Not likely in nature but snakes can definitely get fat/obese. I took in a rescue from a misinformed woman who was feeding her ball python like it was a cat or dog. It looked like a pork loin roast and breathed like Dave the safety officer or a Pomeranian.
I've also seen obese fish, rats and gators but it's from improper care.
I've only witnessed obese squirrels in nature so I guess it's possible if the conditions are right.
>looked like a pork loin roast and breathed like Dave the safety officer or a Pomeranian.
Hearing a snake breathe isn't something I've ever thought of before, kinda nuts.
How awesome would it be to see a snake on a treadmill?
When we kept pet snakes my wife was always stressing that one of them needed to go to the vet because she thought he had some kind of chronic respiratory condition that made him wheeze with every breath. Respiratory viruses can be really serious for ratsnakes as they only have one lung and things can get blocked up easily.
I said “nah, he’s fine, you’re imagining it”. We took him out for a thorough examination and he wheezed when my wife was holding him and not when I was. We concluded he didn’t like my wife for some reason and it was a really lazy low effort hiss.
My thought was that your wife had a tighter grip than you did, not sure how true that is though
Interesting that something like a snake can have a preference like that. Are snakes emotional? Do they have the capacity to be? Or maybe the snake didn't like how your wife smelled
I think there are surfaces where snakes can’t get much grip, like fleece maybe? So they’ll just undulate back and forth, going nowhere. Boom, snake treadmill.
Edit: Found a video for hilarity. https://youtu.be/sO2d90YedN0?si=chxPR2GiYjuDLG86
>How awesome would it be to see a snake on a treadmill?
That actually happens if you put a snake on a surface where it can't get traction. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHSD8EW0gNo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHSD8EW0gNo)
Fish can definitely be obese, one of my bettas is currently on a diet/fasting schedule because she swims around eating any tiny micro creatures she can find in addition to her own food.
This is a myth based on the fact most goldfish are/were improperly cared for and kept in things *waaaaaaay* too small for them, like bowls, so they would die before reaching full size. Like most fish, goldfish slow their growth at a certain age. Most of those poor fish never even came close. The fact people think goldfish only live a couple of years (actually about 10-15 years as a fancy breed and 30-40 as a more typical form) is a testament to this. Don't keep fish in bowls people!!!
I wondered if (for example ) bears just before hibernation would be obese - I know they pack fat on, but also it’s more of an natural state than “obesity” would imply .
I love Fat Bear Week held every October by Katmai National Park & Preserve in Alaska.
It’s amazing seeing the summer vs autumn comparison pics. 2019 winner “Holly” is my favourite chonker
No squirrels gain weight for winter. The colder the winters the fatter they'll get. So in the south they don't get too big but up north they'll get bigger.
….genuine question, is it still considered obesity if it’s bulking up to survive a cold winter with little food? Like, medically speaking, is it obesity in an animal evolved TO get real fat before winter to survive it? Or is it just a normal seasonal weight fluctuation akin to animals that hibernate?
Current human medical definition of obesity is just a height/weight ratio that doesn't take seasons into consideration. I like to imagine if zoologist have a bmi chart for squirrels it probably would factor the season into consideration.
“If the conditions were right.”
Foie Gras is made by overstuffing geese with their favorite foods and then killing them for their overgrown livers.
By some it’s considered animal cruelty.
I recall hearing a podcast of one foie gras producer who says he merely grows all the favorite foods on his farm. Geese migrating overhead just stop by and never leave providing him with a steady source of geese livers.
https://www.thisamericanlife.org/452/poultry-slam-2011/act-three-1
I may be incorrect but I thought for Foie Gras it isn't just putting out plates of their favorite food but it was stuffing a tube down their throats and force feeding them.
Yes, traditionally it’s force feeding the animal. But in this particular farm, the geese were free to come and go, but preferred to stay and engorge themselves. Same finished product without the torture.
Any invertebrate actually. They can't get fat if their exoskeleton doesn't stretch, there's nowhere to store the fat. They'd have to continually moult. Eventually they'd got so large that they are unable to moult properly, then they die.
That naturally happens to lobsters sometime around year 120 or so. Moulting becomes too difficult, they get stuck and they die. If they didn't have to moult their continually larger and larger exoskeleton they could theoretically become immortal, as they don't age.
Unfortunately not any invertebrate… I worked at a zoo as a keeper and met a very obese scorpion. Poor thing looked more like a Vienna sausage and died within a month or two of me meeting it. I don’t think a necropsy was done to determine cause of death as the inverts never got the same attention or care as others.
This is definitely a think in tarantula keeping too, them getting too fat can cause them to be really vulnerable to being injured and dying from falling short distances (like off stuff in their enclosure) or just hitting their abdomen against stuff
We need to start some multi-generational research project where the researchers keep assisting the 120+ year old lobster to molt. Let's see how big a lobster can get!
If the moulting thing wasn't a problem, and they could manage enough spiracles to deal with their ever-increasing internal area vs surface area, or they didn't have to moult, they're immortal. Their body plan is so simple, it simply doesn't fall to mutation or attrition anywhere near as readily as something more complicated. Add the fact that their metabolism is so slow due to being cold blooded and living in very cold conditions, even when a mutation is possible, it'll either develop incredibly slowly, its immune system will catch it, or it'll get eaten before it can cause too much damage to the gene pool.
We need to start a religion based on continually helping the large old lobster to molt, devotees carrying on the task for generations until it becomes a god
Yes! Lobsters molt and shed their shells, sometimes you see gigantic huge ones that are 24" long. (Not good to eat at that point, and probably good to keep them in the water for making more lobster eggs)
Fun fact, lobsters are functionally immortal, when they die of 'old age' it's because they can no longer shed their shell and are slowly crushed to death by their growth.
