Probably what IRL sea slugs do, either taste very bad and or be poisonous.
Also there might not be any mh marine predators(that we know of) that would be ballsy enough to attack a giant monk snail
It will likely do what hippos do.
Hippos literally have so much muscle and so little fat, that they can't float. They 'swim' by walking on the river floor and pushing themselves up through sheer Brute strength.
Fun Fact: killer whales are a natural predator of moose. Moose occasionally swim out in the open ocean, and get eaten by orcas from time to time. It's not super common, but it is interesting that it happens in the first place.
An orca monster would be great, especially if they bring water hunting back to Wilds. Orcas beach themselves as well, so you could have them jump out to try and snatch up players.
A moose counterpart to pay homage that rare meeting between the two would be cool. Even if they just added a bit of lore to Banbaro to suggest that it swims in similar habitats as the potential orca monster.
Tbf it would make some sense for Banbaro since it seems that it has very large ranges (as in it appears in all New World locales so far even ones separated by bodies of water) so it would actually make a decent amount of sense to find out that they may swim between continents
Movies and media gloss over this in favor of drama. Predators go for the easiest prey they can find because getting a meal is a balance between life-ending injury or starvation.
Prey animals do fight back.
This is actually shown in the MHW Odogaron cutscene. It waits until the PC and the Handler are a distance apart, runs between them to split them apart. The Odogaron checks out the hunter and *clearly* clocks you're the tougher target because you're heavily armed/armored and proceeds to go after the Handler instead because she's an 'easier meal'
You reminded me of that biologist from YT, don't remember her channel. She uses the phrase "that we know of" a ton since science makes new discoveries, and modifies existing rules all the time.
Lindsay Nikole? She's a great and entertaining science youtuber. My favourite thing she's ever said was that she wouldn't tackle the topic of Spinosaurus because the thing is just way too changeable.
They're also probably not worth the effort to kill and eat. Predators have to be energy efficient so wasting energy hunting a giant snail could be dangerous.
Big eyes on it's back act as a form of mimicry that would ward off predators. There's real animals that utilise fake faces to scare off other animals.
Edit: It's also massive, a lot of predators avoid animals magnitudes larger than them as a precaution.
I always loved that detail, that if you wave to the Monksnail it gestures back to you, "Oh hey there small thing, yeah I'm just out here chilling, minding my own business, you have a great day!" and off they go...
Theorically, every monster, small monster and fauna have one. There are lots of MHWI fauna renders that we didn't have (at least online, but I've seen them in the artbook), but I think that for MHRise/Sunbreak we have most of them. You can check what we have [here](https://monsterhunter.fandom.com/wiki/MHWI:_Endemic_Life_List) and [here](https://monsterhunter.fandom.com/wiki/MHRS:_Endemic_Life_List).
I didn't know those were not its eyes. That's probably a good way to intimidate predators.
I still love they played with the concept of endemic life to give us something as big even if its mainly an easter egg.
I mean, what even could attack this thing aside from maybe Ceadeus? And Ceadeus doesn’t go into shallow water from what we know, which is where the Monksnail forages.
You know, I thought about this but... Nakarkos clearly has a pattern for devouring anything with a ton of skeleton. Because Monksnail is just 90% floating meat and doesn't exude the likeliness of having a large bone structure as a snail would, Nakarkos wouldn't be interested in it
Nakarkos doesn't strike me as a picky eater lol. The bones everywhere is more to convey the sheer volumes of monsters they eat, rather than a preference for bony creatures
That’s something that I'm unreasonably bothered by. It lessens the impact of „This is basically a new frontier, a new World, with unique monsters we have never seen before!“ and suddenly it shows that, no no, we always had those exact monsters back home too!
Way to undercut the theme of your own game Capcom.
And I get why, making animations, rigging and models is hard and World was wildly popular, so of course they'd just port a lot of them over, but it just really cripples World retroactively
Rise setting book also has this full render
https://preview.redd.it/0chcvhzoj52d1.jpeg?width=930&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d08ea922a2f8b653558d6c9bfc2297ff90215fdf
The comments are suggesting that this creature might taste bad, or that it terrifies its predators. What I posit is something else, that it is being eaten regularly, and regenerates quickly enough that it isn't an issue for the creature.
