Leedsichthys

The Leedsichthys (Leed-sick-thees) is an aquatic Creature in ARK: Survival Evolved.

Behavior
The Leedsichthys is passive toward most things with the exception of rafts. They will stop at nothing to take down any raft in open water. Their sheer mass gives them the power to wreak havoc on even the best protected raft. When a raft is encountered the Leedsichthys will charge at full speed smashing the raft to bits by dealing direct damage to the raft itself even when the raft is fully encased in stone or even metal. Boaters beware; the Leedsichthys are anywhere there is deep water, and aggressively attack your watercraft (but not on mobile).

Appearance
The Leedsichthys is a spectacular sight for any deep-diving survivor. Nothing less than an enormous fish, the beast's cavernous maw is capable of swallowing humans whole (thankfully, the creature only feeds on minuscule fish and plankton as well as boats apparently). Its head bears light armoring to protect itself from Mosasaurus and a powerful tail, capable of turning rafts into splinters, propels it through the open ocean. The beast is so vast that bits of its flesh can be scraped off its body without seriously injuring it - a tactic that survivors use along with small water predators.

Roles

 * Fish Collection: The Leedsichthys cannot be tamed, but Survivors can harvest about ~50 or  from a Leedsichthys without killing it by going up to it and pressing . However this ability has a cooldown of 10 minutes.
 * While it cannot be tamed, it can be captured by leading it into a large pen to scrape Fish Meat and not worry about risking the survivor's life collecting in the open sea.


 * Boat Destroyer: If captured in a pen, a player maybe able to raid another survivor's boat by releasing the Leedsichthys when their enemy raft is in the Leedsichthys aggro range.

Combat
This section describes how to fight against the Leedsichthys.

General
A normally passive creature to players and other sea creatures that you can harvest Raw Fish Meat and Raw Prime Fish Meat off without damaging it.

Strategy
Use a high melee damage mount to attack its sides, you can easily out maneuver it and avoid its melee attack and get around the heavily armored front.

Another strategy would be to lure it onto the beach or shallow water, potentially trapping it and leaving it exposed to attack. Though that is a good strategy, try trapping it in areas it can not move much in, making it hard for it to escape.

Another strategy would be to bring some suicidal small aquatic dinos as the Leedsichthys is only able to hit one at a time. This means that you can hit it while it is busy killing the smaller dinos in the battle.

Weaponry
Melee is not recommended. Crossbow or Harpoon Launcher, ranged weapons that can be fired underwater are preferred. If lured at beach, then any ranged weaponry can be used.

Dangers
Powerful jaws that have the ability to kill most survivors in one hit. Leedsichthys are very aggressive towards rafts and their occupants, and can destroy even metal ones with a single hit. (Swimmers -mounted or not- are normally not attacked). This is not the case on mobile. are commonly seen surrounding it. They also have an armoured front similar to that of a.

When on a raft, in spite of their enormous size they are all but invisible and undetectable. The only warning you may get before an attack are the occasional grunt/groaning they make and the noise of it accelerating through the water, which can give you precious seconds to react. If you can hear one, you are within its agro range. It is also possible you may miss the noises, or that there were none at all, so when sailing in any water deep enough for one of these beasts to submerge, expect an attack at any time that can come without warning. Do not attempt to fight to save your boat, as staying near one guarantees its destruction. Simply head towards the closest shore and pray you can make it!

Weakness
Very Slow with a Large turn Radius and no armor on its sides.

By tossing off the raft will temporarily calm the Leedsichthys. Its advised to have more than one survivor; one to maneuver the raft while the other toss honey thus increasing the odds of escape.

Notes/Trivia

 * The Dossier was revealed on November 16, 2015.
 * The "Great Albino Leedsichthys" mentioned in the Dossier refers to the Alpha Leedsichthys, which is a reference to the whale Moby Dick from the eponymous novel by Herman Melville.
 * Leedsichthys is believed by some scientists to be the largest bony fish that ever lived.
 * The process of harvesting meat from it without killing it is a possible reference to the engineered food creatures in Dougal Dixon's Man After Man, or a scene in the BBC documentary series Sea Monsters where protagonist Nigel Marvin witnesses a still-living, albeit deathly ill, Leedsichthys having its flesh ripped off by small marine reptiles and sharks.
 * The genus name of Leedsichthys means "Leed's Fish." It is named after the amateur paleontologist Alfred Nicholson Leeds, for his important finds on Leedsichthys.
 * On ARK: Survival Evolved Mobile, Leedsichthys does not attack rafts and it can be caught by fishing with for an  blueprint.
 * Oddly enough, the  also spawns at level 1. Perhaps this is to make Leedsichthys not overpowered as a highly leveled one may destroy a  in a single bite.
 * An in-game Leedsichthys is over 4.5 times larger than those that once existed in real life. Real Leedsichthys specimens have been estimated to have been between 9 and 10 meters in length, smaller than an in-game, whereas the in-game version of the Leedsichthys clocks in at a staggering length of around 57.5 meters, and is the largest non-boss aquatic animal in the game; topping even the mosasaur and tusoteuthis for both length and bulk.
 * Real Leedsichthys were all around passive and gentle. They don't have teeth and were generally slow moving so they could be preyed on by a great variety of animals. They actually coexisted with real s, their most common predator.
 * The behavior of real Leedsichthys is accurately reflected by the in game, passive all around even when threatened. They were gentle filter feeders that would not have shown the defensive behavior portrayed in the game, not to mention that their sheer speed and agility is completely uncharacteristic to their massive size. On the other hand, real were aggressive predators that killed anything in sight when hungry.
 * Forcetamed Leedsichthys will eat their own prime fish meat.
 * Interestingly, the Leedsichthys in the dev kit had a knock out animation with a knocked out eating animation. There was also a successful tame animation and a failed tame animation. This strongly implies that the Leedsichthys was tameable at first and explains why when forcetamed, it can be ridden.
 * Leedsichthys can be mate boosted.