# Living With Megafauna



## Drakevarg (Jul 23, 2017)

So, latest in my miscellaneous worldbuilding contemplations is how humans would adapt to living in a world bristling with megafauna - particularly in the oceans.

The sea is a scary place, even in our world. But it's thankfully scarce in things like krakens, mosasaurs, megalodons and other such creatures that are fully capable of mistaking a full-sized ship for food. So the thing I've been wondering lately is how shipwrights would adapt to these concerns, at least in the age before ironclads appeared and the threat of chunks being bitten out of the hull could be sufficiently mitigated.

Right now the only ideas I can think of would be nails sticking out of the hull, long enough to dissuade potential maws before teeth could stick in and angled so as to minimize drag, or spiked chains being dragged from the keel. But I thought I'd offer up the question to the forum, see if any other ideas came to mind.


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## Queshire (Jul 23, 2017)

Hmmm.... well first imediate thoughts would  coastal sailing where it's too shallow for the megafauna would be more developed than ocean going sailing. Second thought is that just because they're big doesn't mean they'll attack ships. Third's possibly doing something to repeal the megafauna. Maybe like shaping the boats so that from underwater the mega fauna sees them as another sea monster 'n one too big to risk casually fighting.


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## elemtilas (Jul 23, 2017)

Queshire said:


> Hmmm.... well first imediate thoughts would  coastal sailing where it's too shallow for the megafauna would be more developed than ocean going sailing. Second thought is that just because they're big doesn't mean they'll attack ships. Third's possibly doing something to repeal the megafauna. Maybe like shaping the boats so that from underwater the mega fauna sees them as another sea monster 'n one too big to risk casually fighting.



All excellent points. Even *here*, sharks, giant squids and killer whales don't generally attack ships. Maybe it's a size thing? Others, like whalesharks and blue whales eat plankton, not huge prey. So yeah, just because an animal is big doesn't mean it's going to attack a ship.

Camouflage is a good idea. If the beast your ship builders worry about is scared of some other monster, make the ship look like that monster!

Another kind of camouflage is to make your ships look like the beasts you're worries about. They're less likely to attack one of their own, perhaps.


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## TheKillerBs (Jul 23, 2017)

My first impression would be that it'd only be an issue for a small window of time. It wasn't until about the 15th century when we first started crossing oceans, wasn't it? Prior to that, most sailing was done close to land. I imagine the marine megafauna wouldn't be an issue until these people's equivalent of the age of discovery.


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## K.S. Crooks (Jul 23, 2017)

Perhaps the way to go is to avoid the feeding grounds of whatever the creature of greatest concern eats. How about coating the ships with something poisonous or at least bad tasting...I have no idea how to make the material stay on!


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## Drakevarg (Jul 23, 2017)

TheKillerBs said:


> My first impression would be that it'd only be an issue for a small window of time. It wasn't until about the 15th century when we first started crossing oceans, wasn't it? Prior to that, most sailing was done close to land. I imagine the marine megafauna wouldn't be an issue until these people's equivalent of the age of discovery.



This is an interesting point, but on the other hand plenty of marine megafauna have historically lived in (relatively) shallow waters, exactly the sort of places ships would often travel. By my understanding the majority of sea life lives relatively close to shore as open waters both offer very little concealment and have next to nothing in terms of plant life.



> All excellent points. Even *here*, sharks, giant squids and killer whales don't generally attack ships. Maybe it's a size thing? Others, like whalesharks and blue whales eat plankton, not huge prey. So yeah, just because an animal is big doesn't mean it's going to attack a ship.



Of course. The relevant concern would be the ones who _would_ attack large prey and are big enough to mistake a ship for, say, a whale. Sharks attack surfers because they look like seals. A mosasaur or a megalodon might mistake a ship for a whale.



> Camouflage is a good idea. If the beast your ship builders worry about is scared of some other monster, make the ship look like that monster!
> 
> Another kind of camouflage is to make your ships look like the beasts you're worries about. They're less likely to attack one of their own, perhaps.



This is one angle I've been considering, but less about disguising the ship as something equal or higher on the food chain, and more about making it distinctly not food-shaped, give it a different silhouette somehow that doesn't look like a whale or anything from below.