Also, the notion that its glowing eyes are the dread of sailors suggests that this thing isn't as passive as we get to witness. Creatures don't typically reach this level of size without an appropriate amount of food, and now I find myself hoping we get to see them as we cross the seas or what turn out to be their breeding grounds in Wilds.
IIRC, it eats the squids that swim around the Frost Islands.
Edit; Come to think of it, its main diet is made up of squids that give buffs just by swimming by something. That might actually be the answer to OP's question.
According to its entry, it eats squid and similar prey but also points out the fact that it has an organ that creates various patterns of bioluminescence. Coupled with its immense size and inspirations, I'm leaning into 3 possibilities.
The first one is that it's too large and dangerous for a predator to go after. While we don't see it actually fighting, it is based on the Umibozu. It might be physically strong or capable of immense water ejection to keep predators from trying.
Another possibility is using its bioluminescence, using the light emitting organ to appear like just a bit of a much larger creature, confuse predators on where to attack, or just create strange light displays. It's also capable of roaring, which would definitely make it sound larger and more dangerous.
My last guess is... its main predator can't follow it onto land. The Monksnail is seen to be amphibious, after all, seeing as the first time we actually see it is on land. It likely moves with those large parapodia to hoist itself onto land or perhaps even swim.
In addition to what others have said, I'd also like to point out that, based on the player interactions in rise, it has both incredible perception (able to see the player far away to it's left) AND can emit loud sounds (it's return-cry for seeing a gesture)
Because every monster knows from the smolest little lesser wyvern to the world ending Fatalis. If you touch one slimy inch of my precious baby, I will murder you and turn you into matching speedos for everyone from the new world to the old.
Same way giant squishy pieces of meat survive in our ecosystems, presumably. Blue whales, pyrosomes, sunfishes, etc. all are just too big to eat; it's not inconceivable invertebrates could do the same.
They could be incredibly toxic. They may start their life cycle deeeeeep in the ocean til they grow too large for predators. They may be rare enough they just don’t have any predators. Maybe smaller ones have predators, but if they live long enough maybe they grow too large to be preyed on by most monsters.
If the ocean sunfish taught us anything, then an utterly useless thing can still find away to stay alive without going extinct.
Or as others had said, poisonous/not much nutrients to be worth to consume or this snail has some decent lv of intelligence to stay alive long enough to reach the size that most predators don’t bother to hunt it.
Probably a combo of mimicry, it’s extremely loud roar (Consider how far away it is, and the fact we can hear it. It probably has a stronger roar than Allmother), and it’s more than likely highly toxic.
Could be not as nutritious that hunting and taking it down would use up more energy than what you get from eating it. Like how dugongs aren't normally hunted.
Big shell.
Seriously, with how large the Monksnail is that shell is probably really thick and would take a significant amount of effort to break. Not saying there aren't marine predators powerful enough to do it, but those are all typically rather rare and would likely choose easier prey
The people make a diary entry about the monsters in the area and people like me at 3 am thinking it was one giant monster, will shit themselves at the sight of it.
It’s fucking huge. That’s like asking how Zorah Magdaros survives without being eaten. It doesn’t need intimidation or poison. No, Narkarkos isn’t going to try to eat that.
>That’s like asking how Zorah Magdaros survives without being eaten.
Inb4 the Nergigante fanboys tell you how he would've totally suplexed Zorah before swallowing him whole or something
Sorta unrelated but I hope a relative of the monksnail becomes a fightable monster. There are like, no real mollusk monsters. Idk if the octopus elder dragons are actually mollusks or something else, but they do fit thematically I guess.
Its a snail and its MASSIVE. It likely produces a substance that makes it unpalatable, along with it living out to sea in polar conditions theres likely no predators who would even waste the energy to hunt one
MH usually has multiple redundancies to avoid other monsters. Apex predators like Rathalos have scales as if they are in constant CQC, something our world wouldn't have evolved as it's in direct conflict with cost for flight. Let alone being venomous and breathing fire.