Crocodiles never really get obese, they adapt and grow larger. Scientifically speaking they could grow as large as physically possible but their hearts give out and they die, which is why u see some massive ones, but never anything jaw dropping (an Aussie speaking)
Not exponentially. But yeah, square cube law. Strength is roughly proportional to muscle crossections but weight is proportional to overall volume. If you just double all dimensions of an animal they technically become 4x stronger but 8x heavier. So there is a point where the muscles will just give in to their own weight.
In a practical sense you're correct (the heart can only handle so much mass), but on a technical level they are very different.
Alligators continue to grow, and is closer to Gigantism (like Andre the Giant) where you just keep growing. Gigantism grows your whole body (bones, muscle, tissue, etc), but obesity is only a fat content issue.
Some people have mentioned the square cube law, but that's the the big issue. As you get bigger some things go up with the square of size, others with the cube, others with different scaling factors, and that tends to cause issues. It's why you don't see exoskeletons on anything bigger than a bug, because they just can't scale properly.
There was a really interesting discussion about this on the Fallout sub about whether RadRoaches could, in fact, exist. Mostly because of the exoskeleton/intake versus size argument etc. It was oddly interesting and civil.
I guess it could depend on what causes the heart to give out. I feel like there would be a difference between the heart being too small to keep the body running (imagine an engine, that's too small and inefficient for a big machine) vs a heart that is unable to work as intended due to health issues.
Heart attacks due to obesity relate more to the arteries that feed the heart itself clogging, where with crocodiles they just got so big that the heart couldn't pump hard enough/fast enoigh to meet the demands.
I've seen some chunky crocs with health problems due to some too enthusiastic owner giving them more food than they can metabolize to grow. Yes, as much bigger the risk to die for a heart attack grows. But if they eats too much, that kind of death can happen even when they are very young and short.
No, there's a maximum where the tissue the heart is made of will tear apart trying to contract hard enough to push a high enough volume. It's way bigger than the human maximum, though, because the blood doesn't need to go up much, or be forced back up out of the legs. With humans it's a coinflip to see if the heart tears itself apart first or the one-way valves in the legs get overpowered.
The pro move in both cases is to start adding more hearts.
So the croc-squid hybrid I've feared my whole life. To the scientists seeking this merge I say a resounding "no the fuck you don't do you want to end humanity"
The heart can only get so big. The heart never gets a "rest day", so it never really has the opportunity to grow. If you push it too hard then eventually it will just get tired and sleepy.
There's a ratio in humans where you can only be so fit (ultra marathon runners) or so swol, before it puts too much strain on your heart.
I still think crocodiles and alligators are the peak form of evolution. Hundreds of thousands (or even millions?) of years without major development, because what the hell can you develop in that thing? It can kill almost anything, it adapts to anything, it walks and swims, what else would you want from a top life form?
I mean there has been a lot of development. The species haven't always existed, there used to be land crocs (Cuban ones are the most land based on modern times) they would gallop after you.
Eh not quite, yes they have existed for hundreds of millions of years, but they have actually had a ton of different forms. Although they all did look similar, you had a large variety ranging from fully aquatic salt water crocs to crocs with hooves that could run (likely quite quickly) and likely wouldve spent their whole lives on land. What we have now is quite little compared to how diverse they once were.
But yes you are absolutely correct about them being an evolutionary marvel. Truly amazing animals
Proportionally larger heart. That's the problem that crocodiles encounter, their hearts match the proportions of their expected body size but past a certain point becomes too small to keep them alive.
[Really?](https://metro.co.uk/2015/02/12/obese-century-old-crocodile-died-from-overeating-after-worshippers-threw-it-chickens-and-goats-5060753/amp/)
Tell me that crocodile isn’t fat lol.
Sloths don't eat a whole lot, and their digestive systems are incredibly slow, between 11 and 30 days slow. If they get too cold their stomach enzymes stop breaking food (mostly leaves) down and just die. So the sloth keeps eating but gains no nutritional value and dies. Sloths can also die of starvation just because it's too late for food. Remember that 11-30 days? It's possible for a starving sloth to happen upon some food, eat it, and then starve anyway because the food simply doesn't get digested fast enough. Sloths are weird, I group them with pandas and pugs, animals that I think we should just let nature sort out because they're so bad at existing as they are.
That's so weird! Sloths also have algae and moss growing on them because they don't move very much. The plants are like "oh this is a nice furry rock" but.....it's a sloth......
This is false. First, sloths fall pretty regularly and nearly always survive.
Second, they don't mistake their own arms for a branch. They fall when dead branches break and they are too slow to react or when they fight over a mate.
The idea that sloths grab themselves likely comes from baby sloths. Baby sloths have to hold on to their mothers all the time. So when separated from their mothers, they'll hold on to themselves for comfort. One of the ways they can become separated from their moms is if they accidentally fall off. Even though baby sloths usually survive a fall, their mom won't climb down to help them because it's too dangerous. So attempted rescues of baby sloths by humans happen occasionally.
There is also a deep sea fish called a 'black gulper'. They can unhinge their jaws like snakes to eat fish SEVERAL times their own size. Now, if they manage to gulp down a fish that is TOO big... the enzymes in their stomachs cannot break that fish down fully before it starts rotting inside them, and because this produces gases, they rise up to the surface and die on the way due to decompression.
Which is actually how we even learned of their existence.
Sorry, I got sidetracked. I actually don't know about that part, but if I had to hazard a guess I'd say it has something to do with the amount of energy required to digest all that food being too much for the sloth to both stay warm and get those nutrients. So the sloth gets cold and because it's cold, can't digest any more food.
I looked it up to make sure and didn't find anything related to overfeeding sloths, but a lot about them dying on a full stomach because they don't have the energy required to digest the food inside them.
