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The Bloop; If the bloop were biological
Topic Started: Mar 28 2018, 01:42 AM (784 Views)
Tommy Wiseau
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Hello again speculative evolution people, I am unsure if this is the right segment for this discussion, but alas, I wish to evoke a thought exercise. We know by now that the bloop was the result of some sort of ice quake, but what if it where hypothetically a biological organism? I have two questions:

1) If it where to be one organism, how large would it have to be to create the desired sound? I know it was heard from 3,000 miles away if I remember correctly, and if my quick research is correct blue whales can only be heard from 500 miles. I wasn't able to find much information on the potential loudness of the bloop in decibels, or things like frequency.

2) What would be some plausible biological explanations for the bloop? The loudest underwater creatures are whales and pistol shrimp, so my ideas would be some sort of pelagic swarm of pistol shrimp clicking at the same time or perhaps some rorqual subspecies that rarely engages in some strange group singing behavior.

Anyway, I look forward to seeing what you speculators come up with.
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memebird
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One thing is certain, at that massive size (one estimate I saw was 705 feet) it would also probably be a filter feeder
It's also probably
- migratory
- lives in very deep water, probably deeper then whales, and it probably doesn't need to surface
- needs a reason to produce such a loud noise
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ZoologicalBotanist
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The SCP wiki has tackled the idea of the bloop being a real creature. They called it The Leviathan. I cant remember which one it was, but it was pretty cool. I do remember it was supposed to be some kind of giant isopod though.

EDIT: Here it is - http://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-169
Edited by ZoologicalBotanist, Mar 28 2018, 10:18 AM.


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Archeoraptor
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maybe a deep sea snow feeder like the vampire squid thotugh nto necessary a cephalopod
the idea of it beeing a swarm is cool
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Strychnos
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ZoologicalBotanist
Mar 28 2018, 09:57 AM
The SCP wiki has tackled the idea of the bloop being a real creature. They called it The Leviathan. I cant remember which one it was, but it was pretty cool. I do remember it was supposed to be some kind of giant isopod though.

EDIT: Here it is - http://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-169

When I saw the title for this topic, this SCP was the first thing that came to mind :)
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Tommy Wiseau
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Oh hi memebrid, wow, that estimate is certainly higher than anything I would've anticipated, you must be kidding aren't you? would you mind informing me where you got this information? Furthermore where there any other estimates you are aware of? Or any methods to calculate a hypothetical size? I am curious why you think a bloop would have to be migratory, would this simply be to have access to more food? The idea of any organism reaching 700 feet is far fetched to say the least, much less one on earth that managed to go undiscovered, so thus I believe a collection of individuals would be the more likely "explanation", though it'd be interesting to see how the existence of a 700 foot organism would be justified. Another interesting question is where did this organism come from evolutionarily? Unless it where the aforementioned whales or pistol shrimp it would likely need an early point of divergence from its most common relative we know of.

Archeoraptor, wouldn't the idea of the bloop being a vampire squid be implausible because of the inability of squid to vocalize? They don't have to say it, they can feel it.

Oh it's a very interesting story, I remember that SCP as well, unfortunately it doesn't attempt to integrate plausibility.

Maybe the bloop is just a chicken cheep cheep cheep *bloop shoves*
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GlarnBoudin
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It could just be that whatever this thing is, it's a creature that's incredibly loud - IIRC, the pistol shrimp's quite a bit louder than a blue whale.
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Archeoraptor
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"A living paradox"
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with vampire squid I meant ecologically
not that is a literal vampire squid
just a big animal or a swarm that feeds on marine snow detritus
Astarte an alt eocene world,now on long hiatus but you never know
Fanauraa; The rebirth of Aotearoa future evo set in new zealand after a mass extinction
coming soon......a world that was seeded with earth´s weridest
and who knows what is coming next...........

" I have to know what the world will be looking throw a future beyond us
I have to know what could have been if fate acted in another way
I have to know what lies on the unknown universe
I have to know that the laws of thee universe can be broken
throw The Spec I gain strength to the inner peace
the is not good of evil only nature and change,the evolution of all livings beings"
"
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memebird
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I found the statistic on google images and didn't have time to find another measurement. Apparently the image was cut off and included even more absurd estimates for other undersea sounds (such as the idea that 'Julia' sound belonging to a 2,600+ foot long creature which is... absolutely ridiculous)
again in hindsight, since I didn't have much time when making my previous post, I don't think it's really possible to accurately calculate something's size from a sound.
As for reason for migration, a matter of it searching for food was the reason I had in mind

Here's an idea that builds on the 'actually a swarm of creatures' idea
It's an extremely long Salp colony or colonies... though I can't think of why these would make noise.
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Tartarus
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memebird
Mar 28 2018, 09:48 AM
One thing is certain, at that massive size (one estimate I saw was 705 feet) it would also probably be a filter feeder
I don't really see how one could estimate the size of any creature based solely on how loud its sounds are. Considering how many loud small creatures there are, volume alone tells us nothing at all about how big anything is.
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Tommy Wiseau
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Oh boy a new batch of replies, let's see.

Oh hi GlarnBoudin, what would you make of say, some giant pelagic shrimp related to the pistol shrimp, but perhaps 6 feet long and with an appropriately scaled sound producing claw, would that work? That's the idea. As stated, I can't think of any incredibly loud creatures besides cetaceans and pistol shrimp.