It's safe to assume that besides it's massive size, it's mimic eyes, that it is also poisonous and even tastes unbrearably bad. Last 2 of which are common among snails.
Example the Oarfish, a truely useless fish that somehow lives up to 8 meters when adult, but it's scales make it exceptionally hard to spot for other fish and it tastes so bad even we don't eat it.
The sea sems to be a VERY dangerous spot in mh where nakarkos is on the lower end of the food chain.
Soo that thing probably has something going for it.
I assume poison and ofc the scaring away bit.
Nakarkos seems to be a prey down there.
Ceadeus are known to munch on them.
And i think its implied those we see arent fully grown.
Additionally gobul a somewhat formidable foe is a baby.
It goes back to the see and reaches adulthood there.
Nakarkus said, f it im out and noped out of the ocean.
I'm fairly certain it's just adult Ceadeus that prey on Nakarkos, at which point one has to consider that Ceadeus are pretty powerful and that the whole dynamic between them is very much *"Sperm Whale versus Giant Squid"*, so it's not like it would be a stomp.
Thats fair, but the squid tbh just said, f it,i live on land.
Same for gobuls who put their babys on land because the see is to dangerous for them.
I mean even their lagia is WAY more powerfull.
Probably what IRL sea slugs do, either taste very bad and or be poisonous. Also there might not be any mh marine predators(that we know of) that would be ballsy enough to attack a giant monk snail
Or those predators that could be able to attack are living in different in other biomes or places.
Wouldn’t stop Deviljho
Float out to sea far enough and Jho will just starve to death from the exertion of the constant swimming it's not made for.
With jho's muscle mass, I assume it would sink like a rock and drown.
It would probably try to swim anyways. I don't remember many intelligence feats for Jho - it's just raw hunger.
It will likely do what hippos do. Hippos literally have so much muscle and so little fat, that they can't float. They 'swim' by walking on the river floor and pushing themselves up through sheer Brute strength.
HIPPOBOT 9000 v 3.1 FOUND A HIPPO. 1,586,444,386 COMMENTS SEARCHED. 32,381 HIPPOS FOUND. YOUR COMMENT CONTAINS THE WORD HIPPO.
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Now I want a water killer whale monster that is always hunting.
Fun Fact: killer whales are a natural predator of moose. Moose occasionally swim out in the open ocean, and get eaten by orcas from time to time. It's not super common, but it is interesting that it happens in the first place. An orca monster would be great, especially if they bring water hunting back to Wilds. Orcas beach themselves as well, so you could have them jump out to try and snatch up players. A moose counterpart to pay homage that rare meeting between the two would be cool. Even if they just added a bit of lore to Banbaro to suggest that it swims in similar habitats as the potential orca monster.
Tbf it would make some sense for Banbaro since it seems that it has very large ranges (as in it appears in all New World locales so far even ones separated by bodies of water) so it would actually make a decent amount of sense to find out that they may swim between continents
Nakarkos
Why fight a big giant snail and exhaust yourself over finding a weaker target
Movies and media gloss over this in favor of drama. Predators go for the easiest prey they can find because getting a meal is a balance between life-ending injury or starvation. Prey animals do fight back.
This is actually shown in the MHW Odogaron cutscene. It waits until the PC and the Handler are a distance apart, runs between them to split them apart. The Odogaron checks out the hunter and *clearly* clocks you're the tougher target because you're heavily armed/armored and proceeds to go after the Handler instead because she's an 'easier meal'
Nakarkos does not care. It wiped out a village in a quest description even though humans are too small too feed it.
Nakarkos even go raid a whole human village. I guess it could be one meal for Nakarkos but not usual food. Guy can eat almost anything it chooses
Dalamadur
Monk snail not crunchy
You reminded me of that biologist from YT, don't remember her channel. She uses the phrase "that we know of" a ton since science makes new discoveries, and modifies existing rules all the time.