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## Holman (Jul 24, 2017)

What about a chemical response - ships are designed so that a substance that the creatures don't like is put into the water somehow - this along with brightly painted hulls warns the creatures that the ship tastes bad.


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## Drakevarg (Jul 24, 2017)

Holman said:


> What about a chemical response - ships are designed so that a substance that the creatures don't like is put into the water somehow - this along with brightly painted hulls warns the creatures that the ship tastes bad.



It's possible, though the likelihood of any chemical treatment washing off or otherwise diluting in the water over the course of the voyage would probably make it an expensive procedure, another "fuel" alongside food and fresh water that determines how long a ship can afford to remain at sea.

(You could potentially risk going without the treatment in high-traffic waters where the local predators would be conditioned to assume any ship with the warning colors is unpalatable, but on longer voyages there'd be an increasing risk of running into ones that have never encountered a ship before and don't know the meaning of the markings, at which point a lack of 'fuel' could be fatal.)


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## Holman (Jul 24, 2017)

Exactly - but would allow for additional dilemmas and solutions that are more novel than running out of water, etc.


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## CupofJoe (Jul 24, 2017)

Holman said:


> Exactly - but would allow for additional dilemmas and solutions that are more novel than running out of water, etc.


Probably apocryphal but didn't the USN try anti-shark chemicals back in 40s-50s? It was supposed to make the water around a downed crew unpleasant. They found out that it got the shark's attention well enough, and so rather than dissuade attacks the chemical drew them on to the new potential food source.
I'd go with stealth. Do not try to stop an attack from succeeding, but rather try not to get attacked in the first place.


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## Holman (Jul 24, 2017)

CupofJoe said:


> Probably apocryphal but didn't the USN try anti-shark chemicals back in 40s-50s? It was supposed to make the water around a downed crew unpleasant. They found out that it got the shark's attention well enough, and so rather than dissuade attacks the chemical drew them on to the new potential food source.
> I'd go with stealth. Do not try to stop an attack from succeeding, but rather try not to get attacked in the first place.



You mean that Batman's can of shark repellent wouldn't work! - another childhood myth destroyed


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## elemtilas (Jul 24, 2017)

Drakevarg said:


> elemtilas said:
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> 
> 
> ...



Or perhaps worse, a large sea creature that sees your ship as a convenient scratching post.

In the end, I think the best way to deal with pesky pelagics is avoidance. Put a couple spotters up in the crow's nest and have em watch for sea monsters.

Next might be bait and switch. If a pod of hungry mosasaurs comes too close, harpoon one of em to lure the others away to an easier, more tasty meal.

Things like chemicals and even comouflage really require a deeper understanding of the animals' behaviour. That's something I doubt any non-modern non-scientific culture will know much about.


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## FifthView (Jul 24, 2017)

In _One Piece_, some captains coat their ships in Sea-Prism Stone (or Seastone) that makes the "sea kings," giant sea creatures, think the ship is just part of the ocean, so they won't attack.

I vaguely wonder whether the bottoms of ships could be painted so that they look just like the rippling sky above. Maybe a kind of special paint might be used, one that's somewhat phosphorescent so that the ship doesn't appear to be a shadow above. There's actually an evolutionary idea behind this, since a lot of animals have a lighter colored underside that helps them camouflage: Countershading - Wikipedia

Edit: elemtilas makes a decent point about deeper understanding of animal behavior; but on the other hand, the light-underbelly thing is something easily observable in many creatures, including some sharks, and putting two and two together wouldn't be too far fetched. Plus, there's nothing saying such a procedure would be 100% effective maybe, and this could still allow some dramatic tension and suspense for a story.


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## Viorp (Jul 24, 2017)

I think the cultural implications would be massive.
I actually think more people would go to sea.

Think for a bit how in inuit tribes or in japan whale hunters were heroes once.
They risked their lifes to hunt incredibly huge beasts to bring valuable resources back.

In this world there are both more resources and more dangerous creatures in the sea.


