What If The Titanoboa Never Stopped Evolving?

this is the Titanoboa one of the largest and deadliest snakes to ever exist it went extinct 55 million years ago but what if that never happened what if the titanboa just kept evolving and was alive today what special traits would this deadly creature have and how big could it get this is what if and here's what would happen if the titanboa never stopped evolving okay before we look at the modern-day Titan booa we need to go back 60 million years ago the Titan booa lived in the tropical waters of South America arriving on the scene

After The Dinosaurs went extinct it was a major predator of its time this snake was unimaginably large it had a girth of about 1 M that means if it were slithering on the ground toward you it would come up to your waist it was 14 to 15 M long and it weighed over 1,000 kg luckily the Titanoboa wasn't venomous but don't let that trick you into believing it was safe it had a different way of killing its victims by squeezing the life out of them literally by wrapping itself around your body or squeezing your windpipe

and then swallowing you hole and if you tried to slip out you'd be met with rows of sharp little teeth that would dig into you but you could see this creature coming right no not a chance the titanboa was the perfect color a color that allowed it to camouflage itself in its swampy environment it would sit and wait for the perfect moment to strike it feasted mainly on fish Turtles and crocodiles so if the ti tab booa was so dominant what finally made it go extinct well it had to do with a massive change in

climate but to understand this let's first dive into what made the Titanoboa such a dominant creature and then how it suddenly went extinct paleo scene 66 million years ago to 56 million years ago titanoboas emerged after the apex predator Niche was left empty by the extinct of the dinosaurs they thrived in hot and humid environments lucky for them that's what Earth happened to be like 60 million years ago the average temperature was around 24 25° C now we love that temperature in the summer but imagine if it were that way the whole year instead of

ice caps the poles were covered with forests and instead of polar bears there were alligators roaming around just like today a planet even a few degrees hotter is very unpleasant for human beings so it's a good thing we weren't around at that time but there's a set of animals that thrive in the heat cold blooded ones our titanoboa was coldblooded so it loved warm weather unlike warm-blooded creatures cold-blooded animals aren't able to regulate their own body temperature they use heat from the environment to warm up their bodies and kick their metabolism into a higher gear

so a warmer Earth was perfect for the Titanoboa it had a supply of external energy to keep its body warm hunt without mercy and become one of the largest Predators ever but then the Titanoboa went extinct why well a lot of changes were happening at this time the Earth experienced two very different climate shifts first it became very hot and then it cooled down with our current evidence it's not clear if the Titanoboa became extinct during the heat Spike or during the cooling phase so let's look at each change and try and figure out what

might have happened the heat Spike event 56 million years ago it was 56 million years ago that Earth suddenly got super hot the official name for this heat spike is the paleocene eosine thermal maximum or petum for short massive amounts of carbon dioxide entered the atmosphere raising the temperature by up to 8° C the Seas became really hot in the tropics it was like a warm bathtub with temperatures around 38° C there was a mass extinction of creatures in the deep sea in particular many single cell creatures called thums died out now for the Titanoboa

this may have resulted in two different outcomes it's possible that this giant snake thrived in hot water and became larger you know even if some fish were dying other reptiles like turtles and crocodiles could have also grown big with the heat and became a great food source for the Titanoboa so in this scenario our titanoboa just gets bigger and batter during the heat Spike but there's another possibility maybe the Titanoboa went extinct due to the warmer temperatures because the heat Spike was so sudden oceans absorbing carbon dioxide would have become more acidic many fish may

have died in that acidic warm water which would have meant fewer fish for the Titanoboa to eat now if this were the case the Titanoboa would have needed to adapt to survive what evolutionary change could have helped it survive this heat Spike well if the tropical waters were too hot and acidic to live in moving on to land would have been Titan ioa's best bet yeah switching from a mostly pescatarian diet to being a meat eater now as Earth became warmer something interesting was happening above the waterline the land was exploding with different types of

mammals camels horses pigs goats and giraffes all evolved when Earth was a giant sauna so if titanoboa moved from water to land it would have found some new foods to keep it going but because of its large size living on land would have been difficult so our titanoboa would need a different kind of adaptation to get through this temperature Spike the giant snake is going to get some stronger swimming muscles and swim up to the poles because now the poles have warmed up so much that they're tropical the ice melted into water and the polar