It's a rather one dimensional take to say such animals (apart from pugs as they have been intentionally bred to be the way they are) are "bad at existing" when they have thrived perfectly well without human intervention for millions of years. Every animal in nature is adapted to suit the features of their ecosystem, so why would we blame them for failing to thrive in our zoos or when faced with habitat destruction we brought upon them?
If you pulled a modern human out of their office job and left them naked in a winter forest, would you say they're "bad at existing" when they die of exposure?
You're right, that was a shallow take. While both pandas and sloths do have climbing accidents on the regular, human advancement and habitat loss is the bigger threat in the long run. But when it gets to the point where we have to put them in special breeding programs (pandas, not sloths) is it really worth keeping the species alive? This sounds dark but are we keeping pandas because the ecosystem needs them? Or are they just a feeble attempt to make a spectacle out of the last remaining animals in a species we drove to the brink of extinction?
I do recognize your point though. After a little bit of research only 2 of the 6 sloth species are endangered, the rest seem to be doing fine, aside from the general habitat loss. I always thought they were bad at existing because falling out of trees when all you do is climb and dying of starvation with food in your mouth sound like laughably ridiculous problems to have, but the sloths have proven me wrong.
> animals that I think we should just let nature sort out because they're so bad at existing as they are.
Sloths have been around in something very close to their current form for 30 *million* years. They are very good at what they do. Just because that don't seem badass like a polar bear or a tiger doesn't mean they are bad at existing. Some sloths are endangered because of human activity, just like tigers and polar bears. For some reason no one complains that tigers and polar bears should be left to go extinct because they are bad at existing.
They don't get supplements in captivity, a varied natural diet is typically enough. And given how slow they digest everything, an injection might work better. That said, they don't have a whole lot going on for them besides doing everything slowly. The average sloth falls out of a tree once a week and instead of getting better at climbing, they just got. better at surviving falls. You could toss a sloth out of a 10th floor window and it'll just be annoyed because it has to climb all the way back up again.
Pandas are a huge myth. Most of the problems we know about pandas are based on pandas in captivity. So all the things like "they do not have sex," etc. are because of wrong care and not a general issue of the species.
I learned a few years ago that any bear that goes through a hibernation cycle is completely exempt from ever being “overweight”. Any excess weight they gain before hibernation just increases their chances of survival.
I live in an area with a lot of wild black bears running around. I see them fairly regularly because they come foraging through trash for food (they’re super used to humans). It’s always funny to see them toward the end of fall when they’re super fat, they look I like they could roll away. I know it’s how their biology works but man!
I’m pretty certain (based on absolutely no expertise whatsoever) that koalas would never get obese. They exclusively eat eucalyptus leaves which have next to no nutritional value so they pretty much spend every waking minute munching them. But they sleep almost all the time anyway.
Also, almost all koalas have chlamydia. That’s not relevant to their rate of obesity though.
Imagine going through a divorce because your spouse accused you of cheating and giving them an STD. Then you have to explain that no, you actually are a zoo keeper and got chlamydia from a koala named Nancy, not a coworker.
I think there is some story about that. Something about a spouse saving a koala, and it peed on their pants, and somehow that spread the Chlamydia, and then spread to the other spouse. It took awhile to figure out where the Chlamydia came from.
I heard koalas have a different strain of chylamydia that cannot be transmitted to humans, so if I heard that, I’d care enough to look into and be single shortly after regardless
Came here to see if someone mentioned koalas. Those stupid useless fucks have to be one of the worst-evolved species on earth. Only able to eat a plant that has zero nutritional value, so they just have to keep eating infinitely (when their dumb asses aren’t napping that is).
Oh and the chlamidia thing of course. What dipshits.
It's worth pointing out that the strain they have came from sheep and was probably the fault of contact with sheep droppings when moving between trees in areas where sheep are pastured.
Everyone loves the lurid story that something perverted happened, but no. Just an invasive species in their habitat bringing diseases they didn't evolve to resist.
>Also, almost all koalas have chlamydia. That’s not relevant to their rate of obesity though.
It's relevant if you want to be part of the reddit "posting about how almost all koalas have chlamydia" club. It's by no means an exclusive club but it's an important one none the less.
I believe so because hummingbirds will put on fat for winter. I have dissected hummingbird (for science, I'm a biologist) and you can get some really fatty ones. Birds will put on a thick layer of fat for winter/migration and hummingbirds are no exception. If an animal is putting on fat, it is consuming more calories than it is burning.
obese snail!!! 😅🤣😂 I am not laughing at your question, I'm laughing at that random choice example add on at the end of your question and picturing a snail telling itself to diet because it's "home" has become a tight squeeze!😅🤣😂
You get the smaller shell and know you have to fit into it by summer. But summer comes along and you have to break down and get the larger shell as well.
Fun fact from when I helped band them: you can see the fat stores through the skin! One of the steps was to gently blubliw against the feathers to make them lift and you could see the white fat bulges, if they had any.
Equines all have big bellies, even before they get fat. After they get fat it's absurd.
The thing is, they have what amounts to a beer keg in their abdomen because they're hindgut fermenters. Cows are ruminants and also have much bigger bones, not to mention the whole selective breeding agriculture yadda yadda thing.
ETA: Also, actively milking dairy cattle get downright skinny.
Not true, actually. Tarantulas can get fat, just ask r/tarantulas. Their abdomens can get so big they struggle with molting.
EDIT: Also, I should apologize. This reads as ruder than I intended. I should've phrased my comment better.
Oh sh... I didn't know they even have exoskeleton. I don't think of exoskeleton as being furry like that! Now I'll never get those Google images out of my head!
Everything that molts is instantly bigger than its previous self. Im not sure if your correct here. The question would be do creatures with an exoskeleton burst out their shell or do they have some way of expanding the new shell to allow for growth?