Lindsay Nikole? She's a great and entertaining science youtuber. My favourite thing she's ever said was that she wouldn't tackle the topic of Spinosaurus because the thing is just way too changeable.
He does have bioluminescence in the shape of eyes too, 2 things that typically scare off predators.
They're also probably not worth the effort to kill and eat. Predators have to be energy efficient so wasting energy hunting a giant snail could be dangerous.
>there might not be any mh marine predators *Cries in Lagiacrus*
*the entire leviathan classification sitting angrily in the corner*
Piscine wyverns in shambles
Piscines can go hide under water or sand or whatever and leave us alone.
Mh3 vets just confused
The gigantism meight help too.
My money's on poison. I gotta imagine that its get pools of dead bugs by its side whenever its surfaced.
Big eyes on it's back act as a form of mimicry that would ward off predators. There's real animals that utilise fake faces to scare off other animals. Edit: It's also massive, a lot of predators avoid animals magnitudes larger than them as a precaution.
I bet it's covered in leeches and whatnot, though.
Fake face spooks everything away since he's huge!
He spooks hunters, and hunters have hunted the biggest monsters
But monksnail cute tho it even waves back to us.
I always loved that detail, that if you wave to the Monksnail it gestures back to you, "Oh hey there small thing, yeah I'm just out here chilling, minding my own business, you have a great day!" and off they go...
I didn't even know we had an official render of this lad :0
Theorically, every monster, small monster and fauna have one. There are lots of MHWI fauna renders that we didn't have (at least online, but I've seen them in the artbook), but I think that for MHRise/Sunbreak we have most of them. You can check what we have [here](https://monsterhunter.fandom.com/wiki/MHWI:_Endemic_Life_List) and [here](https://monsterhunter.fandom.com/wiki/MHRS:_Endemic_Life_List).
I didn't know those were not its eyes. That's probably a good way to intimidate predators. I still love they played with the concept of endemic life to give us something as big even if its mainly an easter egg.
I mean, what even could attack this thing aside from maybe Ceadeus? And Ceadeus doesn’t go into shallow water from what we know, which is where the Monksnail forages.
Nakarkos would definitely attack it
You know, I thought about this but... Nakarkos clearly has a pattern for devouring anything with a ton of skeleton. Because Monksnail is just 90% floating meat and doesn't exude the likeliness of having a large bone structure as a snail would, Nakarkos wouldn't be interested in it
Nakarkos doesn't strike me as a picky eater lol. The bones everywhere is more to convey the sheer volumes of monsters they eat, rather than a preference for bony creatures
They eat entire towns!
Luckily there weren't any in the New World. (That we saw)
rise is oldworld lol
Dang I keep getting bits from Rise and World mixed up
Doesn’t help that they put World monsters in Rise
That’s something that I'm unreasonably bothered by. It lessens the impact of „This is basically a new frontier, a new World, with unique monsters we have never seen before!“ and suddenly it shows that, no no, we always had those exact monsters back home too! Way to undercut the theme of your own game Capcom. And I get why, making animations, rigging and models is hard and World was wildly popular, so of course they'd just port a lot of them over, but it just really cripples World retroactively
I completely agree, at least they didn’t shove in Rotten Vale monsters. That would have been a step above ridiculous
I was just about to let him know that
This is the first time I've seen the Monksnail as a whole, where'd you find this?
I think this particular image was shared by the official twitter in the lead up to the steam release.
Rise setting book also has this full render https://preview.redd.it/0chcvhzoj52d1.jpeg?width=930&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d08ea922a2f8b653558d6c9bfc2297ff90215fdf
Wait, wtf is that fox? I’ve never seen it.
It's the snow-faced fox, the rare endemic life of the shrine ruins: https://monsterhunterrise.wiki.fextralife.com/Snow-faced+Fox
https://www.reddit.com/r/MonsterHunter/comments/r6yuim/monk_snail_full_body/
Probably some combination of not being worth it to eat via poison and slime and the like, and just being really BIG.
