Ads skipped

Could Subnautica's Ghost Leviathan really exist?

27K views · Jul 6, 2026 · Gaming

Alidove

86K subscribers

Comments · 163

@Alidove_ · 2 months ago · pinned
Welcome to my mini crash course in evolutionary ecology! While it's fun to talk about real life science through the lens of video games, please remember that Subnautica is just that: a video game. Of course its creature designs won't be realistic, nor should they be.  This isn't meant to be an exhaustive analysis that covers every potential facet of a Ghost leviathan's anatomy and physiology, but rather just enough to teach you a few things you might not have known before and introduce a little critical thinking in my area of expertise to one of my favourite games of all time. That being said, I hope you come away from this video with a better understanding of evolutionary pressures and just how amazing hammerhead sharks are haha
121
@TinyTurtleDuck · 2 months ago (edited)
on my hands and knees begging for a similarly structured video about the chelicerates from below zero, those weird shrimps are my favorite
328
@Shadow-oc7ns · 2 months ago
You should do all of the leviathans in the subnautica series
166
@lilyy7318 · 2 months ago (edited)
Okay, but hear me out, what if these big critters aren't out there filter feeding for long? When I think of something needlessly large, flashy, and pretty much useless to do anything except breed, my mind goes to insects rather than fish. What if they do the large majority of their life cycle: the "juvenile" phase (which could be the large majority of their lifespan) to reach the adult weight, then they simply get a few extra calories filter feeding to extend their lifespan by a hair while breeding? Like, take a caterpillar. They're voracious eaters, then after metamorphosis, they will eat small amounts of nectar or even entirely lose the ability to eat. The entire point of metamorphosis in insects is to more efficiently sexually select. Butterflies are entirely useless for literally anything else, and develop their bright, flashy coloration as adults for that exact reason. Like, I can reasonably see the life cycle of something like this being hatching and spending 98% if their lives in places like the Lost River and storing energy with the hugely abundant food, 1% of their lives leaving and mating outside once they're too large, and the last 1% returning and laying eggs before dying. They'd probably leave the crater for breeding since, as far we know, they're really the only organisms out there for at least a few hundred miles. No need to worry about other predators when you're the only thing bigger than plankton out there. They wouldn't need metamorphosis since they're already capable (if not efficiently so) of moving through water rather than needing to go from flightless to flight, so the body plan that's more suited to their juvenile habitat makes a certain sense. As for why there are so many, the PDA does say they show a remarkable rate of growth. Maybe they're doing breeding on a similar system as, for example, example a cicada brood or locust swarm. Perhaps we just so happened to land on 4546B in the middle of their several-hundred-year breeding cycle, after letting the population of river prowlers and other organisms recover from the last time. From this perspective, I think it's fair to bump their plausibility up from a 0.0001% to a staggering 0.00015%. Thank you for coming to my rejected TedX talk.
111
@palmtree2711 · 2 months ago
Honestly- all the talks about ramming in this video makes me really wanna hear a breakdown on the Hammerheads from Subnautica 2. Seeing two of them ramming into each other for dominance was one of the genuinely coolest moments of my playthrough, would love to hear you break down that and their adoration of the tadpole!
92
@Oceanfilly · 2 months ago
I still just think of them as big a** polychaete worms 😂
29
@labrys-and-lillies9963 · 2 months ago
The Ghost Leviathan was very good at making me suspend my disbelief whenever I screamed like a child as it came out of the dark right at me XD This was a really cool explanation of all the problems, complete with a lot of information on how to do it right.  When I first played the game, something about the lifecycle of the Ghost Leviathans' lifecycle was really appealing to me as a writer, so it's really helpful to get all this information to make a better morphology. They're still my favorites of the Subnautica 1 Leviathans, but there's a lot of fun to be had in trying to create something as close to a real, believable organism as possible as a writer. Besides, if that thing's mouth was actually adapted to filter feeding, it would have been even scarier if it came towards me and then unfolded half it's face like a basking shark XD
42
@The_Amalgam · 2 months ago
I have to wonder, then, if we assume the PDA IS wrong (or at least can be), is there a way the ghost leviathan could survive with its size and body plan?
52
@heatherfertig7119 · 2 months ago
I've often thought the way the Ghost leviathan & Reaper leviathan move wrong for sea creatures. Probably due to the game engine but it feels like they are pushing or pulling through the water instead of being propelled by their tale/body.
20
@howaboutthis6897 · 2 months ago
I have genuinely been ranting about this to everyone in my life who will listen to me, so having a more in depth analysis by a subject matter expert is EXACTLY what I needed! If you make more of these, please do the reaper because the desolate biomes they live in cannot sustain them.
2
@Bowser641119 · 2 months ago
I'd love to see a redesign of the Ghostie that makes it more believable then, while keeping some of it's most notable features intact.
9
@IC3Y_hudson · 2 months ago
My theory is the the ghosts we see in the void are still in a larval stage. They metamorphosis into a different body and when they become gravid their body adapts to go back into the lost river (gets smaller organs change or whatever) then they die. And because we know they eat other ghosts the hammer head can be intentionally flawed they ram into each other. The weaker one dies and becomes food and also the less ghosts the more micro organisms the other ghosts can eat.
9