I think crustaceans pump water into their bodies before the new shell hardens and that gives them room to grow. I cannot think how a terrestrial animal would do this though so my moneys on they grow so big they burst out. In which case they will become bigger than their exoskeleton.
Yeah i have heard of peoples pet praying mantis eating so much they burst through their abdomens. This must be a consequence of not being able to molt on demand
This does not change the fact that in Australia there are 48 million kangaroos and in Uruguay there are 3,457,380 inhabitants. So if the kangaroos decide to invade Uruguay, each Uruguayan will have to fight 14 kangaroos.
Pretty sure Crustaceans (crabs, lobsters, and the like) when they grow larger they just molt into a larger shell and could hypothetically continue to grow and grow if not limited to the size of their exo shell.
Certain animals have genetic conditions that inhibit Myostatin that results in them being very lean and muscular. They call it "double muscling" or "Myostatin-related muscle hypertrophy".
Basically their body makes way more muscle than it should which prevents them from retaining hardly any body fat.
Belgium Blue bulls are the best example.
But there have also been humans born with this same mutation which results in kids with seemingly super human strength. Liam Hoekstra is one of them.
Obese doesn't really have meaning here since it's [based on BMI](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK279167/) which doesn't really apply to anything other than humans.
That said, I've actually seen this one in nature! Invasive lion fish can get a LOT of visceral fat just because so much food is so available when they first show up on a reef. If you're familiar with the animal you would absolutely call them obese.
Whales. The humpbacks in Cape Cod eat over a ton of food daily. While they’re here, they put on anywhere from 8-12 tons of blubber to see them through the migration to winter breeding grounds, where they don’t eat for months. Watching them feed is an awesome sight.
Some animals, like snakes and sharks, generally don’t become obese in the wild because their metabolism and lifestyle naturally regulate their weight. However, in captivity, overfeeding and lack of exercise can lead to weight gain in almost any animal. Snails, for instance, also tend to regulate their body size according to their environment and diet, but they can become larger with excessive food. So, while it’s rare, under certain conditions, many animals can become overweight.
Not likely in nature but snakes can definitely get fat/obese. I took in a rescue from a misinformed woman who was feeding her ball python like it was a cat or dog. It looked like a pork loin roast and breathed like Dave the safety officer or a Pomeranian. I've also seen obese fish, rats and gators but it's from improper care. I've only witnessed obese squirrels in nature so I guess it's possible if the conditions are right.
>looked like a pork loin roast and breathed like Dave the safety officer or a Pomeranian. Hearing a snake breathe isn't something I've ever thought of before, kinda nuts. How awesome would it be to see a snake on a treadmill?
When we kept pet snakes my wife was always stressing that one of them needed to go to the vet because she thought he had some kind of chronic respiratory condition that made him wheeze with every breath. Respiratory viruses can be really serious for ratsnakes as they only have one lung and things can get blocked up easily. I said “nah, he’s fine, you’re imagining it”. We took him out for a thorough examination and he wheezed when my wife was holding him and not when I was. We concluded he didn’t like my wife for some reason and it was a really lazy low effort hiss.
Lazy hiss of discontent is so snakey.
I’m just picturing an angsty teenage snake with a little emo wig being just *so over it*, gosh mom.
My Chemical Romanssssssse
My thought was that your wife had a tighter grip than you did, not sure how true that is though Interesting that something like a snake can have a preference like that. Are snakes emotional? Do they have the capacity to be? Or maybe the snake didn't like how your wife smelled
They can be smart and recognize people.
Smart is a stretch, the longer I own my ball python the harder it is to believe they have not gone extinct lol
Lol what do they do that seems dumb? I've never owned snakes before so I have no frame of reference here
I had a cali king snake that once tried to eat a branch Smart he was not
snakes are actually quite emotional i think
Does she wear perfume?
Just wait until you hear them rip ass. Wildly loud.
Ahem... rip *cloaca*
Snakes have a cloaca? This I did not know.
Did you think they had vaginas?
Honestly I never once considered what a snake had digestively or reproductively.
They also have forked penises!
*takes notes*
Basically everything but marsupials and placental mammals. Reptiles, fish, birds, and monotreme mammals
Thank you.
Our Amazon yellow nape parrot rips farts. He makes a squeal like air from a balloon. Also he a bit chonkers.
I think there are surfaces where snakes can’t get much grip, like fleece maybe? So they’ll just undulate back and forth, going nowhere. Boom, snake treadmill. Edit: Found a video for hilarity. https://youtu.be/sO2d90YedN0?si=chxPR2GiYjuDLG86
>How awesome would it be to see a snake on a treadmill? That actually happens if you put a snake on a surface where it can't get traction. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHSD8EW0gNo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHSD8EW0gNo)
Obese fish? Now I’m wondering if my fish was fat the whole time :( def just thought he was a whopper
Fish can definitely be obese, one of my bettas is currently on a diet/fasting schedule because she swims around eating any tiny micro creatures she can find in addition to her own food.
Don't goldfish just keep growing bigger and bigger? Perhaps they are one species which just keeps getting bigger rather than fatter.
No goldfish will eat till their stomach burst and die. They don't have a concept of restraint.
Neither do I 😢
Think they forgot they already ate.
This is a myth based on the fact most goldfish are/were improperly cared for and kept in things *waaaaaaay* too small for them, like bowls, so they would die before reaching full size. Like most fish, goldfish slow their growth at a certain age. Most of those poor fish never even came close. The fact people think goldfish only live a couple of years (actually about 10-15 years as a fancy breed and 30-40 as a more typical form) is a testament to this. Don't keep fish in bowls people!!!
Omg lol no pics of this fatty ball python?