Seas were full of crocodiles the perfect lunch for a hungry Titanoboa eosine and ooen 56 million years ago to 23 million years ago okay after 200,000 years the heat Spike was finally over and temperatures went back to what they were before but another major shift in climate is on the way a cooling around 50 million years ago temperatures began dropping in a longterm cooling Trend that lasted until the dawn of civilization the once Lush forests at the poles are now becoming ice caps this was bad news for the Titanoboa the cooler climate didn't suit this

cold blooded snake it could no longer get the heat it needed from the environment to be able to power itself it's possible that this led to the Titan aoa's Extinction about 55 million years ago in order to survive it would have had to evolve in a different and totally unexpected way in our hypothetical scenario the Titanoboa becomes warm-blooded maybe you're thinking well can a cold-blooded animal really become warm-blooded well how is that even possible well it's true that if we look at snakes we don't see any examples of them being warm-blooded but there is another

category of cold blooded creatures that have some warm-blooded exceptions fish while the majority of fish are cold-blooded about 0.1% are partially or fully warm-blooded for instance the MoonFish is warm-blooded BlueAnt tuna white sharks and salmon sharks are kind of both they use a special mechan ISM to raise their body temperature called vascular countercurrent heat exchange let me show you how it works let's use a shark as an example now the muscles they use to swim generate heat which Heats blood in the veins the arteries bring cold oxygenated blood from the gills to the shark's muscles

and organs this cold blood picks up the heat from Blood In the veins which then raises the shark's internal temperature but in the Titan boa's Case there are no gills involved it breathes in through its nostrils and has lungs to supply it with oxygen but we can make it warm-blooded like the shark by having cold blood pumped in through the arteries which then pick up the heat from the warm blood in the veins this single evolutionary transformation would allow the Titanoboa to survive the mass cooling let's see what happens next myosin 23 million years ago

to 5 million years ago during the mayine Epic that followed Earth began to warm a little followed Again by a period of cooling the climate became drier and vegetation was more coarse rhinos were dominant in North America many species of horses evolved as did the variety of camels also a saber-toothed cat-like creature called the Nim Ravid roamed around could the Titanoboa have adapted in new and different ways to spawn a line of desert titanoboas yeah I know I said that living on land would be tough for such a massive creature but maybe there's an evolutionary

path to make this possible to camouflage in the desert it would need to adapt a new color scheme a light Sandy color and its next most important adaptation strong muscles to burrow into desert soil and live underground during the day both to conserve energy and to hunt under the cover of Darkness now to protect against water loss through the skin the Titanoboa would take a lesson from the spadefoot toad this toad secretes a semi-permeable membrane that makes its skin thick locking in moisture our desert titanoboa would Branch out and have a new diet of birds

and mammals many desert animals are too small to make a meal so titanboa would lie and wait for a herd of camels Slither out of its burrow and make a killing or it might go months without food so the evolutionary path of titanoboas could lead to two subspecies the first one is shark-like swimming far and wide across the ocean able to preserve its body heat through adaptations that make it warm-blooded and the second is also warm-blooded but lives in Burrows deep in the desert like the sand worms from Dune they emerge from the Burrows with

lightning speed only to strike eat and then Retreat back underground these 21st century titanas would be as long as 23 M and about 1.2 M wide imagine going for a swim in the ocean and running into one of those you'd have just enough time for one last breath 6,000 years ago to today now this brings us to the question of how modern-day humans might interact with these magnificent and terrifying creatures before the start of modern hunting titanoboas would have been legendary frightening sea creatures that terrified humans our ancestors would probably be scared of going in

the ocean who knows any swim could be your last if you encountered a titanoboa the only good news would have been that these enormous creatures would probably have little interest in eating you because humans would provide little sustenance they'd rather catch a large fish or crocodile that would be much more satisfying now as humans developed better weapons the relationship would have changed there's evidence of humans hunting whales as far back as 6,000 BCE if the Titan Boa was still around it may have been a target of fishermen thousands of years ago maybe these snakes would

become part of our diet if their meat was tasty who knows maybe humans would have hunted them to near extinction by now in today's world it'd be a lot like the occasional shark attack we'd probably hear about rare titanoboa attacks on humans who swam too far out into the ocean in the desert nomadic tribes would probably fear the random unpredictable attacks of the desert titanoboa camels would have evolved to be super sensitive to those giant snakes underground movements maybe they'd warn humans when they sensed activity underground with infrared technology we'd be able to detect the

heat signature of titanoboas in their underground burrows future but in today's fast changing world something new and interesting would be happening human activity has reversed the cooling Trend with global warming temperatures are becoming attractive for reptiles again our newly evolved titanoboas have a warm-blooded inner architecture that has helped them survive the cooling of Prior epics but as the Earth Heats again the Titanoboa would once again lean on the environment for heat rather than using its muscular interactivity conditions would be ripe for the Titanoboa to hunt even more effectively and grow bigger as sea levels rise

in future years our coastal cities will be flooded and destroyed the warm weather will help new generations of titanoboa Thrive but the traditional habitats of the Titanoboa are currently being destroyed the lush tropical swamplands and forests near tropical waters are being wiped out by logging and Commercial activity the growing acidification of the waters will kill the marine life that the titanboa feeds on this would prove to be the biggest challenge for the creature the destruction of its food supply but there is one prey left for the titanboa would have to eat several to make a

meal of them but there's lots around you guessed it I'm talking about us maybe we'd become the target of the new ferocious Titanoboa watch out the next time a coastal city floods or maybe you should watch out for another giant creature the Megalodon those aren't still around are they well that sounds like a story for another what if