« Animal Life Spans | Home | Fuel Cells - The Basics »
Super-size Me!
By Linda | April 19, 2008
All creatures are designed in a scale that allows their particular muscle and skeletal structure to properly support their mass. If you had the ability to supersize living things as has been the plot of many a science fiction movie, some unexpected consequences would arise.
If a scientist could really super-size a 5 foot tall, 100 pound woman to 10 times her height, you might assume that her new taller self would weigh 10 times as much or 1000 pounds, but you would be incorrect. If she increased proportionately in figure dimensions, the 50 foot woman would weigh a staggering 100,000 pounds. Not only would her muscles not be strong enough to allow her to stand but her organs would most likely not be able to sustain her massive bulk and she would soon perish!
For this same reason, if we were to super-size an ant to human scale, it would no longer be able to lift 10 or 20 times its own own body weight.
I found a great website that does an excellent job of illustrating the relationship between length and mass. To read more CLICK HERE.
There was a time in Earth’s past when bugs really did get quite large, but only with the help of the environment. To read more about it CLICK HERE.
Topics: Animal Kingdom, Nature |
-
Archives
April 19th, 2008 at 8:34 pm
[…] drbrown wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerptIf a scientist could really super-size a 5 foot tall, 100 pound woman to 10 times her height, you might assume that her new taller self would weigh 10 times as much or 1000 pounds, but you would be incorrect. … […]