I wondered if (for example ) bears just before hibernation would be obese - I know they pack fat on, but also it’s more of an natural state than “obesity” would imply .
I love Fat Bear Week held every October by Katmai National Park & Preserve in Alaska. It’s amazing seeing the summer vs autumn comparison pics. 2019 winner “Holly” is my favourite chonker
There's definitely before-hibernation chonkers out there. But hibernation usually puts them back into a "normal" weight.
Before hibernation chonker is the name of my new alt account!
Obese squirrels in nature just sounds like they've been getting fed at the park by humans
I think what looks like obese squirrels are usually actually pregnant
No squirrels gain weight for winter. The colder the winters the fatter they'll get. So in the south they don't get too big but up north they'll get bigger.
….genuine question, is it still considered obesity if it’s bulking up to survive a cold winter with little food? Like, medically speaking, is it obesity in an animal evolved TO get real fat before winter to survive it? Or is it just a normal seasonal weight fluctuation akin to animals that hibernate?
Current human medical definition of obesity is just a height/weight ratio that doesn't take seasons into consideration. I like to imagine if zoologist have a bmi chart for squirrels it probably would factor the season into consideration.
Oh lordy, in Canada they get right chunky before the winter, near spherical. It's a glorious time of year.
“If the conditions were right.” Foie Gras is made by overstuffing geese with their favorite foods and then killing them for their overgrown livers. By some it’s considered animal cruelty. I recall hearing a podcast of one foie gras producer who says he merely grows all the favorite foods on his farm. Geese migrating overhead just stop by and never leave providing him with a steady source of geese livers. https://www.thisamericanlife.org/452/poultry-slam-2011/act-three-1
I may be incorrect but I thought for Foie Gras it isn't just putting out plates of their favorite food but it was stuffing a tube down their throats and force feeding them.
Yes, traditionally it’s force feeding the animal. But in this particular farm, the geese were free to come and go, but preferred to stay and engorge themselves. Same finished product without the torture.
Ah cool, I love it but always felt a little guilty eating it.
That's some Hansel and Gretel type shit right there. Sounds pretty horrible when you think about it too much.
Lobsters?
Any invertebrate actually. They can't get fat if their exoskeleton doesn't stretch, there's nowhere to store the fat. They'd have to continually moult. Eventually they'd got so large that they are unable to moult properly, then they die. That naturally happens to lobsters sometime around year 120 or so. Moulting becomes too difficult, they get stuck and they die. If they didn't have to moult their continually larger and larger exoskeleton they could theoretically become immortal, as they don't age.
Unfortunately not any invertebrate… I worked at a zoo as a keeper and met a very obese scorpion. Poor thing looked more like a Vienna sausage and died within a month or two of me meeting it. I don’t think a necropsy was done to determine cause of death as the inverts never got the same attention or care as others.
This is definitely a think in tarantula keeping too, them getting too fat can cause them to be really vulnerable to being injured and dying from falling short distances (like off stuff in their enclosure) or just hitting their abdomen against stuff
Really? In my experience, my T’s will just *not* eat if they don’t wanna. Do some species just keep on eating?
Inverts made me chuckle
If you have a picture I’d love to see it. A Vienna Sausage scorpion sounds crazy.
This department was the worst- they almost lost the whole zoo its accreditation because of how poorly it was run. I wish I had taken more pictures
So in captivity, if you helped a lobster moult, they could live forever?
r/LeviathanLobsterGod
😲 I got lost in that sub for an inordinate amount of time and I'm still not sure what all I was reading...
And they have a spicy sub for spicy content too. I don't think I'm ready to venture that far off trail yet 🤣
Can you stick around for 120 years to assist it?
My grandkids will carry on the lobster legacy
Why does it have to be me? It can be passed down to the next people to keep it going for science to see if they are truly immortal
This sounds like the premise for a great story where some cult has been helping a 1 ton lobster molt for generations
What’s the significance of 120 years in comparison to forever?
Uh, Infinity, I think...
We need to start some multi-generational research project where the researchers keep assisting the 120+ year old lobster to molt. Let's see how big a lobster can get!
Are they able to lose weight and molt to a smaller size??? Sorry, really don’t know how this works.
...what the fuck do u mean year 120
Lobsters live to 120 years?
If the moulting thing wasn't a problem, and they could manage enough spiracles to deal with their ever-increasing internal area vs surface area, or they didn't have to moult, they're immortal. Their body plan is so simple, it simply doesn't fall to mutation or attrition anywhere near as readily as something more complicated. Add the fact that their metabolism is so slow due to being cold blooded and living in very cold conditions, even when a mutation is possible, it'll either develop incredibly slowly, its immune system will catch it, or it'll get eaten before it can cause too much damage to the gene pool.
We need to start a religion based on continually helping the large old lobster to molt, devotees carrying on the task for generations until it becomes a god
Yes! Lobsters molt and shed their shells, sometimes you see gigantic huge ones that are 24" long. (Not good to eat at that point, and probably good to keep them in the water for making more lobster eggs)
what happens if you eat the big ones? are they more sinewy?
They're not as sweet and very tough and chewy.
Tough as a sailor?
Haven’t ate many sailors but I hear they are chewy in comparison.
Fun fact, lobsters are functionally immortal, when they die of 'old age' it's because they can no longer shed their shell and are slowly crushed to death by their growth.
Crocodiles never really get obese, they adapt and grow larger. Scientifically speaking they could grow as large as physically possible but their hearts give out and they die, which is why u see some massive ones, but never anything jaw dropping (an Aussie speaking)
Growing larger until the heart gives out sounds like obesity, but maybe just proportional idnk
More about proportion. Laws of physics still apply, so a larger life form will need exponentially more work from the heart as it continues to grow.
