How to Make an Elephant Explode – The Size of Life 2
Why Worldbuilding Stack Exchange recommends it
Worldbuilding Stack Exchange answerers point people to it when explaining how scaling creatures up or down changes their metabolism, heat management and strength.
Recommended by 2 people across 2 different months, 2018 to 2021.
What it is
A Kurzgesagt animated explainer on how body size shapes an animal's biology, using the square-cube law to show why elephants, mice and insects work so differently. It covers heat loss, metabolism, weight support and what happens when you scale an animal up or down.
What people said
Recommends KernelOfChaos · 2018-05 · Worldbuilding Stack Exchange · on “Would a humanoid insect species even lift?”
What I would like to know is how this creature's musculature would compare to ours regarding strength, more specifically lifting and carrying weight. Yes, it would be comparable. So, let's look at the square-cube law another way: the larger something is, the slower it is in all areas relative to its size. It's metabolism and reaction times slow down, its top speed slows down, etc. It also lifts less mass relative to its own body weight. So scaling a mantis up to human size would result in a mantis with human strength, human speed, human reflexes, and so on. Keep in mind that the average human weighs 45 - 50 kg, and most cannot lift more than half their bodyweight without specifically trainin
Recommends Lupus · 2019-06 · Worldbuilding Stack Exchange · on “How big could a land-dwelling arthropod get if it wasn’t limited by oxygen consumption?”
Oxygen consumption isn't the only problem. Their biology is optimized for their current size. With a significant change in it, they should rework almost every major system. Heat management With increase in size, their insides (which generate heat) increase more than their surface area (which loses heat). It either requires a better cooling system or a slower activity on their part. Like elephants and rhinos. This (Kurzgesagt) video explains it in more detail, with nice illustrations: [this video] Weight management Both inner body support and outside movements had to be reworked or enhanced with size increase. For example, in most arachnids case, their limbs are too far away from their center of g
Cites LiveInAmbeR · 2021-11 · Worldbuilding Stack Exchange · on “Explaining Chasers as a Evolutionary Stage of a Caterpillar”
It's not about wasting energy but about efficiency. Larger animals are counterintuitively more efficient than smaller ones. Larger animals need more food, but as in most things the square-cube-law comes into play. Thermoregulation is a problem for smaller creatures, while larger ones are so resistant they actually save energy. Because of this, smaller animals have high metabolisms and eat multiple times their body weight, while larger ones eat comparatively less and have slower metabolisms. Here's a kurzgesagt video [this video] that explains this in greater detail. Larger animal means longer steps. [LINK] Consider the effort it takes for a tiny person to walk a few feet forward. A larger person