-and-death scenario. It may as well fight with everything it has.

Bush Pigs live in my backyard practically. Quite a few people have lost their dogs to them. In the bow hunter community people say they feel safer hunting buffalo than Bush Pigs. When bow hunting Bush pigs, even if you got a good heart and lung shot, its common practice to have a large revolver/pistol or a rifle as back up after you loosed the arrow.

As one who has been the victim of several murder attempts by a single herd of elk in Oregon over the period of several years, I can assure you -- The "hyper-aggressive herbivore trope" is absolutely practical, cold hard fact. I don't worry about bears, cougars, or sharks -- I worry about elk. They frighten me. Pretty sure, when I'm an old man in a nursing home, that one herd of elk will send a cleverly disguised assassim to my deathbed and finish the job. Never met a more vengeful, hate-filled, gratuitously violent species than Western Elk.

Someday I hope you cover the creatures of Pandora, I feel like they aren’t covered enough and you’re hands down the best science channel that covers fictional animals

As a wise man once said… you can negotiate with a predator by convincing them you aren’t worth the effort but you can’t negotiate with an animal that thinks you are going to eat it

“Chat faeces exit the species” That was brilliant

Damn straight!! Love this trope. One of the reasons I love original King Kong. All the herbivores are psychos. In a scrapped 1979s King Kong movie the swamp monster for it was actually going to be a hadrosaur. Have you considered doing a video of the benefits of invader monsters in MH? I was also disappointed realizing Brachydios was a predator. Now he's no longer my favourite monster.

It's surprising that aggressive herbivores are so rare in fiction when large herbivores in the real world are so wildly aggressive. Even Monster Hunter which is generally pretty good lacks this trope, with Diablos being one of very few examples. I guess predators are just more exciting and dynamic to create.

Nothing like a "short" that's over 20 minutes long! More minutes means more learning!

Y'know the mere thought of somebody saying "horns aren't effective at driving back predators" makes me not just want that vid on horn shape over many species, but a buncha footage of predators losing.

I love deep dives like this, itd be really cool to see a break down of the "man-eater" trope. Itd be really cool to do a whole break down on examples of it in real life and what causes that behavior in the first place

One thing to consider is the fact that people tend to let their guard down around herbivores and get too comfortable around them until it's too late. Watch any Yellowstone footage of tourists and you will always see people getting entirely too close to bison (often with disastrous results). Compare that to say, a mountain lion where the average Joe is much more likely to give it a wide berth. So on top of herbivores being more aggressive, confrontations with humans are more likely because far too many don't perceive them as dangerous

Diablos are also said to be extremely territorial because of the very scarce quantity of its hyperspecific diet: cactus patches, they are also ironically not able to identify the only real threat: carrier ants, due to its poor eyesight, making it hunting barroth ironic as it preys on them

One important context to note about fatal herbivore attacks, however, is that large herbivores are far more common than large carnivores. This is further exacerbated by how endangered many large herbivores are. The total population of bush elephants for instance, is ten times the population of lions. Hippos and buffalos are even more numerous.

14:34 AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!! I've never heard that one before! The literal sophisticated version of 'talk shit get hit!' OH MY SIDES!

I would like to point out a bit about the dangers of herbivores to people. In my experience, it's not that the herbivores go out of their way and attack people (hippos and formerly rhinos being notable exceptions) it's that people are dumb, see the cute animal, know it's a herbivores, assume it's safe, mess with said animal, and learn how terribly terribly wrong they were.

Two things I want to point out that expands on this notion: 1.) Ungulates (except for whales in general) are more of interspecific fighters, and herbivorous animals with fighting adornments in general prioritize intraspecific rather than interspecific fighting (ankylosaur fossils from recent discoveries have head injuries corresponding to tail whips from the same species, most probably mating competition). hyperaggressive herbivores seemingly appear in the larger scale of their family (we could easily include silverback gorillas here, the largest of the current living primates). The size requirement lessens once the animal is somewhat omnivorous but evolved from (or evolving into ) herbivores. Chimps which aren' megafauna as well as pigs (and suiids in general) are known to be dangerous even though they are far from megafauna levels. 2.) Herbivorous beetles especially stags and rhino beetles, are notorious interspecific fighters. They are hyperaggressive in general even at small scales. Though in the insect world's scale, herbivorous beetles are in the rough equivalent of megafauna levels. In beetles, it seems the meta is defined by the horns arms race, and their strong territorial defense habits are supported by their horns. Like in vertebrate megafauna, horns are generally important for species identification as well, and the more impressive your set of adornments roughly corresponds to your ability to keep your territory as well.