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## Drakevarg (Jul 24, 2017)

Viorp said:


> I think the cultural implications would be massive.
> I actually think more people would go to sea.
> 
> Think for a bit how in inuit tribes or in japan whale hunters were heroes once.
> ...



I've considered this angle, both for the sea and the land-based megafauna. Hunters would be bona fide badasses and considered a specialized skillset on par with artisans, as going after prey would not only mean taking down things like mammoths, but competing with predators the size of buses to do so.

Serving on a whaling ship or being part of a hunter's lodge would probably be the closest you could get to being an "adventurer" in the classic heroic fantasy sense while still having an actual job description.


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## arboriad (Jul 24, 2017)

What if you go the angler fish route, where a lead boat would be brightly lit, perhaps phosphorescent, from the underside. It attracts the megafauna before the darker,larger hull of the main ship. 

When that gets attacked/disappears , then a poison is dumped into the sea to ward it off the bigger ship.

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## Drakevarg (Jul 24, 2017)

That sounds like it would be _enormously_ expensive. Sailing ships aren't something that come off an assembly line, and aside from the sorry bastards who would draw "bait" duty, an entire ship going down - even a small one capable of long sea voyages - every time a predator attacked does not seem even remotely economical.


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## arboriad (Jul 24, 2017)

Drakevarg said:


> That sounds like it would be _enormously_ expensive. Sailing ships aren't something that come off an assembly line, and aside from the sorry bastards who would draw "bait" duty, an entire ship going down - even a small one capable of long sea voyages - every time a predator attacked does not seem even remotely economical.


I figured. 

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## Creed (Jul 25, 2017)

Fifthview has some great ideas! Rolling off of them, using large glass decorations/prisms could potentially be used to divert sunlight directly below a ship. This could erase the silhouette, or potentially make the ship seem like a second sun from below.

This won't work if your sea monster is using other methods of navigation besides sight (like a massive hammerhead shark, yikes). Not sure how that would be diverted.

An alternative could be the production of noise, if there are no other options. Some contraption on board that generates a lot of noise could confuse or actually hurt certain sea creatures, like dolphins, or a sea monster that uses echolocation. Otherwise, sailors could grab pots and pans and attempt to make a racket large enough to dissuade the megafauna.

In one of my WIPs the mariners of the world have to watch out for serpent people and the Great Serpents. Some are lucky enough to have a mage on board that specializes in the manipulation of sound and vibration. Others mount spears on the deck, offer sacrifices, and sail the nights in complete silence.


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## DMThaane (Jul 25, 2017)

I see a lot of suggestions for avoidance and not a lot on simply murdering the damn things. Man didn't get to the top of the food chain by passing up the opportunity to murder any inconvenient predator we came across. Interesting historical side-note, did you know that the first record of the concept of the torpedo was in the late 13th century by Hasan al-Rammah? A fascinating man, also listed a lot of gunpowder recipes. This isn't strictly relevant but it does show how inventive we are as a species.

The simplest devices would be lures that were designed, painted, or scented to attract creatures and give other ships warning. The ships could then respond with other defensive measures. More violent plays on the 'lure' idea could be a soft-shelled device like a large inflated animal bladder containing a spiked ball, something like a nastier caltrop, that would tear up the insides of the creature. A cruder method is to simply stuff an animal carcass with sharp objects or poison said carcass. Certain chemicals could also be used, such as lye. Other devices could use gunpowder, incendiaries, or chemical reactions triggered by fuses. The basic idea is that if a creature is known for eating things you attack it through its stomach.

To throw an idea out there, you could have a floating device constructed of wood or iron and covered with animal hides, tethered to a vessel by rope. The device would be scented with animal meat and the underside would be painted with bioluminescence harvested from reefs or underwater caves. When grabbed or, better yet, eaten whole by a megafauna the rope would be pulled taught and snap, triggering the fuse to the explosive charge and blowing up at least a portion of the creature. Pressure waves can be highly dangerous in water so that alone could kill the thing but at the very least you've mangled a tentacle.

Now this is just one off the cuff suggestion but it's an example of how you can combine historical technology and concepts with some fantasy and a little ruthlessness to create something that at least sounds like it could work and while this is a high-tech solution plenty of more primitive variants on the same concept are viable. And these megafauna sea mines are only one solution to the problem. Humans would likely develop an impressive variety and test them until at least something went extinct.


