this post was submitted on 17 May 2024
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Since whales are teaming up with each other to take down yachts and teaching others how to do it I thought this would be a fun question.

If a majority of intelligent enough sea animals that could communicate with each other teamed up to mess with human activities in the sea who would win.

By the way for people that say that humans would obviously win we have already lost a war against emus before.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

I know this is just being silly, but stop and think about the difference in scale between a yacht and the larger ships in the ocean. There was a recent case of a cruise ship showing up at port with a whale over it's bow. The ship rammed a whale, effectively beached it on the bulbous bow and no one on the ship noticed. And then you have things like an Eisenhower Class Aircraft Carrier. At over 1000 feet long, 250 feet wide and displacing over 100,000 tons the sheer scale of the ship is hard to imagine without seeing it. Imagine taking a sky scraper, tipping it on it's side and floating that out to sea. That's what we're talking about. You could have 10 large blue whales laid out tip to tail along the length of the carrier. An entire pod of whales ramming such a ship would just result in whales with concussions. And then CWIS goes brrr.....

Whales, dolphins and other marine animals are amazing, but their scale and coordination pales in comparison to what humans do. We have basically no natural weapons or advantages in strength or speed. But, we dominate the planet because we can plan far ahead and work in groups much larger than a local tribe. We also harness energy in ways well beyond what animals do. Even something as simple as fire is outside the ability of other animals to create and use effectively.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

Considering the sheer amount of microplastics we are pouring in the ocean collectively, we may lose but after a while we are still going to bring them down with us.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago

the only reason those whales are surviving is because they're legally protected and people don't want to hurt them. we hunted whales nearly to extinction without even using gunpowder

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

Alfred Hitchcock's The Fish

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

At sea? I would not even fight. The sea creatures rule the sea.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

Humans have a history of eradicating species without even trying. If we put our mind to it we'd have the oceans scraped clean by next week.

Free Willy, with every purchase of $20 or more

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Humans.

We can be "not at sea" and still kill sea life, but dolphins can't get on land.
We're currently trying not to kill sea life and doing a pretty poor job of it. If we were trying we could do a number on marine mammals just by having the navy use their crazy powerful sonar all the time, instead of "minimally".
"Ah, you're trying to boop my ship. Have you considered having your inner ear destroyed so you can't tell up from down, use echolocation, or communicate, resulting in a horrible death by drowning or beaching?"

Humor of it aside, the emu was was an attempt to kill the emus eating farmers crops where they used military resources to try to do pest control for people given vaguely subpar farmland. Turns out that stationary machine guns are not the best way to kill emus. After a few attempts only killed a couple thousand, they switched back to just having hunters do it and that got tens of thousands.
Later, they just used "fences", which proved insurmountable to the emus, which were forced to just walk around the farms instead of cutting through.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 months ago (1 children)

What’s preventing dolphins from coming up on land?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

They don't have legs my friend.

They also overheat without the water to keep them cool.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Are you saying they’re too dumb to overcome those challenges?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 months ago (1 children)

It's not their intelligence I'm concerned with my dude, but their inability to hold precision tools.
I hate to be the one to remind you, but they can only use their mouths, and it's really hard to mine or build complex machines underwater.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 months ago (1 children)

really hard

So you’re saying there’s a chance?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

Bless your heart.