It is what a wise man on the internet once called, "generational trauma"

there's a particular fact most people don't know about hippos. They have a four chambered stomach, with the fourth chamber being not a fermentation tank but an acid bath. They are fully capable of eating meat and getting nutritional benefit from it, but they are poorly adapted to suddenly switch to full time carnivore.

I like these new spec evo shorts! I always think these murder vegans in pop culture could have a revamp given the time.

One aggressive little herbi (I think its a herbivore anyway) that I know of is the norweigan lemming. I'm not sure if its aggression is over hyped, but it's certainly a brave little bugger. I don't think it counts for hyper aggressive though, seeing as it isn't going out of its way to attack anything. It just goes all in if anything gets too close for comfort.

I hope in Prehistoric Planet season 2 features Edmontosaurus actually fending off a Tyrannosaurus. It doesn’t have to be the same as buffalo, just show them standing their ground, bellowing, and even charging the predator. If the filmmakers are really daring, have the bull bite the Tyrannosaurus on the leg like in paleoart!

Wyomingite here...the excess in American Bision attacks is attributed to how often tourists approach them trying to get close up photos or even trying to feed them.

The hyper aggressive herbivore trope is basically "Don't confuse my kindness for weakness."

Assuming you do another Monster Hunter video, please cover Seltas next. Its similar in many ways to the Asian Giant Hornet, which would be the perfect analogy It would be interesting to see if Seltas are primarily solitary creatures or have some sort of hive colony like Giant Hornets do. It would have to be a very large hive covering a large enough area, given Seltas large size

I noticed the trend of Caprids having restricted ranges a couple months ago, but I couldn’t find any literature explaining why. I’m glad you were able to put that concept into words!

Ah yes the hyper aggressive herbivore trope aka The Hippo Effect.

Given that the Hippo exists, I wouldn't exactly call it a trope, more like a road sign.

I feel like Rut like occurrences are not used enough in fiction. Male deer outside of rut are actually quite docile and usually choose to flee. A typical passive animal that gets super territorial would make for good fiction.

So in animal science, there is a theory that elephants going into Musth and becoming a threat to society is the result of poaching as more older and vateran bull elephants would teach them how to moderate it instead of letting it go out of control.

The fact of the matter is evolutionary speaking herbivores need to worry about being hunted more than predators. This makes herbivores more anxious than carnivores and often times that anxiety translates into aggression. Now add this with the fact that herbivores can often grow larger than carnivores due to the cost effective nature of their diet and as a means to defend themselves from predators and we've got a pretty clear example of a death machine.

It is quite curious how plenty of media depicts herbivorous creatures as defenceless and sometimes useless animals (primarily seen in videogames and even documentaries) Really ignoring aspects like size and weaponry... despite how surprisingly aggressive smaller herbivores can be not only to humans but to other animals as well

herbivores, or at least prey animals, are often a lot more aggressive than anything in a similar weightclass. this is one reason why mustelids, such as the honey badger, are hyper aggressive: theyre prey. fear is a prime factor in aggression after all, and if your a big, bulky prey animal that cant outrun most of its predators, such as a honey badger, then you dont have much choice but aggression.

My only gripe is the statement that herbivores are routinely more dangerous than carnivores, I think a lot of the high death tolls especially in the case of bison are at least part due to the fact that on average people are in much closer and much more frequent contact/vicinity with many herbivorous species at least somewhat due to the general inaccurately assumed notion by be general public that they are not inherently dangerous as well as the fact that many herbivores exist at much higher local densities than large predatory species. I’d imagine if people walked past large groups of grizzly bears and behaved in as dumb a manner as they often do with bison similar death tolls would arise.

Please make a video on The Future is Wild! You’d do an amazing job dissecting that series and seeing how the creatures and ideas hold up. Like mammals losing ground to other groups like invertebrates

No hyper aggressive herbivores or hyper aggressive carnivores. Herbivores are more aggressive because they are being hunted not the hunter

I'd love to see a part 2 to this video and on the note about how good flight is as a anti predator defense i feel the pronghorn antelope is a amazing example of this with them having essentially outliving their primary predator the healthy adults of the species appear to be eaten with primary predation occurring on their young. It would be an interesting video idea to see what it looks like to " win " an evolutionary arms race against a species such as organisms that have a extremely powerful venom/poison or animals with strange adaptations that would have aided in surviving with a now extinct predator etc

I definitely agree we need to see more aggressive herbivores in media showcasing dangerous wildlife, but it is a good idea to also be sure to give that animal justifiable reason why it behaves that way.