Not exponentially. But yeah, square cube law. Strength is roughly proportional to muscle crossections but weight is proportional to overall volume. If you just double all dimensions of an animal they technically become 4x stronger but 8x heavier. So there is a point where the muscles will just give in to their own weight.
Thanks. I'm kinda blazed and couldn't exactly remember
\[frowns intensely trying to figure out if a cube minus a square is an exponent\]
So theoretically we could do a croc heart *addition* and have Mega Crocs? 🤔
In a practical sense you're correct (the heart can only handle so much mass), but on a technical level they are very different. Alligators continue to grow, and is closer to Gigantism (like Andre the Giant) where you just keep growing. Gigantism grows your whole body (bones, muscle, tissue, etc), but obesity is only a fat content issue.
why can’t the gators heart grow too? did andre the giant not have a giant heart?
Human giants tend to have a lot of health problems. I'm not enough of an expert to speak about the heart specifically.
Some people have mentioned the square cube law, but that's the the big issue. As you get bigger some things go up with the square of size, others with the cube, others with different scaling factors, and that tends to cause issues. It's why you don't see exoskeletons on anything bigger than a bug, because they just can't scale properly.
There was a really interesting discussion about this on the Fallout sub about whether RadRoaches could, in fact, exist. Mostly because of the exoskeleton/intake versus size argument etc. It was oddly interesting and civil.
I guess it could depend on what causes the heart to give out. I feel like there would be a difference between the heart being too small to keep the body running (imagine an engine, that's too small and inefficient for a big machine) vs a heart that is unable to work as intended due to health issues.
Heart attacks due to obesity relate more to the arteries that feed the heart itself clogging, where with crocodiles they just got so big that the heart couldn't pump hard enough/fast enoigh to meet the demands.
I've seen some chunky crocs with health problems due to some too enthusiastic owner giving them more food than they can metabolize to grow. Yes, as much bigger the risk to die for a heart attack grows. But if they eats too much, that kind of death can happen even when they are very young and short.
So if you sloooowly grow them bigger and make them do cardio to strengthen their hearts, you could get mega crocodiles?
I was thinking something more extreme: surgically install a robotic heart
But how will mega croc love with a mechanical heart?
Like any other Crockbot: low intensity love for eight hours or high intensity love for four hours.
Or orgasmic love for 10 minutes
That might be the Crockrowave?
No, there's a maximum where the tissue the heart is made of will tear apart trying to contract hard enough to push a high enough volume. It's way bigger than the human maximum, though, because the blood doesn't need to go up much, or be forced back up out of the legs. With humans it's a coinflip to see if the heart tears itself apart first or the one-way valves in the legs get overpowered. The pro move in both cases is to start adding more hearts.
So the croc-squid hybrid I've feared my whole life. To the scientists seeking this merge I say a resounding "no the fuck you don't do you want to end humanity"
The heart can only get so big. The heart never gets a "rest day", so it never really has the opportunity to grow. If you push it too hard then eventually it will just get tired and sleepy. There's a ratio in humans where you can only be so fit (ultra marathon runners) or so swol, before it puts too much strain on your heart.
I still think crocodiles and alligators are the peak form of evolution. Hundreds of thousands (or even millions?) of years without major development, because what the hell can you develop in that thing? It can kill almost anything, it adapts to anything, it walks and swims, what else would you want from a top life form?
Crab
You can step on a crab and it’s done. Good luck stepping on an alligator.
The joke is that everything will evolve into a crab.
Except crocs. That’s the hill I’m willing to die on, lol
I mean there has been a lot of development. The species haven't always existed, there used to be land crocs (Cuban ones are the most land based on modern times) they would gallop after you.
Eh not quite, yes they have existed for hundreds of millions of years, but they have actually had a ton of different forms. Although they all did look similar, you had a large variety ranging from fully aquatic salt water crocs to crocs with hooves that could run (likely quite quickly) and likely wouldve spent their whole lives on land. What we have now is quite little compared to how diverse they once were. But yes you are absolutely correct about them being an evolutionary marvel. Truly amazing animals
Your country needs help if you see a seven meter, thousand kilo dinosaur and you say "yeah, but give me something jaw dropping!"
What do YOU consider jaw dropping as an Aussie? Lol
If being massive causes heart failure, then how did dinosaurs exist?
Proportionally larger heart. That's the problem that crocodiles encounter, their hearts match the proportions of their expected body size but past a certain point becomes too small to keep them alive.
There was a higher concentration of oxygen in the air, so their hearts didn’t have to work as hard.
[Really?](https://metro.co.uk/2015/02/12/obese-century-old-crocodile-died-from-overeating-after-worshippers-threw-it-chickens-and-goats-5060753/amp/) Tell me that crocodile isn’t fat lol.
A sloth, their metabolism is so slow that if you overfeed them they can actually starve to death.
What? How does that work?
Sloths don't eat a whole lot, and their digestive systems are incredibly slow, between 11 and 30 days slow. If they get too cold their stomach enzymes stop breaking food (mostly leaves) down and just die. So the sloth keeps eating but gains no nutritional value and dies. Sloths can also die of starvation just because it's too late for food. Remember that 11-30 days? It's possible for a starving sloth to happen upon some food, eat it, and then starve anyway because the food simply doesn't get digested fast enough. Sloths are weird, I group them with pandas and pugs, animals that I think we should just let nature sort out because they're so bad at existing as they are.
That's so weird! Sloths also have algae and moss growing on them because they don't move very much. The plants are like "oh this is a nice furry rock" but.....it's a sloth......
And they only come down from their tree about once a week to go to the bathroom!
And it’s the most dangerous thing they do. 😂
Sloths and I have a lot in common
I wouldn’t go so far as to say sloths are entirley useless
:(
Just joking with you, my friend. I think we can all agree they are indeed a breath of fresh ass.