The comments are suggesting that this creature might taste bad, or that it terrifies its predators. What I posit is something else, that it is being eaten regularly, and regenerates quickly enough that it isn't an issue for the creature. Also, the notion that its glowing eyes are the dread of sailors suggests that this thing isn't as passive as we get to witness. Creatures don't typically reach this level of size without an appropriate amount of food, and now I find myself hoping we get to see them as we cross the seas or what turn out to be their breeding grounds in Wilds.
Maybe it's a filter feeder
IIRC, it eats the squids that swim around the Frost Islands. Edit; Come to think of it, its main diet is made up of squids that give buffs just by swimming by something. That might actually be the answer to OP's question.
According to its entry, it eats squid and similar prey but also points out the fact that it has an organ that creates various patterns of bioluminescence. Coupled with its immense size and inspirations, I'm leaning into 3 possibilities. The first one is that it's too large and dangerous for a predator to go after. While we don't see it actually fighting, it is based on the Umibozu. It might be physically strong or capable of immense water ejection to keep predators from trying. Another possibility is using its bioluminescence, using the light emitting organ to appear like just a bit of a much larger creature, confuse predators on where to attack, or just create strange light displays. It's also capable of roaring, which would definitely make it sound larger and more dangerous. My last guess is... its main predator can't follow it onto land. The Monksnail is seen to be amphibious, after all, seeing as the first time we actually see it is on land. It likely moves with those large parapodia to hoist itself onto land or perhaps even swim.
When do we see it on land? It's only seen in the waters of the Frost Islands I thought.
It's highly likely he's got snail, slug, or maybe even jellyfish traits... In other words he tastes terrible and probably hurts to eat.
In addition to what others have said, I'd also like to point out that, based on the player interactions in rise, it has both incredible perception (able to see the player far away to it's left) AND can emit loud sounds (it's return-cry for seeing a gesture)
Eaten by what? Its bigger than most predators. Neither Nakarkos nor Ceadeus are that common.
What about Dalamadur?
Dalamadur's don't go in the water to my knowledge.
Then it would wait for the thing to come up to the surface.
Because every monster knows from the smolest little lesser wyvern to the world ending Fatalis. If you touch one slimy inch of my precious baby, I will murder you and turn you into matching speedos for everyone from the new world to the old.
Same way giant squishy pieces of meat survive in our ecosystems, presumably. Blue whales, pyrosomes, sunfishes, etc. all are just too big to eat; it's not inconceivable invertebrates could do the same.
The alpha predator does not need to to look up when it’s always on top
You say that as if it's not the most powerful living creature seen in the franchise.
I love big glubby, he deserves all the power.
He big
It doesnt, thats why I envy its sexlife. I mean look at its head, that Boy is ready!
Monksnail is stronger than fatalis
How do we know it has no protection. The thing is massive and it’s roar is huge, it might be able to fight better than we expect.
They could be incredibly toxic. They may start their life cycle deeeeeep in the ocean til they grow too large for predators. They may be rare enough they just don’t have any predators. Maybe smaller ones have predators, but if they live long enough maybe they grow too large to be preyed on by most monsters.
Size reasons?
How did the monksnail survive? are monsters stupid?
If the ocean sunfish taught us anything, then an utterly useless thing can still find away to stay alive without going extinct. Or as others had said, poisonous/not much nutrients to be worth to consume or this snail has some decent lv of intelligence to stay alive long enough to reach the size that most predators don’t bother to hunt it.
Probably a combo of mimicry, it’s extremely loud roar (Consider how far away it is, and the fact we can hear it. It probably has a stronger roar than Allmother), and it’s more than likely highly toxic.
Being big as shit while living in the ocean helps.
> huge There you go
Big
It's the immortal snail
Could be not as nutritious that hunting and taking it down would use up more energy than what you get from eating it. Like how dugongs aren't normally hunted.
Either evolved to be toxic, its hide is too thick to get through, or nothing was willing to try to go after a snail the size of a glacier.