I love your videos and im so happy to be educated on these things! Thank you!

I hope one day you consider doing a video on After Man's animals in general. I'd love that topic under the kind of analysis you do I understand you probably have more monster hunter stuff, but eventually when that runs out it would be cool to see you talk about it

I think a horn-themed sequel would be very interesting. The Witton blog post was really insightful but I also thought that ceratopsians probably weren't that good in the flight departement, being built more like elephants or rhinos and thus don't compare all too well to deer and gazelles.

When I’m writing a science fantasy dinosaur novel, I made herbivores as a bigger threat to the protagonists than carnivores, that are neutral, patient and will attack on brief occasions, even the Triceratops is portrayed as the main dinosaur villain, while the T. rex is portrayed as a guardian angel. Edit: Then I decided to change the Triceratops with an Ankylosaurus to not only the fact that it's a T. rex killer but it shows that just because something is cute that doesn't mean it's harmless, much like a hippo that killed 500 people a year.

After learning about the relationship between Buffalo & Lions on the African plains makes me wonder if Ceratopsians & Tyrannosaurs had a similar relationship in the Late Cretaceous. It would explain why Triceratops in particular was so ridiculously abundant in the Hell's Creek Formation. Perhaps Triceratops & it's relatives showed similar reactive aggression towards predators, & there are studies that show Tyrannosaurus's in the same population took different prey at different rates so there might have been something going on there...

In my spec evo world, I have a rhinoceros-like herbivore with sharp keratinous spikes covering its lower back and rear. It also possesses two large keratinous horns on its face, similar to brontotheres.

Love that in the spec evo comunity almost half a hour long videos are considered short videos. Also i think the hyper agressive herbivore trope might be my favourite since their weapons double as display pieces making them look cooler than carnivores.

The idea of buffalo counter-ambushing lions is oddly comical.

Thank you for the useful information! As someone whos making a whole speculative biology world and unrelated speculative animals this video definitely helps.

Unnatrual History Channel, thank you for your hard work, we all appreciate it.

Here for mah boi Ferrucutus.

One big topic sorta similar to this I hope to see in the future is a video about breath/elemental weapons. In MH/all media. Being a longtime viewer I wonder now how evolutionarily feasible it would be to develop elemental attacks. Or just what the "prompt" for it would be.

Continue with this, this speculative evo serie are so awesome

I really like this sort of video discussing tropes and behaviours. I hope you do more of this more general video

I can already see The Isle players using this video as an explanation why a stegosaurus should hunt down everything it sees within its entire field of vision 😂 "Herbivores should be active hunters, always seeking something to kill" its folks like these that ruin survival games.

A fantastic video, it's great seeing new info being shared while debunking myths to these kinds of topics. I'm surprised that, give when ceratopsians were brought up, stegosaurs weren't brought up as defenses specifically made as anti-predator weapons, given how dangerous they would be in intraspecific combat (although the possibility of that being a thing isn't impossible) and that we do have fossil evidence of theropods being inflicted with jabs from thagomizers. Still a great topic, going to definitely apply the points learned here to a project I'm developing. One question that did come to mind though, and this is more difficult to judge, is if hyper aggression is more heavily linked to ornamentation or weaponry, in the likes of tusks, antlers, and horns, or body size.

commenting for the algorithm as I am saving this for tomorrow, also can you do the crabs?

i can't thank you enough for presenting an alternative to the VS forum way of seeing nature , as someone who fell into that way of seeing stuff just because i had found other pepole willing to talk about animals , it is sad because the cause is genuinely a self fulfilling loop of : pepole intrested in animals with some disinformation , and networks looking for views and creating more of the same for cheap , as well as servers creating uniformity trough moderation and general structure ... they start with misguided pepole and end up creating complete lunatics that will tie their ego to certain animals and will spend great amount of times and efforts sifting trough genuinely intresting information about their favourites , in search of that nugget that suggest an outcome ... it's sometimes impressive that entire feudes have gone on , on such flimsy premises ... it also brings forth a really degrading way of seeing things : with evolution being a nihillistic god , sometimes doing things just for the goof , being sadistic other times and yet once again being it's best with the most studied genera , them always being rich in tricks and swindles ... this in the best case really , other times animals may be seen as gladiators existing from nothing and to nothing else rather than being pinned against each other ... honestly to wish that these communities got reduced in scope and our egos finally got in check may be wishful thinking on my part ... still thank you for the free almost university level information delivered with an eye to the casual viewer , you've done a whole lot against disinformation

Carnivores fight for meals, herbivores fight for their lives.