Archeoraptor, that seems to be the only likely food source for such an organism it seems, you must be crazy to be eating anything big at that size. Whatever it is we can probably agree it would need a slow metabolism and probably be a low-energy (not very active) organism. Poor bloopy would probably be tired and wasted all the time. I wonder how deep it would have to be to remain convincingly hidden (he must be very shy), because krill can live in depths up to 5000 meters, though that seems more the exception not the rule, regardless it seems they would be a food source of greater sustenance than detritus, you krill taste good, ha ha ha.

I see memebird, I managed to find the image too, here it is if anyone wants it: https://www.google.com/search?q=bloop+size&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjxgLb68JLaAhXl64MKHTFfBoIQ_AUICigB&biw=1920&bih=963#imgrc=vcEwnBklVirDUM:
Wished they had picked a more interesting silhouette than just your standard prehistoric marine reptile though.

Ha, funnily enough I actually thought up a colony of linked comb jellies as well, perhaps forming a hollow cylindrical shape that would slightly taper at both ends, because rule of cool. Whatever the reason is for them producing noise, I imagine it happening very infrequently would add to the plausibility. Perhaps it has some sort of natural predator, and when the colony takes enough damage it calls out to some sparsely populated organism who feeds on the colony's predators. However I'm more troubled by HOW a Salp colony could produce noise.

Tartarus, the pistol shrimp is the only small organism capable of producing a significant sound I know of, what others are there? It seems to me like you're the expert. Anyway, I disagree that an estimation would be impossible, as couldn't one take the range of noise certain organisms could produce then calculate how much one would have to scale up that creature to produce the bloop's range? Granted the bloop would not be a perfect scaled up copy of the organism, but could it not work to get an idea of how big what kind of animal would have to be?

Anyway, something else to consider is that when one listens to the non-sped up audio of the bloop its sound is far more reminiscent of a cetacean's song than say, the clicking of a pistol shrimp (Or many. I knew they would betray me), though I am uncertain if they could produce a similar effect if they were larger of if there were a swarm of them.

One more thing, we've looked at cetaceans, pistol shrimp, and jellies, but what about fish? According to the following article corvina can be incredibly loud, so loud you'd think everybody betrayed them and they don't have a friend in the whirled: https://gizmodo.com/the-worlds-loudest-fish-is-now-a-victim-of-its-own-uniq-1821434120
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Tartarus
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Tommy Wiseau
Mar 29 2018, 09:14 PM
Tartarus, the pistol shrimp is the only small organism capable of producing a significant sound I know of, what others are there?
Well, cicadas are pretty loud things, with at least some species making sounds that can be heard as far as 400 metres away. That's quite a lot for such a small creature. Some mole crickets are loud enough to be heard 600 metres away.

Incidentally, I am not actually claiming our speculative creature needs to be a small creature. I'm merely disagreeing with the idea that is has to be a "705 feet" long leviathan. Why could it not just be a creature that's large, but still no larger than any known creature, that just happens to have a very loud voice?

Another thing to consider is if the loud sound should be depicted as a sound our speculative creature normally makes or rather as just the loudest it is able to make. For example, us humans can shout, roar or scream pretty loudly if we want to but our normal speaking voices are at a far lower volume.
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Tommy Wiseau
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Ah I see Tartarus, but I notice those are all land dwelling creatures. Granted, you've proven there are many small creatures capable of making loud noises, but those examples don't help in establishing the taxonomy of our hypothetical bloop. I think we should establish the most likely places such an organism could come from evolutionarily. I do believe something related to the pistol shrimp remains our most likely option.

I do agree it needn't be on the order of 700 feet, and indeed the creature's plausibility is raised tremendously if we keep it within the limits of known animal size. I still wonder how large a creature or how many of them would be needed to produce a sound that travels as far the bloop.

As for its volume or potential loudness, I do believe that depends on what type of animal we imagine the bloop to be, a swarm of creatures could produce a range of loudness depending on how many there are, where's if it where one individual (take a very large pelagic pistol shrimp as an example) would have a much smaller variance. Isn't the snapping of a pistol shrimp's claw more or less consistent in volume for each individual?

The sound would be infrequent, so I am tempted to go with the latter option you presented. Perhaps the organism is critically endangered and only starts to vocalize when it is with enough of its species, or once the swarm reaches a certain "critical mass". Perhaps the last time it made its noise humans had not developed the technology to hear it, and the bloop was the last time it could happen due to the dwindling species count.
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LittleLazyLass
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From Wikipedia:

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According to the NOAA description, it "rose" rapidly in frequency over about one minute and was of sufficient amplitude to be heard on multiple sensors, at a range of over 5,000 kilometres (3,000 mi).

If it was sustained over a minute, it can't have been a pistol shrimp-type creature, right? That's one instantaneous snap, which isn't going to rise in frequency. Pardon if I'm missing something though - not exactly my area of expertise. Additionally, pistol shrimp use their snapping to hunt, and so something similar couldn't possibly be so infrequent that we've only heard it once.

Some sort of bizarre whale or whale-like creature performing singing or something similar seems like it fits the event better.
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Tommy Wiseau
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Well what do you make of the proposed swarm of pistol shrimp? If many pistol shrimp were snapping in unison then it could stand to reason this could go on for about a minute. Also, maybe the organisms have evolved to the point where their claw is no longer used for hunting, as dwelling in the deep ocean they would likely feed on zooplankton and the like, the claw and its noise could be repurposed for use in communication, mating, or for aggregation into swarms. I am unsure about the frequency however.

Also I do believe a great collection of a known species of rorqual whales, say the Sei Whale, could gather to exhibit a strange group singing behavior, that may work as well.
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