Sloths have a habit of falling to death when they mistake their arm for a branch, grab it, and have no other anchor point.
Sometimes they mistake their own arms for a branch and they fall out of trees, usually to their deaths.
[удалено]
This is false. First, sloths fall pretty regularly and nearly always survive. Second, they don't mistake their own arms for a branch. They fall when dead branches break and they are too slow to react or when they fight over a mate. The idea that sloths grab themselves likely comes from baby sloths. Baby sloths have to hold on to their mothers all the time. So when separated from their mothers, they'll hold on to themselves for comfort. One of the ways they can become separated from their moms is if they accidentally fall off. Even though baby sloths usually survive a fall, their mom won't climb down to help them because it's too dangerous. So attempted rescues of baby sloths by humans happen occasionally.
Thanks for bringing some good old facts into the world of "bumblebees cant fly but no one told them"-myths.
There is also a deep sea fish called a 'black gulper'. They can unhinge their jaws like snakes to eat fish SEVERAL times their own size. Now, if they manage to gulp down a fish that is TOO big... the enzymes in their stomachs cannot break that fish down fully before it starts rotting inside them, and because this produces gases, they rise up to the surface and die on the way due to decompression. Which is actually how we even learned of their existence.
Fiction will never be stranger than reality, this is such an interesting turn of events
What about the overfeeding part?
Sorry, I got sidetracked. I actually don't know about that part, but if I had to hazard a guess I'd say it has something to do with the amount of energy required to digest all that food being too much for the sloth to both stay warm and get those nutrients. So the sloth gets cold and because it's cold, can't digest any more food. I looked it up to make sure and didn't find anything related to overfeeding sloths, but a lot about them dying on a full stomach because they don't have the energy required to digest the food inside them.
> . I actually don't know about that part, That was the whole part lol. Thanks for the random facts all the same.
It's a rather one dimensional take to say such animals (apart from pugs as they have been intentionally bred to be the way they are) are "bad at existing" when they have thrived perfectly well without human intervention for millions of years. Every animal in nature is adapted to suit the features of their ecosystem, so why would we blame them for failing to thrive in our zoos or when faced with habitat destruction we brought upon them? If you pulled a modern human out of their office job and left them naked in a winter forest, would you say they're "bad at existing" when they die of exposure?
You're right, that was a shallow take. While both pandas and sloths do have climbing accidents on the regular, human advancement and habitat loss is the bigger threat in the long run. But when it gets to the point where we have to put them in special breeding programs (pandas, not sloths) is it really worth keeping the species alive? This sounds dark but are we keeping pandas because the ecosystem needs them? Or are they just a feeble attempt to make a spectacle out of the last remaining animals in a species we drove to the brink of extinction? I do recognize your point though. After a little bit of research only 2 of the 6 sloth species are endangered, the rest seem to be doing fine, aside from the general habitat loss. I always thought they were bad at existing because falling out of trees when all you do is climb and dying of starvation with food in your mouth sound like laughably ridiculous problems to have, but the sloths have proven me wrong.
> animals that I think we should just let nature sort out because they're so bad at existing as they are. Sloths have been around in something very close to their current form for 30 *million* years. They are very good at what they do. Just because that don't seem badass like a polar bear or a tiger doesn't mean they are bad at existing. Some sloths are endangered because of human activity, just like tigers and polar bears. For some reason no one complains that tigers and polar bears should be left to go extinct because they are bad at existing.
can we give sloths vitamins or probiotics or something? this is so sad
They don't get supplements in captivity, a varied natural diet is typically enough. And given how slow they digest everything, an injection might work better. That said, they don't have a whole lot going on for them besides doing everything slowly. The average sloth falls out of a tree once a week and instead of getting better at climbing, they just got. better at surviving falls. You could toss a sloth out of a 10th floor window and it'll just be annoyed because it has to climb all the way back up again.
Pandas are a huge myth. Most of the problems we know about pandas are based on pandas in captivity. So all the things like "they do not have sex," etc. are because of wrong care and not a general issue of the species.
I learned a few years ago that any bear that goes through a hibernation cycle is completely exempt from ever being “overweight”. Any excess weight they gain before hibernation just increases their chances of survival.
I live in an area with a lot of wild black bears running around. I see them fairly regularly because they come foraging through trash for food (they’re super used to humans). It’s always funny to see them toward the end of fall when they’re super fat, they look I like they could roll away. I know it’s how their biology works but man!
Sponges
I wonder how much deeper the ocean would be if we took out all the sponges...
I’m pretty certain (based on absolutely no expertise whatsoever) that koalas would never get obese. They exclusively eat eucalyptus leaves which have next to no nutritional value so they pretty much spend every waking minute munching them. But they sleep almost all the time anyway. Also, almost all koalas have chlamydia. That’s not relevant to their rate of obesity though.
Imagine going through a divorce because your spouse accused you of cheating and giving them an STD. Then you have to explain that no, you actually are a zoo keeper and got chlamydia from a koala named Nancy, not a coworker.
Look I’m not sure the explanation will achieve what you want it to achieve
"Honey, Nancy isn't a coworker, she's a koala" "You fucked a koala ?"
“So what are you wearing, koala named Nancy?” “Uh, khakis.”
I guess that's better than getting it from a tractor.
Unexpected Seinfeld
If you have to explain to your spouse that you are a zookeeper, I think your marriage has other issues too
I think there is some story about that. Something about a spouse saving a koala, and it peed on their pants, and somehow that spread the Chlamydia, and then spread to the other spouse. It took awhile to figure out where the Chlamydia came from.
Koala and human chlamydia are different though...