I always knew that horns are use for both intraspecific combat and for defense against predators, so it doesn't make sense for some people to consider them useless in combat, when the reality is that horns are deadly weapons Also, more agressive and hyper agressive herbivores interpretation on media, I hate whenever herbivores are represented as the helpless ones on popular media (including Beastars) Edit: Regarding the rhino's agression towards lions, I do believe this is done to eliminate threats for future calves, since by the looks of it a lot of attacks towards lions are executed by female black rhinos, and since their calves could be a potential prey for lion prides and hyena clans, this in turn could also mean that hyenas occasionally are too attack by rhinos, with similar results

Excellent video as always. I would 100% be interested in a deeper dive into horns/antlers

I would say you make a good point in representing that herbivores are much more danger than the predators. There are many people who misinterpreted that herbivores are not danger, and they can come into their territory, and make a mockery of themselves.

I'd love to see a video about horn and antler morphology

Another fun one as always. I've gotten a greater appreciation for herbivores as of late.

Offensive structures that see more interspecific use than use between species can also be interesting to look at design wise, are they more likely to fight each other or to fight something else? It’s especially good for establishing social behaviors in the animals

Id really like to see you do a cover magnamalo not just to be a joke hate on video but to see what exactly your thoughts are on it and possibly to see if it could be related to teostora sense their both feline like and use a element thats similar in effect

It’s neat to come back to this video and hear the part at 11:58 after reading that isotope study on tarbosaurus that showed individual preferences in prey

Bring on the horns!

I wonder if some animals practice territoriality for access to better sleeping arrangements. Like the breeze is better on that side of the hill so we're gonna run out that other group of critters

A great video, as always.

Unnatural history channel, thank you for you’re hard work, we all appreciate it. You’re an amazing, wonderful, incredible, and awesome person. ☺️😊😄😃🤩😍 👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏 ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️

horns are very interesting since its both defense and attack placed in easy reach of the neck, the main weakness predators tend to go for if they have the ability

I honestly didn't expect the zebra to be part of your list, they seem so timid o.O

The Ferrucutus attack is the only dinosaur-based action scene in King Kong that could be discussed in a serious, ethological way. This is a movie in which a herd of gargantuan Brontosaurus are somehow driven into an insane stampede by a pack of much smaller Venatosaurus (not to mention the ridiculousness of lumbering sauropods being able to run faster than humans) and a Vastatosaurus pursues a tiny woman while he literally has a big Foetodon in his jaws. Outside of dinosaurs, it's also quite far-fetched (and convenient for Ann and Jack) that a swarm of Terapusmordax decides to get themselves killed attacking Kong. Overall, this film is no Jurassic Park. In contrast to the convincing zoology presented in The World of Kong: A Natural History of Skull Island, the creatures in the film are depicted as unrelentingly aggressive monsters rather than animals.

another example might be limited senses. a heavily cited animal in the "hyper agressive" herbivore were Rhinoceros, and in their case it was cause they were legally blind, relying on smell rather than sight. in these types of animal if you smell anything like a threat they will charge at you, rather be of lions, leopards, and even humans, hell... some wild rhinos are known to charge elephants

awesome video!

Wanna see more of them tbf. Dragons with hippos tempermants are fun.

On the topic of omnivores being belligerent, it’d be interesting to see a Triceratops scare, say, a younger Tyrannosaurus from its kill in PP season 2. Just saying!

In terms of potential future spec evo videos, I would love to see one that covers the general viability and advantages/disadvantages of natural zombie viruses like the cordycepts from the last of us and other similar cases, maybe even comparing them to and talking about stuff like real world cordycepts and Leucochloridium.

I don't know where the trope of ''hyper friendly herbivore'' came from either, clearly from people who live far away from nature and from actual wild, not-tamed or used to be around others, animals...

Thanks for that bit at the end about Wittons post about horns. Great guy, and he certainly has a point, but it never really sat well with me.

I'd love to see a follow-up video on horn/antler morphology!