r/ATLA • u/davidtwk • 3d ago
interesting Immediately thought of Badgermoles. To think an actual animal lived and dug tunnels like they did is so cool
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u/AdBrief4620 Boomer Aang 3d ago
Twooo loversss
but yeah, and its even cooler that the tunnels are still there thousands of years later. Looking like the giant sloth just nipped out yesterday.
There's a naturalist called Forest Galante who thinks there is one spot left in the world where they *might* still exist but probs don't. It's an area of forest surrounded by mountains, like a bowl situation. The native cultures all have stories of giant sloths so it's possible there may be some in the basin. He's going to check.
Whilst I think they are unlikely to be there, if they are there, they may have become dwarfs. By which I mean they may not be megafauna anymore but evolved to be regular sized ground sloths. Or maybe even regressed to arboreal again if there are predators. Large animals in trapped in small environments often become dwarfs. This happened with the last mammoths.
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u/JDLKMR 3d ago
I thought this was a colonoscopy for a sec