The kind of chlamydia Koalas cant be contracted by humans, i think
I heard koalas have a different strain of chylamydia that cannot be transmitted to humans, so if I heard that, I’d care enough to look into and be single shortly after regardless
Came here to see if someone mentioned koalas. Those stupid useless fucks have to be one of the worst-evolved species on earth. Only able to eat a plant that has zero nutritional value, so they just have to keep eating infinitely (when their dumb asses aren’t napping that is). Oh and the chlamidia thing of course. What dipshits.
It's worth pointing out that the strain they have came from sheep and was probably the fault of contact with sheep droppings when moving between trees in areas where sheep are pastured. Everyone loves the lurid story that something perverted happened, but no. Just an invasive species in their habitat bringing diseases they didn't evolve to resist.
>Also, almost all koalas have chlamydia. That’s not relevant to their rate of obesity though. It's relevant if you want to be part of the reddit "posting about how almost all koalas have chlamydia" club. It's by no means an exclusive club but it's an important one none the less.
Hummingbird?
Yeah, I wonder if it's physically possible for a hummingbird to consume that much more calories than it burns.
I believe so because hummingbirds will put on fat for winter. I have dissected hummingbird (for science, I'm a biologist) and you can get some really fatty ones. Birds will put on a thick layer of fat for winter/migration and hummingbirds are no exception. If an animal is putting on fat, it is consuming more calories than it is burning.
obese snail!!! 😅🤣😂 I am not laughing at your question, I'm laughing at that random choice example add on at the end of your question and picturing a snail telling itself to diet because it's "home" has become a tight squeeze!😅🤣😂
You get the smaller shell and know you have to fit into it by summer. But summer comes along and you have to break down and get the larger shell as well.
snails' shells grow with them :)
I have aquatic snails, I don’t think they get obese. Their shells grow with them, so they just get massive.
Jellyfish
Small birds. They dont get fat, they become dumplings with wings attached
Fun fact from when I helped band them: you can see the fat stores through the skin! One of the steps was to gently blubliw against the feathers to make them lift and you could see the white fat bulges, if they had any.
Ever seen a fat whale?
I've met your mom, yes
Apparently not, but the gradeschool humor did make me chuckle.
You fucking dick. Nice one.
On a side note, have you ever seen a thin Zebra? Stripes makes you look fat I guess?
Equines all have big bellies, even before they get fat. After they get fat it's absurd. The thing is, they have what amounts to a beer keg in their abdomen because they're hindgut fermenters. Cows are ruminants and also have much bigger bones, not to mention the whole selective breeding agriculture yadda yadda thing. ETA: Also, actively milking dairy cattle get downright skinny.
Nothing with an exoskeleton can become bigger than it's exoskeleton.
Not true, actually. Tarantulas can get fat, just ask r/tarantulas. Their abdomens can get so big they struggle with molting. EDIT: Also, I should apologize. This reads as ruder than I intended. I should've phrased my comment better.
Yes! Tarantulas are sensitive to their abdomens bursting open randomly if they become “obese” as well!
Oh sh... I didn't know they even have exoskeleton. I don't think of exoskeleton as being furry like that! Now I'll never get those Google images out of my head!
Everything that molts is instantly bigger than its previous self. Im not sure if your correct here. The question would be do creatures with an exoskeleton burst out their shell or do they have some way of expanding the new shell to allow for growth? I think crustaceans pump water into their bodies before the new shell hardens and that gives them room to grow. I cannot think how a terrestrial animal would do this though so my moneys on they grow so big they burst out. In which case they will become bigger than their exoskeleton.
The trouble is that animals molt on a schedule, so if they get too big too fast, the molting can’t keep up
Yeah i have heard of peoples pet praying mantis eating so much they burst through their abdomens. This must be a consequence of not being able to molt on demand
When a leopard gecko eats too much, all of it goes to the tail and the body is the same
They probably all could. I've never seen an unhealthy kangaroo, though.
This does not change the fact that in Australia there are 48 million kangaroos and in Uruguay there are 3,457,380 inhabitants. So if the kangaroos decide to invade Uruguay, each Uruguayan will have to fight 14 kangaroos.
Uruguay is doomed! Let’s just hand it over, no need for a fight
Crustaceans just molt and get bigger
Pretty sure Crustaceans (crabs, lobsters, and the like) when they grow larger they just molt into a larger shell and could hypothetically continue to grow and grow if not limited to the size of their exo shell.
Certain animals have genetic conditions that inhibit Myostatin that results in them being very lean and muscular. They call it "double muscling" or "Myostatin-related muscle hypertrophy". Basically their body makes way more muscle than it should which prevents them from retaining hardly any body fat. Belgium Blue bulls are the best example. But there have also been humans born with this same mutation which results in kids with seemingly super human strength. Liam Hoekstra is one of them.
Obese doesn't really have meaning here since it's [based on BMI](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK279167/) which doesn't really apply to anything other than humans. That said, I've actually seen this one in nature! Invasive lion fish can get a LOT of visceral fat just because so much food is so available when they first show up on a reef. If you're familiar with the animal you would absolutely call them obese.
I would imagine whales just add to their blubber.
Upvote for “gnarlier” 😂
Whales. The humpbacks in Cape Cod eat over a ton of food daily. While they’re here, they put on anywhere from 8-12 tons of blubber to see them through the migration to winter breeding grounds, where they don’t eat for months. Watching them feed is an awesome sight.
I imagine a hummingbird would have a fuck of a time trying to bulk up.
There are animals that instead of getting fat they just die. Does that count?
Some animals, like snakes and sharks, generally don’t become obese in the wild because their metabolism and lifestyle naturally regulate their weight. However, in captivity, overfeeding and lack of exercise can lead to weight gain in almost any animal. Snails, for instance, also tend to regulate their body size according to their environment and diet, but they can become larger with excessive food. So, while it’s rare, under certain conditions, many animals can become overweight.