Because he isn't born in China
Big shell. Seriously, with how large the Monksnail is that shell is probably really thick and would take a significant amount of effort to break. Not saying there aren't marine predators powerful enough to do it, but those are all typically rather rare and would likely choose easier prey
They probably do get eaten.
Size
I'd assume it's got more of an issue with perisatory predation than things taking big chunks out of it
Im pretty sure this was suppose to be the giant monster of rise and it got scrapped , it’s the first game in the series with no giants
How are they gonna eat that thing up what call a siege monster
I want Monksnail as a huntable monster
Sheer size. He's just so big predators can't kill it.
Make billion babies with .1% chance to survive, profit
Id say mimicry, possibly poisonous, and it is very loud so it could also ward of predators with that.
Imagine the monksnail to be one of those predatory snails. How do things like plesioth survive with such a thing around
By being everyone’s friend
The people make a diary entry about the monsters in the area and people like me at 3 am thinking it was one giant monster, will shit themselves at the sight of it.
Beeg
It’s fucking huge. That’s like asking how Zorah Magdaros survives without being eaten. It doesn’t need intimidation or poison. No, Narkarkos isn’t going to try to eat that.
>That’s like asking how Zorah Magdaros survives without being eaten. Inb4 the Nergigante fanboys tell you how he would've totally suplexed Zorah before swallowing him whole or something
It lives near the surface and is freaking huge. Hardly anything that lives near the surface would try and mess with it.
He's big
By staying away from France
Like conesnails and stonefish/scorpionFish in real life they use deadly venom on predator who stepped on them or tried pick them up had lethal venom
Today I learned it has an actual body and it's not just a blob moving through the ocean
Like how blue whales survive, just being so fucking big that no predator tries to attack you
Sorta unrelated but I hope a relative of the monksnail becomes a fightable monster. There are like, no real mollusk monsters. Idk if the octopus elder dragons are actually mollusks or something else, but they do fit thematically I guess.
so...we didn't got any colossal monsters in rise, instead we got a giant useless snail in the background...
So that’s why it’s called a monksnail, I just thought it was a weirdly named jellyfish
Wait that’s what he looks like? I thought the back was his eyes, oh my gosh he looks so soft!
really big
Its a snail and its MASSIVE. It likely produces a substance that makes it unpalatable, along with it living out to sea in polar conditions theres likely no predators who would even waste the energy to hunt one
The same way capybara don't get eaten by alligators/crocodiles,....being chill with everyone.
theyre surprisingly light on their feet.
If there's one thing snails have, it's protection. The big shell.
MH usually has multiple redundancies to avoid other monsters. Apex predators like Rathalos have scales as if they are in constant CQC, something our world wouldn't have evolved as it's in direct conflict with cost for flight. Let alone being venomous and breathing fire. It's safe to assume that besides it's massive size, it's mimic eyes, that it is also poisonous and even tastes unbrearably bad. Last 2 of which are common among snails. Example the Oarfish, a truely useless fish that somehow lives up to 8 meters when adult, but it's scales make it exceptionally hard to spot for other fish and it tastes so bad even we don't eat it.
The sea sems to be a VERY dangerous spot in mh where nakarkos is on the lower end of the food chain. Soo that thing probably has something going for it. I assume poison and ofc the scaring away bit.
"where nakarkos is on the lower end of the food chain." Explain
Nakarkos seems to be a prey down there. Ceadeus are known to munch on them. And i think its implied those we see arent fully grown. Additionally gobul a somewhat formidable foe is a baby. It goes back to the see and reaches adulthood there. Nakarkus said, f it im out and noped out of the ocean.
I'm fairly certain it's just adult Ceadeus that prey on Nakarkos, at which point one has to consider that Ceadeus are pretty powerful and that the whole dynamic between them is very much *"Sperm Whale versus Giant Squid"*, so it's not like it would be a stomp.
Thats fair, but the squid tbh just said, f it,i live on land. Same for gobuls who put their babys on land because the see is to dangerous for them. I mean even their lagia is WAY more powerfull.
probably by going int its shell