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## Drakevarg (Jul 26, 2017)

DMThaane said:


> -snip-



Interesting ideas. I'd note that for my setting at least though, one of the themes is that humanity is pointedly *not* at the top of the food chain. Near it, sure, but the food chain is scaled up in general and there are enough apex predators that for some of them the _only_ leg up humans have on them is numbers, even with the consideration of technology. In this scenario eat least, you'd run out of ships before you ran out of predators who might try eating them.

More broadly relevant though, is the observation that these traps are by nature single-use. Once something bites into the decoy or predator mine and pays for it, you're left without a defense for the rest of the voyage. Carrying extras means less cargo space for other essentials. Worse still once you reach the gunpowder age and you're left with cargo that not only explodes, it's deliberately designed to do so when tampered with.

While the idea of painful if not outright lethal dissuasion is a perfectly valid approach - my own initial suggestion involved a spiked hull or other such methods of maiming biters - I think that a separate device dangled near the ship is inherently problematic for the simple reason that if a predator needs to tear it in half to tell it's dangerous then you're going to lose the device the first time something big gets curious. And at least in the case of my setting you'd only be able to hope to get wherever you're going before another one investigates, not that you'd eventually kill every big thing in the water.


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## ink. (Jul 26, 2017)

A small contribution but have you ever heard why the Great White Shark is grey on the top and white on the bottom? 

One of the leading theories is that it's because if you're prey and swimming above the shark (they usually attack from beneath) then you're much less likely to notice it against the backdrop of the dark blue of the deep if it's got a dark back itself. Conversely, if you're swimming beneath the shark and look upwards it's much harder to see it against the sunlight if it's underbelly is white. 

So, a potential solution might just be to paint the hull a brighter shade of white to look like dappled sunlight. Maybe not the most high-brow solution, and by no means foolproof, but it may help. 

Edit: Just read all of the replies and this has already been mentioned.

Of course this depends on the relative intelligence of your megafauna. Fish don't see the shark above them but humans certainly do. Are these creatures closer to fish or to humans in intelligence?


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## Drakevarg (Jul 26, 2017)

ink. said:


> Of course this depends on the relative intelligence of your megafauna. Fish don't see the shark above them but humans certainly do. Are these creatures closer to fish or to humans in intelligence?



There are examples along the whole spectrum, most likely. Some - like megalodons - are literally big toothy fish, while others (zeuglodons, for example) might be closer to dolphin intelligence.


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## Petrichor (Jul 26, 2017)

If the evolution of megafauna in your ocean is that varied what about the flora that could be utilized as dissuasion tactics? Oceanic and land based. Like for some of your medium sized jumpers that try to snag negligent sailors from the edges of ships/outer riggings, some kind of sling shot mechanism for farther trajectory/not explosive like concussive grenades, but more like large  paintballs made up of nauseatingly pungent flora mash-ups to seriously mess with creature olfactory senses/tastebuds as a deterrent. 

If there are any kind of hunters, that are insane enough to hunt oceanic megafauna for sport because adrenaline junkies are honestly prevalent, make an expensive trade market for items that are collected from those ventures. Sealed barrels of blood and anticoagulant(plant matter) from some of the largest, so that if there are sightings of incoming creatures, the kinds that like to break surface with dorsal fins of spines and webbing, dump the barrel contents in the water to spook them. It works for making great white sharks panic, dive deep and flee when they smell blood of their own species in the water which is a sign of a bigger predator. 

Also, with the way that salinity meets between oceans you could have a season like our Ill Nino except that theirs widens the breach path between bodies of water and the brackish salinities are jarring to a large portion of ocean predators essentially creating aquatic "Bering land bridges" that would offer more safety for traversing waterways than normal.


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## DMThaane (Jul 27, 2017)

Drakevarg said:


> While the idea of painful if not outright lethal dissuasion is a perfectly valid approach - my own initial suggestion involved a spiked hull or other such methods of maiming biters - I think that a separate device dangled near the ship is inherently problematic for the simple reason that if a predator needs to tear it in half to tell it's dangerous then you're going to lose the device the first time something big gets curious. And at least in the case of my setting you'd only be able to hope to get wherever you're going before another one investigates, not that you'd eventually kill every big thing in the water.



By dint of logic this would appear to undermine the passive defence of spiked hulls since a creature needs to attack you to realise attacking you is a bad idea and by that point it may have already damaged your hull. Considering that the spikes will also create drag, leave you more vulnerable to reefs and shallows, and basically make beaching impossible they may cause as many problems as they solve. Also smart krakens may well learn to just snag the mast and yank the whole ship over so that's a very good reason to either kill them or keep them away entirely. Cephalopod intelligence could actually be the bane of your people's existence whatever solution you employ.

Both solutions leave you vulnerable to attrition and lesson your ship's ability to operate, albeit with different trade-offs. From a story perspective this can actually be useful to generate tension but if what you want is the have megafauna, have ocean travel, and want the ocean travel to function without always worrying about monster attacks then you'll want something more elegant. Some people have suggested scenting the ship but if your oceans contain a variety of monsters than a substance that offends one (particularly blood) could attract another. Some magic device that continuously pumps an electrical charge into the water could work if powerful but may actually attract them if too weak. Something like the Byzantine fire siphōn could be used to pump a caustic or irritating substance into the water, although with a need to carry supplies of the substance. Without just going 'full wizard' it really is a game of trade-offs.

Although while on the subject of interesting historical solutions to unique problems you should really check out the Korean 'turtle ship' or 'Geobukseon' for inspiration on something a little more armoured without going full ironclad. I'm not sure how well they'd do on open ocean but they already play into the spikes idea and they're a pretty good starting point to work from, especially if your world isn't just lifting European styles.


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## Drakevarg (Jul 27, 2017)

Good points, even if I'm not quite sure how one would adapt a Geobukseon to protect the lower portion of the ship. I will note that the main difference between the decoy trap and hull spikes is that the entire point of the decoy is to entice predators to bite it and not the ship, at which point they pay for it; whereas with a spiked hull the point would be akin to a puffer fish or a porcupine - to make it visually apparent from the get-go that the ship is unsuitable for biting, and to further dissuade creatures that try anyway.

I think my main takeaway from this discussion though, is that people would likely try a wide variety of techniques with varying degrees of success across history and cultures rather than any one reliable technique used by pretty much everyone.


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## DMThaane (Jul 27, 2017)

Drakevarg said:


> Good points, even if I'm not quite sure how one would adapt a Geobukseon to protect the lower portion of the ship. I will note that the main difference between the decoy trap and hull spikes is that the entire point of the decoy is to entice predators to bite it and not the ship, at which point they pay for it; whereas with a spiked hull the point would be akin to a puffer fish or a porcupine - to make it visually apparent from the get-go that the ship is unsuitable for biting, and to further dissuade creatures that try anyway.
> 
> I think my main takeaway from this discussion though, is that people would likely try a wide variety of techniques with varying degrees of success across history and cultures rather than any one reliable technique used by pretty much everyone.



Actually, you raise a good point with the puffer fish that I hadn't considered. If you had the spikes be extendible so they could be pushed out when needed and then withdrawn into slots or casings within the ship you could extend them to maximum length when creatures were sighted and then pull them back in when wanting speed or facing reefs or shallow waters. Engineered properly this could even allow for cleaning and repair to keep them functional on longer or more difficult voyages. Spare spikes could be kept with a minimum of wasted storage allowing replacement should any creature get too curious and this system would allow you to extend them further than if they were fixed, reducing the chance anything would come into contact with the hull. You could even have different locking points so you'd extend them to quarter if feeling nervous or out to full if a threat is actually seen.

As for the turtle ships, their anti-boarding defences (or an adaptation of them) could prove useful should anything try to attack the decks (sea serpents or krakens commonly do this in fiction but it might not be common in your world) and they have a decent layout for a more defensive, less broadside focused ship.

And yes, I think there'd be a lot of eulogies in your world contain some variation of the phrase 'although he had a brilliant idea it didn't quite work out in practice.'


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